Ethiopia: Meaza Mohammed Detained for Third Time in Nine Months As Authorities Continue Crackdown

Location: Ethiopia, Addis Abeba
Date: September 14, 2022

Journalist Meaza Mohammed has been detained for the third time in nine months in connection with her journalistic work. The Coalition For Women In Journalism (CFWIJ) strongly condemns the continued state suppression of critical voices in the country. We call for Meaza’s immediate release and urge Ethiopian authorities to let the press work freely without fear of government retaliation. 

On September 7, police officers arrested Meaza, co-founder of YouTube-based news channel Roha Media, while she was shopping in Shiro Meda Market in Addis Ababa. “Plainclothes police[men] asked Meaza to show her ID card and then two federal security forces approached while she was asking for the grounds why she was stopped and questioned.  Later she got into a pickup car and was told they would take her to the federal police station,” said Meaza’s coworker Misrak Tefera, who was with her that day. 

The next day, Meaza was produced before the Federal First Instance Court but citing time constraints the court fixed the hearing for September 9.  The authorities did file any formal charges against the journalist but claimed they were holding her in connection with ongoing crackdown against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a left-wing ethnic nationalist political party banned in January 2021 as a terrorist organization by the Ethiopian government.

Meaza’s detention came a few hours after she posted on Twitter about YouTube channel Voice of Amhara’s founding editor Gobeze Sisay’s arrest. 

Federal police arrested journalist #GobezeSisay, the owner and managing director of “Amhara Voice” online media, today early morning around 8 am, Kedir Sisay, the younger brother of the journalist told #RohaMedia. pic.twitter.com/YFygrV7FKa

— Meaza Mohammed (@mohammed_meaza) September 7, 2022

“Federal police arrested journalist Gobeze Sisay, the owner and managing director of “Amhara Voice” online media, today early morning around 8am, Kedir Sisay, the younger brother of the journalist told Roha Media,” wrote Meaza on Twitter on September 7.

This is the third time in nine months that Meaza has been detained by security forces and held without charges for several weeks, in connection to her journalistic work. She was arrested in December 2021, after her YouTube channel aired a documentary about sexual violence allegedly committed by rebel soldiers. The documentary featured interviews of survivors from the Amhara region. She was taken by law enforcement officials shortly after the documentary went up. The police claimed at the time that they suspected Meaza of “transmitting messages that incite violence”. The journalist was released after spending almost a month in prison without trial.

She was arrested again in May this year, on the same charge of alleged illegal activity along with dozens of other journalists. According to a statement released by the federal government, authorities were taking action against those “engages in illegal activities, deliberately causing public alarm and turmoil, as well as those who were working to cause violence and public disturbance” 

Freedom of the press in Ethiopia has deteriorated further in recent years amid an ongoing civil war, with journalists and civilians impacted by a devastating conflict in Tigray, abuses by security forces, attacks by armed groups and deadly ethnic violence. Since November 2020, when the war started, at least 63 journalists and media workers have been arrested in the country, often without formal charges, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The Coalition For Women In Journalism is extremely concerned for the safety of journalists in the country. We condemn the arrests of Meaza Mohammed and Gobeze Sisay and call for their immediate release. The Ethiopian authorities must allow journalists to report freely without fear of government reprisal.

The Coalition For Women In Journalism is a global organization of support for women journalists. The CFWIJ pioneered mentorship for mid-career women journalists across several countries around the world and is the first organization to focus on the status of free press for women journalists. We thoroughly document cases of any form of abuse against women in any part of the globe. Our system of individuals and organizations brings together the experience and mentorship necessary to help female career journalists navigate the industry. Our goal is to help develop a strong mechanism where women journalists can work safely and thrive.

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