By Mohamed Hassim Keita/Africa Research Associate
This week, in an exclusive interview with the Financial Times, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi suggested that the press in his country freely expresses dissent. In fact, that is hardly the case. The Horn of Africa nation remains one of the world's worst backsliders of press freedom.
Asked whether a series of recent arrests of political dissidents and legislation on civil society organizations and terrorism had "contributed to an atmosphere where people do not feel free to speak," the prime minister responded: "Have you read the local newspapers? Do they mince their words about government?"
A multitude of private, political newspapers filled the newsstands in the capital, Addis Ababa--until November 2005. Then, in the midst of deadly unrest following disputed elections, authorities imprisoned the editors of these publications on antistate charges, blaming the violence on their headlines. The government either banned the titles or induced enough fear that printers were dissuaded from printing the newspapers.
Click here for the rest. And here is the rest of it.
