Last Updated: Wednesday, 31 May 2023, 15:44 GMT

Ethiopian police detain journalists reporting on drought, escort them back to capital

Publisher Committee to Protect Journalists
Publication Date 17 August 2016
Cite as Committee to Protect Journalists, Ethiopian police detain journalists reporting on drought, escort them back to capital, 17 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57d017644.html [accessed 5 June 2023]
DisclaimerThis is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Ethiopian police on August 8, 2016, detained three journalists reporting on the effects of a severe drought in the country before escorting them back to Addis Ababa with a warning not to work outside the capital, the Foreign Correspondents' Association of Ethiopia said in a statement.

Fred de Sam Lazaro and Thomas Adair from the U.S. Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and Africa News Agency (ANA) correspondent Hadra Ahmed, who was working as a fixer and translator, were told by the police to report to the Shashemene town police station, about 240km from the capital.

Police confiscated their passports and their equipment and offered no reason for their detention. The team was taken back to Addis Ababa the next day under police escort, interrogated for a further six hours and then released with a warning not to report outside the capital.

"Hadra and her colleagues' ordeal is the latest example in a long trend of the government preventing journalists from doing their work," William Davison, the FCAE's chairman, said in the statement. In March 16, police detained Davison and a translator in the eastern town of Awash, confiscated their equipment, and escorted them back to the capital, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported at the time.

Ethiopia is the third worst jailer of journalists on the African continent, with at least 10 behind bars on December 1, CPJ's 2015 prison census shows.

Copyright notice: © Committee to Protect Journalists. All rights reserved. Articles may be reproduced only with permission from CPJ.

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