Ethiopia: Facebook comments got politician six years in jail

ESAT News (May 25, 2017)

An Ethiopian court sentenced a young politician and activist to six years and six months in jail over Facebook comments he made, the second person in a week to be convicted and sentenced by a justice system that serves a regime known for intolerance to its critics and journalists.

Yonatan Tesfaye, the former public relations head for the opposition Blue Party and a social media activist, was arrested in December 2015 at the height of the anti-government protest. His comments on his Facebook take note of the fact that the regime has used the laws in the country to oppress the people and hence protests by the people were legitimate.

Authorities arrested Yonatan and charged him with “terrorism” and accused that he had tried to incite violence working with groups outlawed by the regime, like the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF).

Despite uproar by rights watchdogs and the international community, the regime has continued to use its anti-terror proclamation to silence and hand down cruel punishment on dissenters and critical journalists.

On Wednesday, the same court convicted a newspaper journalist of “criminal offences” of “inciting violence” over Facebook comments he made five years ago. The court passed a guilty verdict on Getachew Shiferaw, in what Amnesty International called “a further slap in the face for justice.”

The former editor-in-chief of the Negere Ethiopia newspaper, Getachew Shiferaw, was initially charged with terrorism offences over a Facebook comment he made five years ago, when journalist and activist Abebe Gellaw protested against the late dictator Meles Zenawi at a global forum in Washington, DC. The terrorism charges were later downgraded to “criminal offences.”

Getachew Shiferaw has been detained since December 2015, and faces a maximum of ten years when the kangaroo court sentence him on Friday.

“Getachew did nothing but share publicly-available information – to convict him of provoking revolt with the risk of a 10-year jail term, away from his loved ones, is cruel and unacceptable,” said Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes.