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Woyanne arrests two Swedish journalists

EDITOR’S NOTE: Didn’t Bereket Simon say that security situation “in Ogaden is improving by the day”?

(CPJ) — Two Swedish journalists reporting on the activities of armed separatists operating in an oil-rich province of eastern Ethiopia have been detained without charge since Thursday in the Horn of Africa nation, according to news reports and government officials.

Ethiopian Woyanne security forces arrested photojournalist Johan Persson and reporter Martin Schibbye, contributors to the Sweden-based agency Kontinent, along the border with neighboring Somalia, government Woyanne spokesman Bereket Simon told CPJ.

The journalists had been embedded with Ogaden National Liberation Front rebels who had come under attack by government Woyanne forces, said Simon. Persson, 29, was wounded in the hand and Schibbey, 30, in the shoulder during the fighting, according to news reports. The two received medical treatment under police custody in the border city of Jijiga, Swedish Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Cecilia Julin reported.

Persson and Schibbey were moved from Jijiga to the capital, Addis Ababa, this evening and were expected to appear in court in the near future, Simon added. In a report, the Ethiopian government-controlled broadcaster claimed that security forces killed 15 rebels and captured six others, including the journalists, in the raid.

Simon alleged the two journalists had crossed over the border from Somalia without accreditation. CPJ research shows that Ethiopia has blocked independent access to the Ogaden, a Somali-speaking region that has been home since 1984 to a low-level insurgency. Last month, the Ethiopian government formally categorized the Ogaden National Liberation Front as a terrorist group under the country’s sweeping anti-terrorism law, which construes any reporting the government deems favorable to a terrorist entity as a criminal offense.

Persson has worked with Kontinent for five years and has covered many dangerous assignments across the globe, including stints in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, colleague Jacob Zocherman told CPJ. Schibbey, an experienced reporter, has written many human rights-related stories, including a series of reports on human trafficking in Asia, Zocherman said. Both are professional journalists with no affiliation to the rebel groups. Kontinent has gathered all of the two journalists’ work as proof of their colleagues’ professionalism, Kontinent Picture Editor Martin Laupa told CPJ.

“These journalists should not be detained for seeking to cover an under-reported story,” said CPJ East Africa Consultant Tom Rhodes. “The Ethiopian authorities must release them immediately.”

With the arrests of Persson and Schibbey, eight journalists are behind bars in Ethiopia, making the country the second worst jailer of journalists in sub-Saharan Africa, according to CPJ research.

Persson and Schibbey follow other international journalists arrested for attempting to report on the Ogaden conflict, according to CPJ research. Journalist Heather Murdock was expelled in 2010 while reporting near the Ogaden, while a crew from The New York Times was expelled in 2007 while reporting in the region.

4 thoughts on “Woyanne arrests two Swedish journalists

  1. Peter Wallensteen, professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University, describes Ethiopia as a country full of war and conflict.

    “I’ve seen some prisons where you don’t want to end up. There’s several ongoing wars, and it’s not a country governed by law. Ethiopia’s way down on the democracy scale,” said Wallensteen.

    According to Wallensteen, Sweden has a good relationship with Ethiopia, a major beneficiary.

    “Hopefully there will be no more than a formal court case, and then they’ll be released,” he said.

    http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=34744#comment658615

    They will be out of there in no time. My worry is for Reeyot Alemu & Wubshet Taye

  2. For TPLF regime to arrest journalists, Swedes nor Ethiopians is no a new
    phenomena. I believe this will bring the issue of smearing everyone one, peaceful citizens of the world as Terrorists, using the the ‘TERROR” cards effectively against anyone who has differences of opinions with them. Eritrea is one such country that is being flashed with bogus cards. Here sweden is not yet acused by TPLF regime, as sponsors of Terror but Kontinental news media will be soon. I don’t know
    how Meles Zenawi has not acused Hilary or Obama for sponsoring terrors and condemn them to death in absentia? The largest and ever growing opposition to Meles Zenawi’s dire bruits regime is right here in North America.

    There is a saying in Amharic, ” AHYYAN FERTO Dawulan” one who fears the donkey would beat up its loads. MR. Zenawi has turned Ethiopia into muzzled, enslaved, effectively controled, through the rules of barberism. He calls his such brutalism, a democracy. Democracy that is unheard of nor can be seen in daily lives of its citizens. Citizens starve, get arrested, robbed by the regime cadres, exiled in horrendous conditions in which thousands die all over East Africa.

    The two swedish journalists are braves, heroes to have taken a tasks such as going into death camps of Ethiopia to capture first hand the people who are closed off the world media. The OGADEN people are closed down by Meles and his TPLF REGIME so that their sufferings can not be seen. So they face mass starvasion and deaths in bibilical proportions.

    These journalists are heros never to be arrested. Even being kept in Ethiopia, where 80 million people live as prisoners of TPLF regime, free in top hotels is prison for these heroes. Free all of them without
    any conditions!

    All free people of the world condemn Terrorist reime of MR. MELES ZENAWI. DOWN TPLF. DOWN WITH YOUR CRIMINAL RULES. POWER BACK TO THE PEOPLE OF ETHIOPIA.

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