Press freedom in 2024
and more civic actors suspended
Hi there,
We’re in the fourth month of the Ethiopian calendar year, and Christmas is still coming up on January 7. Yet, that hasn’t exempted me from feeling that time has stopped ever since we hit December 25. I’m keeping the sense of timelessness going by sending a shorter version today.
To new subscribers, welcome!
My name is Maya Misikir, and I’m a freelance reporter based in Addis Abeba. I write Sifter, this newsletter where I send out the week’s top 5 stories on human rights and news in Ethiopia.
Now, to the news.
Press Freedom: looking back at 2024
Last week Tuesday, police set free Ethiopian journalist Muhiyadin Mohamed Abdullahi who they had held in detention since December 9.
I wrote about Muhiyadin before when he was detained last February, charged with hate speech in March, and then convicted to serve two years in prison in May. By June, he was released, with no further details on his former sentence.
The journalist, who is based in the capital of Ethiopia’s Somali region, Jigjiga, was set free last week, after spending several days in detention, with no formal charges against him.
The past year hasn’t been great for journalists in general – the 2024 round-up by Reporters Without Borders says that there has been ‘an alarming intensification of attacks on journalists’. The worst of this has happened in conflict zones. Gaza is identified as the most dangerous region - since October 2023, over 145 journalists have been killed by the Israeli army.
Here's a quote from the statement that resonates:
Journalists do not die, they are killed; they are not in prison, regimes lock them up; they do not disappear, they are kidnapped. These crimes — often orchestrated by governments and armed groups with total impunity — violate international law and too often go unpunished.
The Facebook post from the head of the Somali Region Journalists Association, announcing Muhiyadin's release, here. The full statement by Reporters Without Borders, here.
Civic space: casting a wider net
When the licenses of two prominent civil society organizations in Ethiopia were suspended for the second time, many voiced concerns including the Ethiopian Human Rights Defender’s Center.
Last week, the civil society regulatory body announced that it had suspended the license for the Ethiopian Human Rights Defender’s Center and the Ethiopian Human Rights Council.
The suspensions were levied on the two organizations, on the grounds that they lacked political neutrality, and were operating outside the mandate of their establishment.
I wrote an update in May when the Ethiopian Human Rights Council had sent out a call ‘asking for partners and human rights organizations to stand with it as it is facing increased attacks and pressure from the government’.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has put out its statement on the actions taken on the four organizations citing its concern that the orders to suspend were given without listing details on the laws broken by the civil society actors.
The full story, in Amharic, on Ethiopia Insider, here, and the statement from the Commission, in Amharic, here.
Infrastructure: nothing is certain
About two weeks ago, Ethiopia and Somalia reached a diplomatic breakthrough (Ankara Declaration), after nearly a year of back and forth over the port deal Ethiopia had signed with Somaliland. You can read more about that here.
Though the details of the most recent agreement are still not clear, a delegation from the government of Somalia was in Addis Abeba a few days later, a move the Somali government said signaled its, ‘unwavering commitment to deepening bilateral ties with Ethiopia’.
A few hours later after this announcement was made, the Somali government said it condemned an attack by Ethiopian forces in a border town between the two countries. The statement said that in a breach of the Ankara Declaration ‘Ethiopian forces launched an unprovoked and unexpected attack, causing fatalities and injuries among Somali personnel and civilians’.
The Ethiopian government responded by saying that this was carried out by third parties ‘intent on destabilizing the Horn of Africa’.
The week ended with another announcement: ‘Ethiopia is likely to be excluded in an upcoming African Union-led peacekeeping mission in Somalia’.
The full story on Addis Standard, where most of this update was sourced from, here.
Human rights: what’s happening in prisons
A report shows widespread violations of the rights of people in government custody.
The report, compiled by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, cites violations of, ‘the right to be informed of reasons for arrest or corresponding charges, the right to appear before court, the right to legal counsel, and visitation rights’.
Here's an excerpt from a story on The Reporter:
The report indicates that exercising rights to speech was also a frequent cause for arrests and detentions.
Two individuals told EHRC they were arrested for criticizing the government on social media, while 14 individuals say they were detained in a Special Forces camp in Bahir Dar for gathering to discuss the situation in the conflict-ridden region.
The full story on The Reporter, here.
Finance: looks like they’re here to stay
My Google Alerts has been flooded with news from crypto outlets on how Ethiopia leveraged its hydropower for Bitcoin mining last week. The stories are about hydroelectric power from the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam being used ‘to fuel Bitcoin mining’.
These reports come a week after Ethiopia’s central bank governor explained that despite the use of crypto assets being outlawed currently, the Bank may come up with laws governing their use down the road.
I won’t delve into details on this edition, but you might like reading an earlier edition from February when news first broke that 21 Bitcoin miners had ‘set up their energy-guzzling computers’ in the country.
For those of you interested in learning more about the crypto world, and how things are playing out globally, and in the US, I highly suggest following Molly White’s newsletter, Citation Needed.
The story on the central bank’s stance, in Amharic, on Ethiopia Insider, here.
That’s all for this week. I’ll be back next week with more updates!
In the meantime, feel free to share this with anyone you think can benefit from keeping up with what’s going on in Ethiopia.
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Thanks for sharing 🫶🏻