Eritrean journalists who have attempted to express themselves freely or to establish links with international media or organizations have found themselves in trouble, either being thrown into jail, killed or forced into exile.
Also, 15 journalists fled from Somalia into neighbouring Kenya and Uganda this month fearing for their lives following systemic targeted attacks, kidnappings, torture and killings by the extremist Al-Shabaab group in Somalia. The exodus has heavily affected the operations of the media in that country, with one media house, Shabelle Media Network, having almost all its directors and senior editors carrying out their duties from outside the country.
In Ethiopia, the country’s Federal High Court on Monday 24 August 2009 sentenced two newspaper journalists to imprisonment for ”dissemination of false stories”.The journalists, Asrat Wedajo, the editor of Sefe Nebelbal, and Ibrahim Mohamed Ali, editor of Selifya, were convicted by the court and sentenced to one year imprisonment each by the tenth bench of the Federal high court.
Sefe Nebelbal was one of the thirteen papers that were closed down in late 2005, and the conviction is for a story that was carried in the paper almost five years ago. It was the most popular Oromo centralist newspaper at the time of its closure by the government. Selefya is an Islamic paper reputed for its advocacy of strict adherence to Koranic principles. It is still in print. The court rejected a plea by the journalists to pay a fine as opposed to imprisonment.
Meanwhile, in Kenya, four journalists working with the independent Star Newspaper in Nairobi have found themselves hounded by authorities after they exposed laxity in the police work of fighting terrorism in the country. The journalists, Catherine Gicheru, Andrew Teyie, Paul Illado, and Maina Kamore, have been subjected to regular police interrogations this month since they published a story indicating that a terrorism suspect escaped from police custody mid this year. Their lawyer, Paul Muite, has dismissed the police action, terming it “extreme abuse of power by the police, harassment and intimidation of the journalists”.
