Editors held as army warns newspapers

Five editors of independent Ethiopian newspapers were arrested and later released on bail for their coverage of post-election violence, a local media watchdog said on Friday. The Ethiopian army, in a separate statement published in the state-run media on Friday, warned newspapers against printing "defamatory and baseless" articles. The newspapers, it added, had breached the country's press laws. "The national defence forces have the responsibility of keeping the country's territorial integrity and intervening to stabilise in the event of violent events beyond the capacity of the police force," a spokesman, Maj Gen Alemu Ayele, said in the statement. The arrest of the editors, reported by the Ethiopian Free Journalists Association (EFJA), came two days after four other newspaper editors were held for reporting that Ethiopian air force pilots had sought political asylum while training in Belarus. The government spokesman, Zemedkun Teckle, confirmed that the five editors had been held by the police. They included Taye Belachew, senior editor of Lisane Hezeb newspaper and vice president of the EFJA; Tadesse Kebede and Tegist Abrham from the same newspaper; Fassil Yenalem, editor-in-chief of Addis Zena newspaper and Daniel Gezahegne, editor-in-chief of Moged newspaper, the EFJA said. "They were released on bail after [carrying] reports in their Amharic-language weeklies of protesters being shot dead," Kifle Mulat, head of the EFJA, said. "We are concerned that journalists are being arrested, especially due to reporting around the elections," he added. "The Ethiopian free press is in great danger [yet] we are the only alternative to the state-run media." The editors were accused of misrepresenting the security forces and the Orthodox Church, who issued an observation report on the 15 May elections. Earlier in June, officials briefly detained and questioned at least six editors from the Amharic-language press, including Zelalem Gebre of Menilik. On 7 June, the information ministry revoked the accreditation of five Ethiopian journalists working for Voice of America and Deutsche Welle radio stations. Their permits have not been restored. During three days of protests that started on 6 June over alleged irregularities in parliamentary elections, police arrested thousands of demonstrators. On Thursday, the police said the total number of people arrested since the protests but now freed was 3,904. Some 509 people remained detained at the Ziway camp, and another 190 were being held at the Sendafa camp, 30 km north of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.