Ethiopia is offering five detained journalists a choice between their freedom and admitting to crimes they say they did not commit.
Development Diaries reports that Gobeze Sisay, Meskerem Abera, Genet Asmamaw, Dawit Begashaw and Abay Zewdu have spent three years in detention awaiting trial on terrorism charges linked to their reporting on unrest in the Amhara region, and were offered release in August if they wrote apology letters admitting involvement in an insurgency, expressing remorse and promising to stop working as journalists.
Their lawyer, Solomon Gezahagn, told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that the five refused to sign the letters because doing so would amount to self-incrimination.
He also said that prison officials threatened and isolated the journalists to pressure them into writing their own versions of a draft document provided by the government.
The government’s description of the offer as a pardon raises another problem. Solomon said Ethiopian law provides for pardons only after a defendant has been convicted and sentenced, meaning the five journalists would instead need their charges withdrawn or an amnesty granted if the government wants to release them before their trials are concluded.
Three years of detention without a concluded trial is already a serious due process concern. Asking the detainees to admit guilt as the price of leaving prison makes the situation worse because the state is effectively asking them to help establish the case against themselves.
And the five journalists are not the only people facing this arrangement, as reports indicate that more than 300 politicians, journalists and other people facing terrorism charges linked to the Amhara conflict have been asked to sign similar apology letters, with about 30 reportedly refusing.
That turns the matter from five journalists in detention into a much broader question about how Ethiopia is handling terrorism prosecutions arising from the Amhara conflict.
The conflict began in 2023 after the federal government’s decision to integrate regional militia into the national army triggered protests and resistance from Amhara regional forces and the Fano militia. The five journalists were detained in connection with their reporting on the unrest.
For journalists, when you report on a conflict, be ready to face terrorism charges, spend years awaiting trial, then choose between continued detention and an apology that ends your journalism.
That is a powerful way to make a newsroom quieter without having to close it.
Ethiopia’s constitution gives accused persons the right to a public trial within a reasonable time and protects them from being compelled to confess guilt. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Ethiopia is a party, similarly protects the right not to be compelled to testify against oneself or confess guilt.
The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights also protects the right to receive information and to express and disseminate opinions.
Those protections are the line between prosecution and coercion. Once the state can detain journalists, keep them awaiting trial for years, and then make their freedom conditional on an apology and a promise to stop reporting, due process has become part of the punishment.
The Federal Ministry of Justice controls the prosecution of the cases, while the Federal Prison Commission is responsible for detention conditions. The Government Communication Service has also been linked to the apology document, while the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has a mandate to investigate rights violations.
But the authorities have not publicly answered CPJ’s questions about the arrangement.
Two of the five journalists are women. Meskerem Abera founded and edits Ethio Nikat Media, while Genet Asmamaw works as a reporter for Yegna Media.
Their continued detention removes two women from a journalism sector in which women already form a relatively small part of the profession, while their isolation raises additional concerns about access to family support, healthcare and protection in custody.
The people losing out also include Amhara communities affected by fighting because they depend on local journalists to document displacement, deaths, abuses and the experiences of families caught between government forces and insurgents.
Ethiopian authorities should either bring the five journalists to trial without further delay and allow them to defend themselves, or withdraw the charges and release them, without demanding apologies or promises to abandon journalism as the price of freedom.
If the relevant authorities, including the Federal Ministry of Justice, Federal Prison Commission, and the Government Communication Service, do neither, Ethiopian and continental press freedom organisations should take the cases to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and seek scrutiny of the detention and apology-letter process.
Pressure should also come from within Ethiopia, with readers and diaspora groups asking the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission to investigate the reported threats, isolation and pressure on detainees and publish its response, while African newsrooms keep the five journalists’ names in circulation and their cases in public view.
At the continental level, the African Union, headquartered in Addis Ababa, should raise the matter directly with Ethiopian authorities and treat the prolonged detention of journalists as a press freedom issue requiring scrutiny, not a domestic matter to be left unanswered.
