Amare Aregawi arrested for brewery’s labour report

Press release - 26 August 2008- Reporters Without Borders is dismayed to learn that Amare Aregawi, the editor of the big-circulation weekly Reporter, was arrested on 22 August in Addis Ababa and was then illegally transferred to a prison in Gondar, 750 km north of the capital, in connection with a libel case brought by the Gondar-based Dashen brewery. Reporters Without Borders

“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.”

Police from the Amhara region arrested Amare on the afternoon of 22 August at his office in the Addis Ababa headquarters of Media and Communication Centre, a company that owns two well-known weeklies, the Amharic-language Reporter and the English-language The Reporter.

Journalists who were present at his arrest told Reporters Without Borders that the police were also looking for deputy editor Eshete Assefa and Teshome Neku, the young reporter who wrote the article last month quoting two former Dashen brewery employees as saying they were wrongfully dismissed. Neither Eshete nor Teshome were in the office at the time.

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 yesterday. 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 offence took place. As 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.

A few days after the article appeared, Teshome 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.

A second story about the unfair dismissals at the brewery, published by Reporter on 20 July, quoted two representatives of the Confederation of Ethiopian Employee Associations (CEEA), who accused the brewery’s management of breaking up its union, firing its leader, setting up a new, company-controlled union and other illegal practices.

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ETHIOPIE

Le célèbre rédacteur en chef de l’hebdomadaire Reporter arrêté pour une enquête mettant en cause les pratiques d’une grande entreprise

Reporters sans frontières a appris avec consternation l’arrestation, le 22 août 2008, d’Amare Aregawi, rédacteur en chef de l’hebdomadaire privé à grand tirage Reporter, et son transfert illégal dans une prison à 750 km de la capitale, pour une affaire de prétendue “diffamation” contre une entreprise de brassage de bière.

“Le gouvernement éthiopien rappelle si souvent la presse à la loi qu’il est incompréhensible qu’il tolère que celle-ci soit ouvertement bafouée par le ministère public. De plus, la détention injustiée d’Amare Aregawi montre toute l’inéquité d’une législation qui permet l’incarcération des journalistes dans les affaires de diffamation. Son journal a osé mettre en cause les pratiques d’une puissante entreprise. Son rédacteur en chef, après le journaliste auteur de l’article, paye aujourd’hui de sa liberté le courage d’avoir bien fait son métier et d’avoir servi l’intérêt public. Il doit être libéré au plus vite”, a déclaré l’organisation.

Amare Aregawi a été arrêté à son bureau du siège de la société Media and Communication Center, propriétaire des célèbres hebdomadaires en amharique Reporter et en anglais The Reporter, à Addis-Abeba, le 22 août en fin de journée, par une unité de la police régionale d’Amhara. Des journalistes présents au moment de l’arrestation ont déclaré à Reporters sans frontières que la police était également à la recherche du journaliste Teshome Neku et du rédacteur en chef adjoint, Eshete Assefa, absents à ce moment-là.

Amare Aregawi, ancien directeur de la télévision publique après la chute de la dictature du “Derg”, a d’abord été conduit au quartier général de la police d’Addis-Abeba, avant d’être transféré à Gondar (Nord), une ville à 750 km de la capitale où se trouve le siège de la brasserie Dashen, qui a récemment porté plainte pour “diffamation” contre le journal.

Après trois jours de détention, le journaliste a comparu devant un tribunal de Gondar. Selon une source au sein du journal interrogée par Reporters sans frontières, il a refusé la libération sous caution proposée par le juge et acceptée par le procureur, estimant que sa détention à Gondar était illégale. La loi sur la presse éthiopienne, adoptée en juillet 2008, prévoit en effet que les affaires de diffamation soient jugées dans la juridiction où le délit a été commis. Reporter étant un journal dûment enregistré à Addis-Abeba, rien ne justifie le transfert du rédacteur en chef dans un endroit si reculé du pays.

Les poursuites ont été engagées après la publication, en juillet 2008, d’un article signé par Teshome Neku, un jeune journaliste de Reporter, donnant la parole à deux employés de la brasserie Dashen estimant qu’ils avaient été licenciés abusivement. Quelques jours après la publication de l’article, le journaliste avait été arrêté et conduit à Gondar, puis libéré sous caution après trois jours de détention. Le juge devant lequel il avait comparu avait expliqué au procureur que le journaliste devait être poursuivi devant un tribunal d’Addis-Abeba, où l’hebdomadaire est légalement enregistré.

Le 20 juillet, Reporter avait publié un nouvel article sur les licenciements abusifs de salariés de la brasserie, donnant notamment la parole à deux responsables de la Confédération des associations d’employés éthiopiens (CEEA). Ils dénonçaient la dissolution du syndicat de la brasserie par la direction et le licenciement de son responsable. Dans cet article, les deux syndicalistes condamnaient également la formation d’un nouveau syndicat contrôlé par la direction et certaines pratiques illégales des patrons de la brasserie.

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Leonard VINCENT
Bureau Afrique / Africa desk
Reporters sans frontières / Reporters Without Borders
47, rue Vivienne
75002 Paris, France
Tel : (33) 1 44 83 84 76
Fax : (33) 1 45 23 11 51
Email : afrique@rsf.org / africa@rsf.org
Web : www.rsf.org

TIME Interview with Meles Zenawi

TIME: There has been some dispute over how big this emergency is. What is your assessment?
Meles: We have pockets of severe malnutrition in some districts in the south and an emergency situation in the Somali region. It's not small to those who are suffering, but it is a manageable problem.

Why the dispute with Unicef [which announced 6 million people at risk and 125,000 children with severe acute malnutrition, a figure it revised to 4.6 million and 75,000 after the government protested] over the scale of the problem?
Because their assessment was patently false. I do not think there was ill intention on their part. But every country is competing for emergency resources, and the more gruesome the picture [you present], the better chance you have of receiving a large share of those resources.

What's your view of emergency aid?
It's a mixed bag. When you have an emergency, there is the urge to do whatever it takes to see people get assistance. [But that can mean]the name of the game is [to] include a bit of hyperbole, and that can convey the message that the situation is hopeless when in fact it is not, and that might do some lasting damage, given the fact that all investors take their information and make their assessments on the basis of the 24-hour news cycle. Famine has wreaked havoc in Ethiopia for so long , it would be stupid not to be sensitive to the risk of such things occurring. But there has not been a famine on our watch - emergencies, but no famines.

SF Switzerland just pulled out of the Somali region, saying the [Ethiopian] security services there [who are fighting an ethnic Somali insurgency] were placing too many restrictions on it. Are you placing security and politics above humanitarian concerns in that area?
That's not true. Most of the humanitarian agencies are operating there. Only those who find it difficult to distinguish between political interference and humanitarian assistance are restricted. I can give my assurance that the Ogaden is receiving the same level of care as other affected parts of the country.

Do you think donors and receiving governments strike the right balance between food aid and development aid?
Some humanitarian assistance is clearly required and we very much welcome it. But clearly a large percentage of this goes through all sorts of NGOs, and I am not sure whether the money is being spent in a manner that adequately promotes development. There are excellent NGOs, good ones, mediocre ones and good for nothing ones. [Then again], development is not going to happen on the basis of external assistance. [A lack of foreign assistance] does not mean that development has to be abandoned.

What about the idea that assistance undermines enterprise and self-reliance?
An expression of human solidarity between the rich and the poor should not automatically be demeaning to the beneficiaries. There has been a transformation of Western thinking [on that score]. [Most Western countries] no longer believe that aid implies the unfortunate are in that position because they are inadequate, that Africans have brought this on themselves - although that has not been completely eliminated. Some people think African states cannot be trusted with the cookie jar. But there are absolutely good NGOs who have this feeling of human solidarity and who also recognize that their work can only be supplementary to the government.

What efforts are you making to reform agriculture?
It's primarily focused on the commercialization of small scale farms so that they supply the market rather than just the farmers' own consumption: improving seed varieties, irrigation, the whole gamut of agrarian reform and transformation, and increasing private investment in more large scale operations. We promote agriculturally-led industrialization. Farmers grow crops like coffee and sesame, and that strategy is reflected in our exports, which have gone up 25% for each of the last five years. Incomes in rural areas have improved very dramatically; we have double digit agricultural growth. That's still not enough to get us out of the hole, however. So we have a safety net program, which is very similar to the social welfare programs in the US. We cannot afford it ourselves as yet, and it is not funded by our own resources, but I am not particularly ashamed or worried about that. I suspect we will always have pockets of hunger. The big question is whether we have enough in our own economy to be able to finance the safety net program. We have not reached that stage yet.