As Ethiopia struggles toward democracy, press under fire

The law, if passed, will prohibit any reporting on opposition party activities, for example, as well as ban the printing of any government documents, henceforth classified as confidential. No funding or assistance to the private press from outside sources will be allowed (which seems to include both fundamentalist Islamic organizations and invitations to professional conferences at the American Embassy alike) and press releases from nongovernmental organizations will be considered ads that must be paid for and taxed. Access to government officials, now notoriously difficult, will be made even harder.

"We want the government to stop regarding the private press as enemies," said Josh Friedman, director of the board of the New York based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), on a visit to Ethiopia several months before the new laws were presented.

The British Embassy here had been trying to organize workshops for the government and the private press to discuss the problems at hand and avert a wider clash between them. At the first meeting, the private press, denied the right to speak, walked out. Next month, the Embassy plans to try again.

Few African countries have found a comfortable balance between the government and free press. The Economic Freedom of the World 2002 Annual Report - put out by the Fraser Institute of Vancouver, British Columbia - found that with few exceptions (South Africa, and, to a lesser degree Botswana and Mauritius) African governments were the worst offenders in the world in restricting the freedoms, including press freedom, of their citizens.

For example, in neighboring Eritrea, its authoritarian rulers have shuttered the independent press completely, and jailed those who dare criticize them. CPJ ranked President Issaias Afeworki of Eritrea, together with Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, as one of Africa's "most repressive" leaders when it came to press freedoms. The Ethiopian government - which blanches at any comparison with Eritrea - argues that its own situation is completely different. "The new press laws are not censorship," states Netsannet Asfaw, state minister for information. "They are a demand that responsible press use some self-censorship."

Ms. Asfaw fought on the front lines against the previous regime. Today, she sees that fight continuing - only now, it's directed against the private press which, she believes, represents little more than the leftovers of the old Marxist regime. "They are never accountable for what they write," she says. "They write things just to spite us, stirring up ethnic and religious tensions and then hiding behind talk of democracy."

Dagnachew Teklu, chief writer of the private paper Daily Monitor, begs to differ. "Let us have democracy, access, and true freedom, and then accuse us afterwards if we distort the truth," he says.

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