Ethiopia

Press Release: African Activists Sign Letter to Eritrean President

10 de June de 2019 Maka Angola

Nobel Laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka joins over 100 African activists and academics from 52 of 54 African countries, including Ugandan musician and opposition MP Bobi Wine, award winning Kenyan anti-corruption activist John Githongo, Egyptian actor Amr Waked, award winning human rights lawyer Alice Nkom, novelist Alain Mabanckou, award winning investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas in signing a letter to Eritrean head of state. DEAR MR PRESIDENT, PLEASE WELCOME US TO ERITREA AFRICAN DEMOCRACY ADVOCATES, JOURNALISTS AND HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS ASK TO VISIT THEIR INCARCERATED COLLEAGUES IN ERITREA. One hundred (100) leading African journalists, democracy and human rights advocates took the opportunity on Africa Day – May 25th 2019 to write an open letter to Eritrea’s President Isaias Aferwerki. It is released today Monday 10th June 2019. They requested the head of state an opportunity to visit their colleagues incarcerated in Eritrea. In a message of solidarity with all the people […]

Human rights

Open Letter to the Eritrean Head of State

10 de June de 2019 Maka Angola

Your Excellency, President Isaias Aferwerki: We write to convey our most sincere congratulations upon your country’s normalization of diplomatic relations with Ethiopia. This is a development much appreciated by all Africans of goodwill. We write to you in our capacity as citizens of Africa to pledge our unequivocal solidarity with all the people of Eritrea. This includes the many Eritreans we see enduring all manner of risk and suffering in search of a better life outside their homeland. We acknowledge that we too hail from nations with varying governance and developmental challenges. We write to you, in the spirit of Pan-African solidarity, to seek common solutions to our shared problems. Africa’s many disparate nation states have undergone significant and diverse changes over the course of the last two decades. [Today, many more Africans live in freedom than under repression]. Importantly, those African countries that have made the most progress – […]

Human rights

I Believe in the Power of Solidarity

20 de March de 2015 Rafael Marques de Morais

With an award comes a greater responsibility. It is therefore my privilege to accept this journalism award [from Index on Censorship], and dedicate it to my fellow Ethiopian colleagues Eskinder Nega, Reeyot Alemo, and the Zone 9 bloggers. They are in jail, currently serving some of the harshest sentences in Africa, for the crime of exercising their right to freedom of expression. For over a year, the Ethiopian government has denied adequate health care to Reeyot Alemu, who is in desperate need. Ethiopia is the seat of the African Union, and its regime is one of the worst offenders for upholding the freedoms of the press and of expression. When a regime in Africa succeeds in trampling their citizens’ rights with impunity, and enjoys such good international standing and legitimacy as Ethiopia, it becomes a textbook case for other authoritarian regimes. I believe in the power of solidarity. I have […]