Woubshet Taye's wife, Birhan Tesfaye, and his son Fiteh Woubshet pictured during the CNN MultiChoice African Journalist Award held in South Africa on October 12th, 2013. (CNN photograph)
By Tom Rhodes/CPJ East Africa Representative
“When I grow up will I go to jail like my dad?” This was the shattering question that the five-year-old son of imprisoned Ethiopian journalist Woubshet Taye asked his mother after a recent prison visit. Woubshet’s son, named Fiteh (meaning “justice”), has accompanied his mother on a wayward tour of various prisons since his father was arrested in June 2011.
Authorities have inexplicably transferred Woubshet, the former deputy editor of the independent weekly Awramba Times, to a number of prisons. From Maekelawi Prison, authorities transferred him to Kality Prison in the capital, Addis Ababa, then to remote Ziway Prison, then Kalinto Prison (just outside Addis Ababa), back to Kality, and in December last year–to Ziway again.
It is at Ziway, an isolated facility roughly 83 miles southeast of the capital, where heat, dust, and contaminated water have likely led to a severe kidney infection in Woubshet. The award-winning journalist was meant to receive medical treatment while at Kality Prison in Addis Ababa, Woubshet’s wife, Berhane Tesfaye, told me, but it never took place. Suffering in such pain in his ribs and hip that he cannot sleep, Woubshet has not even received painkillers, according to local journalists who visited him.
CPJ’s attempts to reach Ethiopian government spokesman Shimeles Kemal by phone call and text message were unsuccessful.
Read more at CPJ.
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Related:
Ethiopian Journalist Asfaw Berhanu Sentenced to More Than Two Years in Jail (CPJ)
UPDATE: Kality Twitter Chat Roundup (TADIAS)
Eritrea, Ethiopia, Egypt Among Worst Journalist Jailers (VOA News)
“Write for Rights” Campaign Launched for Ethiopian Journalist Eskinder Nega (Video)
International Rights Group Appeals for Release of Ethiopian Reporter Jailed for 18 Years (AP)
Ethiopia: A Lifeline to the World — Wire Interview With Birtukan Mideksa (Wire Magazine)
Taking Eskinder Nega & Reeyot Alemu’s Case to African Court on Human Rights (TADIAS)
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