An Ethiopian court has sentenced one newspaper editor to a month in prison and fined another for refusing to reveal the name of a source who criticised a legal ruling on May’s disputed election, officials said on Tuesday.
The Supreme Court found both men — Tamrat Serbesa, editor of Satanaw, an Amharic-language weekly, and Andualem Ayle, editor of the Ethiopi weekly — guilty of contempt of court and imposed the penalties on Friday, the officials said.
Tamrat was sentenced to 30 days in jail, and Andualem was ordered to pay 2 000 birr (about R1 485) for refusing to name an attorney they had quoted in stories in late July as saying the court’s election decision had been ”shameful”.
The New York-based press watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) criticised the Ethiopian court for intolerance to media criticism and called for the immediate release of Tamrat and the lifting of Andualem’s fine.
”In pursuing this contempt case, the court was clearly intent on punishing those who would dare criticise its rulings,” CPJ director Ann Cooper said in a statement on Tuesday.
”It sends a chilling signal to the entire Ethiopian press corps that the court will not tolerate public scrutiny,” she said. ”We call on Ethiopian authorities to release Tamrat Serbesa immediately and unconditionally.”
The stories in question dealt with the Supreme Court’s rejection of an opposition appeal to bar Ethiopia’s national electoral board from releasing preliminary results of the disputed May 15 polls.
The country’s two main opposition groups had sought to prevent the release of partial unofficial returns that showed a ruling-party victory in the elections, arguing only final, verified results should be made public.
The release of preliminary results, which the opposition claimed were marred by widespread ruling-party fraud, sparked protests in June with clashes between police and crowds in the capital in which as many as 40 people were killed.
Nearly three months after ballots were cast, the electoral board has yet to release final nationwide returns pending the completion of investigations into the fraud allegations and re-votes in certain constituencies.
However, it has released partial certified results that show the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front with 263 seats in Parliament and the opposition with 172. — Sapa-AFP