According to his employer on Monday, a French journalist who was in Ethiopia for a recent summit of the African Union was arrested.
Antoine Galindo, a Paris-based correspondent for the Africa Intelligence website, was detained in the capital Addis Ababa last Thursday by plainclothes security personnel, the news outlet’s publisher, Indigo Publications, said in a statement.
According to the statement, Galindo held a visa that allowed him to work as a journalist when he landed in Ethiopia earlier this month to cover an annual conference of the African Union.
Regarding Galindo’s case, the Ethiopian government has not made any public remarks. Indigo Publishing released a statement stating that a judge on Saturday extended Galindo’s imprisonment until March 1.
A “conspiracy to create chaos in Ethiopia” is the charge leveled against him.
According to the statement, “Indigo Publishing is horrified by his unjustified detention, which is also a major infringement on press freedom.”
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Galindo was arrested at the Ethiopian Skylight Hotel in Addis Ababa while conducting an interview with Bate Urgressa, the spokesperson for the opposition Oromo Liberation Front party. Bate was also arrested and was still in custody, CPJ reported.
According to CPJ, who cited Galindo’s attorney, the journalist was refused bail after police asked for his continued custody to obtain access to his phone records and detain additional suspects.
According to CPJ, Ethiopia is the country that imprisons journalists the most in sub-Saharan Africa, and it has joined the calls for Galindo’s immediate release. It stated, “His unjust detention shows the terrible environment for the press in Ethiopia generally.”
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia, who was elected in 2018 amidst widespread demonstrations against authoritarianism, had first pledged to usher in a new era of political transparency, but under his leadership, civil rights have deteriorated.
Foreign journalists and diplomats were banished from the Tigray region during the 2020–2022 conflict, and thousands of ethnic Tigrayans were apprehended and imprisoned. A fresh uprising in Amhara, the second-largest state in Ethiopia, led the parliament to declare a state of emergency due to claims of military carrying out extrajudicial executions.
The CPJ reports that at least eight Ethiopian journalists are incarcerated at the moment.
(AP)
