ETHIOPIA: WHY ARE SO MANY JOURNALISTS IN JAIL?
By Dana Wagner, Huffingtonpost
April 18, 2014 (In Depth Africa) – I recently wrote an article criticizing
two Canadian Cabinet ministers and the absolute privilege of
irreverence struck me yet again. I didn’t have to spend a week sleeping
anywhere but home to avoid thugs, or worry about my family losing their
jobs, or alert my friends — especially my international ones — that I
feared jail and to keep the media on my case if I disappeared.
If I did expect any of that, I don’t think I
would have the courage to write. That is a great tragedy in societies
without press freedom or freedom of speech, that critics can be silenced by the powerful, invisible force of self-censorship.
Disturbingly, it’s the ones who defy that
force that make the case for self-censorship stronger: They face the
outsized punishment that is also an explicit warning to the rest. Jail,
harassment, or worse for journalists and their families has the ultimate
demonstration effect.
A reporter in Mexico summed the rationale for
staying quiet, for only covering the soft stories in his narco-ruled
city, to fellow journalist Óscar Martínez: “Because I live here. And my
family lives here.”
Martínez explains, in his book The Beast,
“For those who live in the middle of the violence in these towns, for
those who travel without bodyguards and earn a pittance for their work,
for those who work from their homes where their kids live and play,
silence is understandable.”
In countries where autocrats control and restrict information, the demonstrations are chilling. Take these three cases from Vietnam, Turkey, and Ethiopia (ranked in the bottom 40 out of 180 countries on the 2014 World Press Freedom Index):
Nguyen Van Hai, pen name
Dieu Cay, is a Vietnamese blogger currently serving a 12-year prison
sentence. He covered government corruption and other sensitive issues —
or, in the language of his charges, he ‘conducted propaganda’ against
the state. The little that’s known about his condition in Vietnam’s
infamous prison camps is from rarely-approved visits by family,
sometimes just five minutes long.
Hatice Duman is a former owner and news editor of Atilim (Leap),
a socialist weekly, and is serving a life sentence in Turkey on several
charges including propaganda, weapons seizure, and attempted use of
force to change the constitutional order. Part of the evidence used to
lay these dubious charges, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF),
was witness testimony
by Duman’s husband who says he gave it under torture. Turkey ranked
first for the number of jailed members of the press until March 2014,
and RSF calls the country “one of the world’s biggest prisons for
journalists.”
Reeyot Alemu is a freelance columnist and former high school English teacher
in Addis Ababa. She is serving a five-year sentence on a conviction of
promoting terrorist attacks. Her columns criticized the government for
nepotism and cronyism — for reserving good careers and education
for the friends and family of elites. Alemu also compared
Ehtiopian-style governance to that of Muammar Qaddafi. Alemu reported
being tortured in jail, prompting UN criticism when Ethiopia failed to
investigate.
What’s behind censorship? The essence is
image and interests. No government wants embarrassing facts circulated
by the press. Some governments mitigate this risk by curbing
embarrassing behaviour; others choke anyone who points it out. And no
government wants to damage its own interests, which directly counter the
public interest wherever state officials collude in corruption and
thuggery.
The Committee to Protect Journalists tallied the charges against jailed journalists around the world and found the
majority are anti-state charges like subversion and terrorism. The
easier it is to be handled as a subversive or terrorist – and
unenviably, it’s easiest for Turks, Iranians, and Chinese, according to
CPJ — the less likely it is that reporters will confront state image and
interests.
Sticking with Vietnam, Turkey and Ethiopia,
there’s a lot of material for writers. Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen
Tan Dung said in his New Year’s address, that “any restrictions on
freedom of citizens must be … only for the sake of national defence and
security, social safety and order and preservation of our cultural,
historical and moral values” — for anything, in other words. Turkey’s
leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, tried to ban Twitter and social media
before elections in March, explaining “I cannot understand how sensible
people still defend Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. They run all kinds of
lies.” And Ethiopia’s head, Hailemariam Desalegn, vowed (in
Qaddafi-style eloquence) to continue the legacy of his predecessor,
dictator Meles Zenawi, “without any change” because “we brought peace,
democracy and development to the country.”
In all three countries, anti-press freedom laws give leaders the
impunity to act on their arrogance, and silence whoever bears witness to
their delusions and exposes the ugly underside of their societies. That
cheats all of us out of being better informed, global citizens.
Imagine a world without a George Orwell and The Road to Wigan Pier, without Katherine Boo and Behind the Beautiful Forevers, or without Óscar Martínez and The Beast.
What if Britain, the United States, and El Salvador had silenced these
radicals before they ever documented working class poverty, the
economics of slum life, and the horror of migrant trails?
Of course not every writer behind bars is a
prodigy, but some likely are. There are 211 jailed journalists
worldwide, as of December 2013, and a countless community of silenced
colleagues attached to each one. Imagine what we’re missing.
Source: In Depth Africa
