After a week spent reporting from the war in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara region in early August 2023, journalist Abay Zewdu stopped at a café in Addis Ababa to eat injera, a traditional flatbread, with friends.
Moments later, his friends watched federal officers shove him into a pickup truck and drive off, his sister Zoma Zewdu told Capital News Service in a telephone interview.
That same day, on Aug. 10, federal police called Zoma, saying her brother had been arrested and she could visit him, she said. But when she arrived at the station, she learned officers were instead raiding their home and Zewdu was with them, still detained.
Nearly seven months after his arrest, Zewdu, an Amharic-language YouTube broadcaster, was formally charged under Ethiopia’s Anti-Terrorism Proclamation. Prosecutors accused him of conspiring to overthrow the government and accepting missions from Fano, an anti-government militia of former special forces soldiers, a group that is seeking peace in Amhara, but Ethiopian authorities claim is engaged in activities aimed to overthrow the government. He was also accused of inciting unrest through his media posts, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a NY-based organization advocating for press freedom.
The Ethiopian Embassy in Washington did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Zewdu’s detention epitomizes the collapse of Ethiopia’s short-lived experiment with press freedom by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, said Ethiopian experts and journalists and press freedom advocates.
Zewdu’s lawyer, Solomon Gezahegn, told CNS that terrorism charges are usually vague and unsupported, adding that Zewdu had been arrested three times before for his reporting. His channel, the Amhara Media Center, often characterized the region’s conflict as a “freedom struggle.”
“This time, the court hearing keeps being delayed, and they don’t want to release him,” Gezahegn said.
Zoma has managed to see her brother only once at the federal police center before authorities transferred him to a notorious military prison camp called Awash Arba, about 130 miles east of Addis Ababa. Detainees are typically held there for months without legal access or communication, according to Reporters Without Borders, a media advocacy organization.
“We didn’t know his whereabouts,” Zoma said. “It was very tough, and he was there with different journalists, politicians and activists.”
After six months at the prison camp, Zewdu was moved to Qilinto Prison on the outskirts of the capital where many political prisoners are held and human rights groups have long criticized prisoner mistreatment and overcrowded, unsanitary conditions.
Zoma was allowed to briefly see him on the weekends and two weekdays. She said he had a bleeding skin allergy across his back and the lingering effects of food poisoning that had never been properly treated.
Silencing independent media
In 2020, a two-year-long war arose in the northwest Tigray region. Abiy declared his first state of emergency, which imposed a complete media blackout in the conflict zone, preventing journalists and humanitarian groups from visiting and documenting alleged atrocities.
The U.S. State Department’s human rights report for 2023 said that the federal government committed serious war crimes, including widespread civilian killings, mass displacement, sexual violence and deliberate starvation.
In April 2023, a different conflict broke out in the northern Amhara region, just south of Tigray.
This one was fueled by the Amhara people’s anger over being excluded from the 2022 Tigray peace deal, even though the Tigray war had affected northern Amhara. Additionally, unresolved territorial disputes and rising ethnic violence escalated the conflict.
By August 2023, Abiy declared a second six-month state of emergency, granting officials sweeping powers to silence dissent and unsanctioned journalism. Internet access was cut, public gatherings were banned and reporters covering the unrest in Amhara were detained on terrorism charges or accused of supporting Fano, according to widespread media reports at the time.
Gezahegn, the lawyer, said, under Abiy’s regime, journalists are viewed as part of the opposition to the federal government.
Vicki Huddleston, former charge d’affaires to Ethiopia and former deputy assistant secretary at the Defense and State departments for Africa, told CNS in an email that she believes Zewdu’s arrest “diminishes Ethiopia.”
“The increasingly difficult environment for factual journalism in Ethiopia — and in the world — threatens democracy and human rights,” Huddleston wrote in response to emailed questions.
Press freedom advocates believe Ethiopia is once again treating journalism as a national threat.
“The patterns were quite familiar,” Muthoki Mumo, sub-Saharan Africa representative at CPJ, said. “They [journalists] would get arrested, they would get accused of these very broad offenses — anti-state offenses, which for us covers things like terrorism, hate speech, incitement – and then they would get held in prolonged pre-charged detention.”
Through the state-owned communications company EthioTelecom, authorities impose national and regional internet shutdowns to silence critics and monitor messages and calls going in and out of the nation. The Ethiopian Media Authority, which restricts online media, forces journalists and media outlets to censor themselves.
“There isn’t any independent organization or news organization or journalists,” Meaza Mohammed, founder of Ethiopian broadcast channel Roha TV but exiled to Washington, told CNS in a telephone interview. “All of them are in prison or exiled.”
“[Everything] is under surveillance,” Mohammed said. “They record calls and use them against you. Even YouTube channels must register so the government can control who is responsible.”
As of December 2024, five journalists were imprisoned in Ethiopia on charges connected to their reporting, according to CPJ.
The irony of Ethiopia’s prime minister
When Abiy became prime minister in 2018, he freed jailed reporters and lifted existing bans on hundreds of media outlets, replacing nearly three decades of authoritarian rule with promises of democratic reform.
He even received the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize “for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation,” a statement from the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.
But by 2020, Abiy’s government had begun consolidating power, increasing censorship and rolling back reforms, prompting many to describe his leadership as increasingly autocratic.
Detained for reporting
Before his arrest, Zewdu covered Fano’s clashes in the Amhara region with federal forces, civilian displacement and alleged abuses. His YouTube broadcast increased his visibility, according to RSF.
“They [federal government] say you reported something that happened in the region, and because of your reports people fought,” Mohammed, the exiled Ethiopian journalist, said.
In Qilinto Prison, Zewdu shares a room with roughly 90 other inmates in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions, according to Zoma.
Meals are so unhygienic, Zoma said, that they often cause food poisoning. To avoid that, Zoma spends two hours traveling by public taxi and then waits in a long line at the prison — usually from about 8 a.m. to noon — just to deliver a few apples and some bread, which she said Zewdu shares with other inmates. But some days she can’t make the trip or can’t afford the food.
Before the surge in the prison population and swelling lines of visitors, Zoma said she was allowed to speak with her brother for at least 20 minutes. Now, guards won’t allow even five. Most days, she has time to give him the food then has to leave.
Prisoners are permitted to use communal bathrooms twice a day. Outside those times, there is a bucket in the small space shared with several people.
Zewdu, Zoma recalled, once told her his suffering was necessary. “We do this for the truth,” he told her.