Ethiopians are experiencing a government-imposed social media blackout supposedly targeted at distracted students.
After a massive online leak of university entrance exam questions forced the nationwide tests to be cancelled, Ethiopia's government cracked down in a big way, blocking access to social media during the exam retake. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Viber were inaccessible starting Saturday morning.
“It's a temporary measure until Wednesday. Social media have proven to be a distraction for students," government spokesman Getachew Reda told the BBC. But many Ethiopians are wary of the implications of this move coming from a government that has a track record of silencing oppositional voices on the internet.
“This is a dangerous precedent. There is no transparency about who took the decision and for how long. This time it is for a few days, but next time it might be for a month,” Daniel Berhane, the prominent blogger behind the website “Horn Affairs” told AFP. Berhane believes that the Ethiopian authorities are testing new internet filtering tools and gauging the reaction of the public.
Deji Olukotun, senior global advocacy manager at Access Now, told Quartz Africa that a nationwide block of social media because of leaked questions is “completely disproportionate” as “shutdowns like this impact broader society as a whole – businesses lose a lot of money, journalists can’t report the news and it creates a culture of impunity.”
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia: The ex-spokesman for Ethiopia's main opposition Blue Party has been charged with inciting violence and being a "ring leader" of a banned rebel group after he criticized the government on Facebook.
Yonatan Tesfaye, who has been jailed since December 2015, in one message accused the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) of using "force against the people instead of using peaceful discussion with the public."
He was referring to the authorities' response to protests that have rocked the Oromia region in Africa's second-most populous nation.
Home to some 27 million people, Oromia encircles Addis Ababa and stretches over large parts of the rest of the country.
It has its own language, Oromo, distinct from Amharic, the language of Ethiopia's government.
The demonstrations began in November against a government plan to expand the boundaries of Addis Ababa into Oromia.
According to court records, Tesfaye was charged Wednesday with 11 counts including inciting violence "to disrupt the social, economic and political stability of the country."
He is also accused of being a "ring leader of the far-left Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) to inflame demonstrations," the court records said.
OLF is a banned separatist movement opposed to the Ethiopian government which police routinely blame for "terrorist" acts.
Authorities consider Tesfaye's writings as a call to rise up against the government and given the country's tough anti-terror law he could face up to 15 years behind bars if convicted.
Tesfaye was until recently the Blue Party's spokesman and comes from a generation of young activists determined to challenge the authoritarian regime that has ruled the nation for 25 years.
"When people become popular and give a voice to the voiceless, (the government) charge them with fabricated charges and put them in jail," Blue Party head Yilkal Getnet told AFP.
"This is what happened to Yonatan," he added.
Since the overthrow of a Marxist junta in 1991, Ethiopia's political and economic situation has stabilized, although rights groups have criticized the government for suppressing opposition.
The cable news channel Al Jazeera America, which debuted in 2013 to great fanfare when it promised to cover American news soberly and seriously, will be shutting down by the end of April. The move was announced at a companywide meeting on Wednesday.
In a memo to the staff, Al Jazeera America’s chief executive, Al Anstey, said the “decision by Al Jazeera America’s board is driven by the fact that our business model is simply not sustainable in light of the economic challenges in the U.S. media marketplace.”
“I know the closure of AJAM will be a massive disappointment for everyone here who has worked tirelessly for our long-term future,” he continued, using the company acronym. “The decision that has been made is in no way because AJAM has done anything but a great job. Our commitment to great journalism is unrivaled.”
At the companywide meeting, Al Jazeera America staff members, some in tears, were told that the decision to shutter the network had not been unanimous. Some of the channel’s leadership argued that the network provided an important service, and continued to win awards for its coverage. But in the end, the decision was an economic one. The channel, it was felt, had fallen victim to the lack of a business model beyond continuous support from Qatar, the energy-rich country that owns Al Jazeera.
Photo
Al Anstey, chief executive of Al Jazeera America.CreditFadi Al-Assaad/Reuters
Some staffers saw that as a tacit admission that falling oil prices were behind the closure, though a spokeswoman for the company denied that on Wednesday.
Beyond its oil wealth, Qatar is one of the world’s top exporters of liquefied natural gas, whose price has also tumbled.
Mr. Anstey said that once the cable news network shuts down by April 30, Al Jazeera would expand its digital presence in the United States. The expansion “would bring new global content into America.”
Al Jazeera America went on the air in August 2013 after Al Jazeera bought Al Gore’s Current TV for $500 million. It promised to be thoughtful and smart, free of the shouting arguments that have defined cable news in the United States over the last decade. But meaningful viewership never came, with prime-time ratings sometimes struggling to exceed 30,000 viewers.
To make matters worse, turmoil hit the newsroom last year when staff members complained bitterly of a culture of fear. There was an exodus of top executives, along with a pair of lawsuits from former employees that included complaints about sexism and anti-Semitism at the news channel.
In May, Ehab Al Shihabi, the chief executive of Al Jazeera America, was replaced by Mr. Anstey. Morale improved, but ratings remained low.
The closure, which will cost hundreds of employees their jobs, highlights the difficulties of establishing a robust cable news presence in an increasingly crowded media marketplace, and one that faces ever more competition from the web — the ultimate 24-hour news medium.
Current TV, before being bought by Al Jazeera, had struggled for years to find an audience, and to define its place in the news landscape. Fusion, a cable news network and digital publication aimed at younger audiences,lost the backing of one of its corporate parent companies, Disney, in recent weeks, following reports that it, too, had struggled to find its footing with audiences. Even established players like MSNBC have been forced to revamp in recent years.
Andrew Heyward, a former president of CBS News who is now an adviser to media companies, said in an interview that Al Jazeera America had faced an uphill battle from the beginning.
Cable news “is a very well-served market, not to say saturated, and you have three powerful, well-established players,” he said, referring to Fox News, MSNBC and CNN. “Endemically, it’s not quite clear that the world was waiting for a new 24-hour cable channel in the U.S., and cable operators certainly weren’t waiting for it,” he said, describing the limited distribution the channel received.
“They came kind of swaggering into the arena, saying we’re going to do higher-end stories and represent people who are under-represented,” Mr. Heyward said, a proposition that played better on paper than in practice. And the network brought something of a British sensibility and judgment, he said, which did not translate as well to cable news as it might in other arenas.
“This is not ‘Downton Abbey,’ ” he said.
All these problems were exacerbated, he said, by the fact that a brand associated with the Arab world was a tougher sell in the United States than it was in Europe.
And Al Jazeera America has not been free of controversy in recent months. In November, the news station’s general counsel, David W. Harleston, was suspended following a report in The New York Times that he did not appear to be licensed to practice law. Among the varied legal work Mr. Harleston had done for Al Jazeera America was his involvement in wrongful termination lawsuits brought by former employees. Legal experts have cautioned that Mr. Harleston’s lack of a law license could potentially leave the network vulnerable in those lawsuits, primarily over issues of confidentiality.
On Dec. 27, Al Jazeera America aired an hourlong documentary that linked some of the biggest stars in Major League Baseball and the National Football League to performance-enhancing drugs. The most prominent athlete mentioned was the Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, who angrily denied the report, calling it “complete garbage” and “totally made up.” The baseball players Ryan Howard and Ryan Zimmerman have filed defamation suits against the network.
When told Wednesday of Al Jazeera America’s plans to shut down, Mr. Manning deadpanned, “I’m sure it’s going to be just devastating to all their viewers.”
Don't Miss Out — Follow Bloomberg On
Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube
Police detain Oromo opposition leader after protests
Politicans suspected of inciting violence across Oromia region
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Ethiopian authorities arrested two journalists in the span of one week, the Committee to Protect Journalists said, asking the East African nation to allow for greater openness.
Getachew Shiferaw, editor in chief of Negere Ethiopia online newspaper, was arrested on Dec. 25, following the Dec. 19 detention of Fikadu Mirkana, an anchor at state-run broadcaster Oromia Radio and TV.
An Ethiopian court granted permission to hold him for 28 days for interrogation after which he is likely to be charged under the nation’s anti-terrorism law, according to the CPJ. The rules criminalize any reporting that authorities might consider encouraging to causes or groups the government labels as terrorist.
“Ethiopia prides itself on development, but economic growth is a hollow achievement if the public does not enjoy fundamental human rights such as the right to receive and share information and divergent viewpoints,” Sue Valentine, the CPJ’s Africa coordinator, said in an e-mailed statement.
Ethiopia’s police also detained Bekele Gerba, a leading opposition figure from the Oromo ethnic group that’s been protesting against an urban development plan over the last month, according to a government spokesman.
Bekele and three other detained leaders of the Oromo Federalist Congress, or OFC, are suspected of inciting violent demonstrations against the expansion of the capital, Addis Ababa, into Oromia regional state, Communications Minister Getachew Reda said.
Oromo Opposition
“They’re suspected of committing crimes and conspiring to organize mobs to destroy property,” he said by phone from the capital on Thursday.
Security forces killed 82 unarmed Oromo demonstrators during the protests that began last month and spread across Oromia, Ethiopia’s most-populous region that surrounds Addis Ababa, according to the OFC. The government is still collecting information on fatalities and vandalism, Getachew said.
Amnesty International said last October that 5,000 Oromos had been illegally detained for political reasons since 2011. Bekele Gerba was released from prison in April after serving less than three years of an eight-year sentence for working with the banned Oromo Liberation Front.
The arrests on Thursday are part of another widespread crackdown against Oromo political activists and demonstrators, said Merera Gudina, the OFC’s leader. “I think the government is very angry because millions of people are protesting for their rights across Oromia, so they are trying to punish the opposition,” he said by phone from Addis Ababa on Thursday."
