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Obama Belongs on List of World's Tyrants | Against Authoritarian Threat of Far-Right |
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Showing posts with label bloggers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bloggers. Show all posts
Journal from an Ethiopian Prison: Testimony of Befeqadu Hailu
This testimony was written by blogger and human rights advocate Befeqadu Hailu in late August 2014. A founding member of the Zone9 blogging collective and a Global Voices community member, he was arrested and imprisoned on April 25, 2014 along with five fellow members of Zone9 and three journalist colleagues. On July 17, 2014, all nine detainees were charged under the country’s penal code and the Terrorism Proclamation of 2009. Befeqadu mentions in his text the names of several of his fellow detainees including Abel, Mahlet, and Natnael. All are members of the Zone9 collective.
This is the first of two installments of an abridged version of Befeqadu’s testimony. It was translated from Amharic to English by Endalk Chala and edited for clarity and context by Ellery Roberts Biddle. The full, unabridged testimony is available in PDF form here.
By BefeQadu Z. Hailu
“So, what do you think is your crime?”
My interrogator posed this question after forcing me to recount my work as an activist and progressive blogger. Soon after the interrogation, when my captors reunited me with my blogger friends, we realized that we were all asked this same question:
“So what do you think is your crime?”
The question is intriguing. It sheds light on our innocence, on our refusal to acknowledge whatever crimes our captors suspect us of committing. Yes, they probed us severely, but each session ended with same question. The investigation was not meant to prove or disprove our offenses. It was meant simply to make us plead guilty.
After two years of writing and working to engage citizens in political debate, we have been apprehended and investigated. Blame is being laid upon us for committing criminal acts, for supposedly being members and “accepting the missions” of [opposition political parties] Ginbot7/May 15 and OLF. [1]
The next step is “due process” and our prosecution, but I believe there are still questions to be answered. How did we get here? What was our interrogation like? Are we really members of Ginbot7/May15? If not, why have they arrested us? Will they release us soon?
No matter what, boundaries exist in this country. People who write about Ethiopia’s political reality will face the threat of incarceration as long as they live here.
We believe that everyone who experiences this reality, dreading the consequences of expressing their views, lives in the outer ring of the prison – the nation itself. That is why we call our blog Zone9. [2]
Zone9 was merely two weeks old when the government made our collective blog inaccessible in Ethiopia in 2012. Despite the blockage, we continued to write, but we knew that the fate of our blocked blogs could be our own. We knew we could end up being arrested.
In the days and weeks leading up to our incarceration in April 2014, government security agents threatened us with imminent arrest, but we were still shaken by what happened to us. The six local members of the blogging collective and our three journalist allies were arrested and detained. With the exception of one of the journalists (Asmamaw Hailegiorgis of Addis Guday newspaper) we were arrested on Friday April 25 at about 11:00 pm and taken from our respective locations. Asmamaw was arrested the next morning. By the time we were seized and taken to the detention center, the search “warrant” that authorized our arrest was well over its time limit, according to Ethiopian law. The unlawful intrusion on our rights began here. Without delay, we became the victims of many violations of Ethiopian law by the authorities.
The idea of setting a foot in the compound of the ill-famed Maekelawi detention center gives a cold shiver to anyone who knows its history. But my sheer optimism and trust that the brutal and inhumane treatment of people was a distant memory saved me from trembling as I was escorted into the compound. The same was true of my friends, I suppose. What is more, we had nothing to be scared of, because we are neither undercover agents nor members of armed forces. We are just writers.
But as soon as I arrived at Maekelawi, detainees informed me that I had been placed in one of the notorious sections of the detention center, known as “Siberia”. In less than a week, I felt like I was living in the middle of an account from the 2013 Human Rights Watch report entitled “They Want a Confession”. [3]
This is the first of two installments of an abridged version of Befeqadu’s testimony. It was translated from Amharic to English by Endalk Chala and edited for clarity and context by Ellery Roberts Biddle. The full, unabridged testimony is available in PDF form here.
This is the first of two installments of an abridged version of Befeqadu’s testimony. It was translated from Amharic to English by Endalk Chala and edited for clarity and context by Ellery Roberts Biddle. The full, unabridged testimony is available in PDF form here.
By BefeQadu Z. Hailu
“So, what do you think is your crime?”
My interrogator posed this question after forcing me to recount my work as an activist and progressive blogger. Soon after the interrogation, when my captors reunited me with my blogger friends, we realized that we were all asked this same question:
“So what do you think is your crime?”
The question is intriguing. It sheds light on our innocence, on our refusal to acknowledge whatever crimes our captors suspect us of committing. Yes, they probed us severely, but each session ended with same question. The investigation was not meant to prove or disprove our offenses. It was meant simply to make us plead guilty.
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| Befeqadu Hailu. Photo used with permission. |
The next step is “due process” and our prosecution, but I believe there are still questions to be answered. How did we get here? What was our interrogation like? Are we really members of Ginbot7/May15? If not, why have they arrested us? Will they release us soon?
No matter what, boundaries exist in this country. People who write about Ethiopia’s political reality will face the threat of incarceration as long as they live here.
We believe that everyone who experiences this reality, dreading the consequences of expressing their views, lives in the outer ring of the prison – the nation itself. That is why we call our blog Zone9. [2]
Zone9 was merely two weeks old when the government made our collective blog inaccessible in Ethiopia in 2012. Despite the blockage, we continued to write, but we knew that the fate of our blocked blogs could be our own. We knew we could end up being arrested.
In the days and weeks leading up to our incarceration in April 2014, government security agents threatened us with imminent arrest, but we were still shaken by what happened to us. The six local members of the blogging collective and our three journalist allies were arrested and detained. With the exception of one of the journalists (Asmamaw Hailegiorgis of Addis Guday newspaper) we were arrested on Friday April 25 at about 11:00 pm and taken from our respective locations. Asmamaw was arrested the next morning. By the time we were seized and taken to the detention center, the search “warrant” that authorized our arrest was well over its time limit, according to Ethiopian law. The unlawful intrusion on our rights began here. Without delay, we became the victims of many violations of Ethiopian law by the authorities.
The idea of setting a foot in the compound of the ill-famed Maekelawi detention center gives a cold shiver to anyone who knows its history. But my sheer optimism and trust that the brutal and inhumane treatment of people was a distant memory saved me from trembling as I was escorted into the compound. The same was true of my friends, I suppose. What is more, we had nothing to be scared of, because we are neither undercover agents nor members of armed forces. We are just writers.
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Six of the detained bloggers in Addis Ababa. Photo used with permission.
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This is the first of two installments of an abridged version of Befeqadu’s testimony. It was translated from Amharic to English by Endalk Chala and edited for clarity and context by Ellery Roberts Biddle. The full, unabridged testimony is available in PDF form here.
Read Part 2: Journal from an Ethiopian Prison: The Maekelawi Ceremony
Learn more about the Zone9 Bloggers’ case at the Trial Tracker Blog.
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[1] Ginbot7 and the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) are opposition political parties based in the United States. Both have been accused of terrorism by the Ethiopian government.
[2] “Addis Ababa’s Kality prison is divided into eight different zones, the last of which — Zone Eight — is dedicated to journalists, human right activists and dissidents. When we came together, we decided to create a blog for the proverbial prison in which all Ethiopians live: this is Zone Nine.” From “Six Members of Blogging Collective Arrested in Ethiopia,” by Endalk Chala.
[3] “They Want a Confession” documents serious human rights abuses, unlawful interrogation tactics, and poor detention conditions in Addis Ababa’s Maekelawi detention center, drawing from interviews with former Maekelawi detainees and their family members. Those detained in Maekelawi include scores of opposition politicians, journalists, protest organizers, and alleged supporters of ethnic insurgencies. Full report here.
Reprinted with permission from Global Voices.
54 Days in Prison and Counting for Ethiopia's Zone 9 Bloggers
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| Free Zone 9 Bloggers banner. Original design by Hugh D'Andrade, remixed by Hisham Almiraat. |
By Ndesanjo Macha
It has been 54 days since six members of the Zone Nine blogging collective [am] and three journalists believed to be associated with the group were arrested in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The group formed in 2012 in an effort to report on and increase public discussion about political and social issues affecting a diverse cross-section of Ethiopian society.
On their Facebook page, they describes themselves as young Ethiopians seeking to use fact-based reporting and analysis to create a new, more nuanced narrative of life in Ethiopia today:
Zone9 is an informal group of young Ethiopian bloggers working together to create an alternative independent narration of the socio-political conditions in Ethiopia and thereby foster public discourse that will result in emergence of ideas for the betterment of the NationThe bloggers have appeared in court at four times since their arrest on April 25, 2014 — their next court date has been set for July 12, 2014. Each time, police have asked for more time to carry out their investigation of the group. Although they have been informally accused of “working with foreign organizations that claim to be human rights activists and agreeing in idea and receiving finance to incite public violence through social media,” they have been issued no formal charges as of yet. Close friends and allies of the group fear that they will be charged with terrorism, similar to journalists Eskinder Nega and Reeyot Alemu, both Ethiopian journalists who have been in prison since 2011.
Following their arrest, Global Voices Online released a statement calling for their release, invited supporters to join the #FreeZone9Bloggers campaign through letter-writing and online efforts, and organised the FreeZone9Bloggers Tweetathon on May 14, 2014.
The Ethiopian Government is trying to reduce online criticism by training recruits to attack information on the web that are critical of its administration, the Ethiopian Satellite Television Service (ESAT) reported.Nigerian British YouTube comedian Ikenna Azuike dedicated an episode of his satirical news show “What's Up Africa” to the bloggers’ plight. In ”Zone 9 Bloggers Paradise in Ethiopia,” he jests:
According to the report, in the second round of new recruits, 235 bloggers were trained in Adama on Facebook and other social media sites on how to shape public opinion by posting comments and documents that support the regime.
The training was given to selected people from different ethnic groups who support the regime, and that the trainees report directly to government officials, ESAT said.
So far, the trainees have opened 2,350 Facebook, Twitter and blog accounts to show the Ethiopian regime in a favorable light, and to criticize anti-government articles, websites, the Ethiopian opposition and the Eritrean government
Just because [Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn] ordered the arrest of nine people who happen to be bloggers and journalists doesn't mean this is part of the biggest crackdown on dissent since the 2005 post-election mass arrests.Why is the Ethiopian government afraid of bloggers? Alemayehu G. Mariam explained:
“Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets,” fretted Napoleon Bonaparte, dictator of France, as he declared war on that country’s independent press. For the regime in Ethiopia, the pens and computer keyboards of a handful of independent journalists and bloggers are more to be feared than ten thousand bayonets mounted on AK-47s. All dictators and tyrants in history have feared the enlightening powers of the independent press. The benighted dictators in Ethiopia fear the enlightening powers of an independent press more than the firepower of several fully equipped infantry divisions.The author continued:
Total control of the media and suppression of independent journalists remains the wicked obsession of the regime. They believe that by controlling the flow of information, they can control the hearts and minds of the people. They believe they can fabricate truth out of falsehood by controlling the media. By crushing the independent press, they believe they can fool all of the people all of the time. But they know deep down in their stone cold hearts that “truth will not forever remain on the scaffold, nor wrong remain forever on the throne.” They live each day in the land of living lies fearful of losing their throne.
The E bloggers and journalists are special Ethiopian heroes and heroines. They are truth-tellers and -warriors. They fight tyranny with their pens and computer keyboards. Their ammunition are truth, words, ideas, facts and opinions. They slay falsehoods with the sword of truth. They chase bad ideas with good ones and advocate replacing old ideas with new ones. They fight the people’s despair with words of hope. They teach the people that fear is overcome with acts of courage. They fight ignorance and powerful ignoramuses with knowledge and reason. They stand up to arrogance and hubris with defiant humility. They seek to transform intolerance with forbearance; resist oppression with perseverance and defeat doubt with faith. They fight with their pens and keyboards on the battleground that is the hearts and minds of the Ethiopian people.On Twitter, friends and supporters are keeping awareness alive using the hashtag #Zone9Bloggers:
Reprinted with permission from Global Voices.
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