November 18, 2003

SOCEPP once again expresses its strongest condemnation of the illegal banning of the Ethiopian Free Journalists' Association (EFJA) by the EPRDF authorities. This repressive action against the EFJA is part of the long-standing official drive to stamp out the free press and hound the journalists into silence.

Many journalists had been jailed, some are still incarcerated, dozens have been forced into exile, disappeared like Berhanu Ijigu or murdered like Tesfaye Tadesse. The EPRDF has used all kinds of repressive laws, its absolute control of the judiciary, its repressive apparatus and its own control of the mass media to impede the free journalists from writing, producing and/or distributing their newspapers and magazines. Newspaper vendors have been brutally beaten up by the police and their papers confiscated. Distribution of newspapers outside of Addis Ababa has been curtailed. Journalists have been hounded without let up, arrested, harassed, fined, imprisoned, threatened, shot at and forced into exile. As if all this were not enough, the authorities have a very repressive press law awaiting proclamation by the rubber stamp parliament. The banning of the EFJA is not something that was not expected given the repression against the free press but this does not decrease from the need to denounce it as an illegal act that violates the freedom of the press that is written into the Constitution adopted by the EPRDF itself.

SOCEPP once again expresses its full support to the autonomous civic organization that the EFJA is. SOCEPP calls on all those governments giving qid money to the EPRDF to vigorously denounce the illegal ban and to take effective actions against the violation of human rights by the EPRDF.

SOCEPP