Police Arrest Ethiopian Newspaper Editor

The Ethiopian police have arrested the editor in chief of The Reporter, a bi-weekly Amharic and English language newspaper, which is one of the biggest newspapers in the country. Staff of the newspaper told APA on Tuesday that the editor-in-chief, Amare Aregawi was arrested last Friday from his office in connection with a story the paper published in one of its recent editions.

Sources at the newspaper said that Aregawi was arrested for an article questioning labor practices at a big brewery; the Dashen Brewery, located in Gondor town, some 750 kilometers north of Addis Ababa.

The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders on Tuesday issued a statement demanding for the release of Aregawi, who is also the owner of the newspaper, established about ten years ago.

“The Ethiopian government reminds the press about the law so often that it is hard to understand how it allows prosecutors to violate it so openly,” Reporters Without Borders said.

“Amare’s unjustified arrest exposes the unfairness of legislation that allows journalists to be imprisoned for defamation. His newspaper dared to question a big company’s practices. Now he, like the reporter who wrote the offending article before him, are paying the price for having the courage to do their job properly and serve the public interest. He should be released at once,” Reporters Without Borders said.

Amare, who ran Ethiopia’s public television after the fall of the Derg dictatorship in 1991, was initially taken to the headquarters of the Addis Ababa police.

He was later transferred to Gondar where he appeared in court on Monday. A member of the newspaper’s staff told Reporters Without Borders that the prosecutor and judge offered to release Amare on bail in Gondar, but he refused on the grounds that it was illegal for him to have been taken there.

“Under a new press law that was adopted last month, defamation cases are supposed to be tried in the place where the alleged offense took place. As The Reporter’s registered headquarters is in Addis Ababa, the case should be heard in the capital and there were no grounds for taking Amare to such a remote location,” Reporters Without Borders said.

A few days after the article appeared, Teshome Neku, the young reporter who wrote the article last month quoting two former Dashen brewery employees as saying they were wrongfully dismissed, was arrested and taken to Gondar, where he was freed on bail after three days.

The judge who ordered his release told the prosecutor that Teshome should be tried before a court in Addis Ababa because the newspaper was duly registered there.

As of Tuesday, there was no news about the release of Aregawi.

Source African Press Agency

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