Media watchdog deplores constraints on journalists

Fourteen journalists are being held behind bars in Eritrea, making the country the worst in Africa to work in as a journalist, an international media watchdog said on Monday. The French-based Reporters Without Frontiers (RWF) said in its 2004 annual report that "little has changed" in the country despite pressure from the international community to improve conditions. "Nothing has shifted in Eritrea, still Africa's biggest prison for journalists and one of the last countries in the world without an independent, privately owned press," it said. "Pressure from the international community, including the European Union, proved ineffective." According to the report, the government of Eritrea forced all privately owned newspapers to close, and imprisoned leading journalists in 2001. "Since then, the only source of news for Eritreans has been the government press and the few foreign radio stations that can be received," it said. Yemane Gebremeskel, the director of the Eritrean president’s office and presidential spokesman, told IRIN in an interview in April that "the problem with the existing papers was that they were few, most of the journalists were not experienced, they could have been easily manipulated, easily infiltrated, especially if there is money involved". "If you tell me you are going to be a journalist, there are standards, there are ethics. In the previous press law, that was not there, so anybody who wanted to be a journalist could be a journalist. But then you also pay the price, because sometimes things get distorted," Yemane said in the interview. The report also criticised neighbouring Ethiopia and named four journalists who were imprisoned in 2003. "The Ethiopian press still has to cope with great difficulties," it said. "Several journalists were arrested in 2003, and one was still being held at the end of the year. The government seems determined to adopt a new press law that will impose draconian restrictions on press freedom." Ethiopian officials insist that the country has a flourishing private press and point to the independent newspapers operating there. The government spokesman, Zemedkun Tekle, told IRIN in March that the new press laws were debated openly and democratically. RWF condemned the recent ban imposed on the Ethiopian Free Press Journalists Association (EFJA). "The EFJA's closure in November 2003 - ostensibly for purely bureaucratic reasons - indicated a new toughening in the attitude of the authorities," it said. "After allowing something of an opening in recent years, the government seemed to trying to reassert control and step up pressure on independent news media," it added. Although the ban on the EFJA has now been lifted, bitter in-fighting between the former leadership and the new executive has plagued the organisation.