(July, 11, (NAIROBI))- Ethiopia was plunged into an internet blackout following what the government described as a failed attempted coup in the Amhara region. In the aftermath at least two journalists were detained under the country’s repressive anti-terror law, part of an uptick in arrests that CPJ has noted in the country since May.
While internet shutdowns and anti-terror laws being turned against journalists are nothing new in Ethiopia, their use in recent weeks is in stark contrast to the Ethiopia that welcomed the international media community for World Press Freedom Day celebrations in May and whose prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has been
fêted as taking bold steps in opening up the space for a free press.
Yared Hailemariam, the executive director of the Swiss-based Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia, described the June 22 shutdown of CPJ as “a very wrong and old strategy by the government.” But it wasn’t the only blackout last month.
The country was hit by intermittent network disruptions affecting internet and SMS services between June 11 and 18, according to the Open Observatory of Network Interference, a global open sourcing network for tracking blocks.
Several outlets, including Bloomberg and CNN, said speculation inside Ethiopia was that authorities cut internet access in those instances to prevent students cheating during examinations.
Alongside the blackouts, in the past two months authorities also arrested several journalists and, on July 8, Ethiopia’s Defense ministry said in a press conference that it planned to file charges against “individuals and media creating distrust between the public and the army,” the state-affiliated Fana Broadcasting reported.
All this leads to the inevitable question: did we celebrate the opening up of Ethiopia too early? Read more from NewsDay Zimbabwe »
While internet shutdowns and anti-terror laws being turned against journalists are nothing new in Ethiopia, their use in recent weeks is in stark contrast to the Ethiopia that welcomed the international media community for World Press Freedom Day celebrations in May and whose prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has been
fêted as taking bold steps in opening up the space for a free press.
Yared Hailemariam, the executive director of the Swiss-based Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia, described the June 22 shutdown of CPJ as “a very wrong and old strategy by the government.” But it wasn’t the only blackout last month.
The country was hit by intermittent network disruptions affecting internet and SMS services between June 11 and 18, according to the Open Observatory of Network Interference, a global open sourcing network for tracking blocks.
Several outlets, including Bloomberg and CNN, said speculation inside Ethiopia was that authorities cut internet access in those instances to prevent students cheating during examinations.
Alongside the blackouts, in the past two months authorities also arrested several journalists and, on July 8, Ethiopia’s Defense ministry said in a press conference that it planned to file charges against “individuals and media creating distrust between the public and the army,” the state-affiliated Fana Broadcasting reported.
All this leads to the inevitable question: did we celebrate the opening up of Ethiopia too early? Read more from NewsDay Zimbabwe »
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