Ethiopia

According with the website Freedom House the terrorism law is used to silence the media in Ethiopia, a country that is not free with their political rights and civil liberties.

Freedom House is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1941 in Washington. One of the main studies of this organization is the liberties of the press of the all countries of the world. This report happens every year and on it is include the censorship, intimidation and violence that exist in each country. In this website the main source for all the data is the World Map of 2019.

Ethiopia is the oldest independent country in East of Africa and is the second largest in terms of population in the continent. With a total of 102,5 million of people Ethiopia has a curious timeline. Apart from the Mussolini’s occupation Ethiopia has never been colonized. Their monarchy ended in 1974, only in 1979 the dictatorship was over and in 2018 they ended a war with a neighbor country. Although all this, Ethiopia is one of the founder members of the United Nations.

Nowadays, the social media seems ready to suffer an improvement because of the change of the government. However, the state can control the national broadcasters or radio and the internet/mobile services have been restricted during periods of social unrest. This makes the local journalists very restricted in their jobs because of the censorship and the biggest problems of all, the terrorism.

According with the website Reporters Without Borders (RSF) there is no register of deaths or injured journalists in the country even though of the real trouble of terrorism that exists. Also, according with this source, the country kept is level in the ranking in the past three years, that is 150 in a total of 180 countries.

In this country, the journalists are afraid of the consequences of speaking the truth. They can be sent to jail without the right to go to the trial or in some cases sent into exile. In 2018 was still possible for the state to ban the public from watch or hear some broadcast media. The transparency and openness of the government is not real, so that, the most of the companies of media that exist on the country are not independent and the state have control on them.

The actual leaders of this country are the president Sahle-Work Zewde, that is the first woman to assume this position in the history of Ethiopia. She took that important position with the aim of ending the discrimination between genders. The prime minister is Abi Ahmed that got the state of peace with the neighbor country Eritrea.

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Rafaela Mendes is a JMC student who wants to give life to journalism.