By Kindeneh E. Mihretie — Wake up… call my friends, meet them at our favorite café and eagerly await the latest issue of the weekly Addis Nagar to come out. This was my Saturday morning routine for most of spring 2009. Usually the paper would be out by 10:00 am. Some times though, it could be late in hitting the streets of Addis. In the latter case, whenever the rather elderly newsvendor showed up with other papers but not Addis Nagar, we would ask, “Addis Nagar is not out yet?” His quick reply, which never ceased to surprise me was always “don’t worry about Addis Nagar being late, no matter how late it comes out, it will still be all gone before sunset.” At the time, I thought that too preoccupied with his own concern as to how many papers he would manage to sale by the day’s end, it did not occur to the vendor that our interest in asking was simply to find out whether the paper would be out on time for us to enjoy reading it over breakfast. Come to think of it now, may be his reply had more to it than just miscommunication or a difference in our sets of priorities. He was perhaps telling us that Addis Nagar was too good, for us to take it for granted. What he was saying was perhaps, “just pray that it comes out, as long as it does, you will still be set for your weekend.” He was right. Addis Nagar was more than a morning paper. It was a true weekender for Addisabé’yns! Alas good things are not meant to last though. And so it is for Addis Nagar!

Before Addis Nagar, I had never been a big fan of local papers. The lack of depth in analyses and sloppy reporting which occasionally used to even veer to sheer fabrications used to turn me off. At first, I therefore attributed the newfound interest in being an Addis Nagar client as simply part of the unconscious desire to make up for the unrestricted access to the internet that I was so used to during my three years sojourn in the west prior to my return home last year. To my surprise however, since I left Ethiopia once again last August, one of the most difficult issue of adjustment turned out to be missing Saturday morning in Addis, and with it Addis Nagar. I was therefore very angry, for the last couple of months, at Addis Nagar for not going online, so that those of us outside of Ethiopia could be able to read it on the internet. Little did I know that it was soon to be shut down and go out of publication altogether.

This is really a very bad news for Addisabéyns. To me, the closure of Addis Nagar is no less significant than the frustration with 2005 election results. It is not that the paper is without its problems and limitations. The feature articles, which are its signature item, occasionally suffered from failure to ground analyses on local reality. Even the choice of topics, one suspects, were sometimes inspired by the buzzword in the American media. However, Addis Nagar was much more than its major feature articles. The news reports were consistently objective and bold. It is also a comprehensive weekly, complete with art and medical sections. A critical review has also to take into account the fact that Addis Nagar was a work in progress. The opportunities were literary limitless, too exciting to think about. That is, had it been allowed to mature.

Most of all, Addis Nagar was a forum for the youth, and there lays its primary significance and the extent and meaning of our loss upon its departure. There were occasional opinion pieces by those advanced in age. However by and large, Addis Nagar was for the youth and one could easily see the enthusiasm, passion and courage to speak out quite literary flowing in its pages, which had the effect of inspiring the reader to think that, after all, there could still be hope. Addis Nagar was in general making a very crucial contribution in addressing the most serious gap in Ethiopian politics, which is involvement of the youth. It is not too much exaggeration therefore to say that in order to see the fruits of Bertukan Medeksa’s labor and scarifies, the best place to go was the pages of Addis Nagar.

The ruling party, which had proven time and again that it has no place for democracy when it really counts, had therefore more than a credible reasons to set its silencing machine at motion. It has also a cause to celebrate at the occasion of Addis Nagars demise. Conversely, we have yet another cause to tear our garments, sprinkle ash over our heads and lament, as lamenting seems to be our only lot.
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Read also:  article From Monday’s Globe and Mail Geoffrey York - Published on Sunday, Dec. 06, 2009 11:18PM EST

Tamerat Negera was the editor-in-chief of Addis Neger, a weekly newspaper in Addis Ababa that has ceased publication after intimidation and harassment by the Ethiopian government. Mr. Negera, pictured here at Addis Neger’s former offices, has since fled Ethiopia. Erin Conway-Smith for The Globe and Mail

It was one of the few remaining independent voices in Ethiopia. But one by one, the editors of Addis Neger have quietly slipped out of the country, fleeing from the imprisonment that they expected at any moment.

The warnings were increasingly ominous. Criminal charges were being prepared. Staff were threatened. When editor-in-chief Tamerat Negera was publicly denounced as a “nihilist” and “anti-establishment,” he knew exactly what it meant. “It’s time to pack,” he said grimly.

In a final act of subterfuge, he hired a new accountant and three new writers, hoping to give the impression that his weekly newspaper was staying open. But he was already planning his escape to the United States.

Late last week, when all six of its founding editors were safely outside of the country, they announced that their newspaper had ceased to exist. It was the culmination of “months of persecution and harassment,” they said in a final statement.

The shutdown is just the latest example of the “climate of fear” in Ethiopia, according to Reporters Without Borders, a media watchdog group based in Paris.

With an election due within the next five months, there are mounting concerns that the government is planning a repeat of the crackdown that imprisoned thousands of people after the disputed 2005 election. Military and police officers killed about 200 opposition protesters after that election, and many journalists and politicians were jailed for the next two years. Websites that criticized the government were blocked, and even text messaging on cellphones was restricted.

Mr. Negera had been an opposition candidate in the 2005 election, but the other co-founders of his weekly newspaper were independent journalists who had been victims of the crackdown in the last election. They named their newspaper Addis Neger (which means “New Thing”), then built it to a circulation of 30,000 – a relatively large number for an independent weekly in Ethiopia. But as the election approaches, they say the Ethiopian media are censoring themselves more heavily.

“The situation for journalists is very dark,” Mr. Negera said. “This election is going to be more controlled.”

Some Ethiopian journalists say that the government is planning to prosecute the independent media under a new anti-terrorism law, which authorizes a 20-year jail sentence on anyone who is deemed to be “supporting” terrorism.

At the same time, a growing number of Ethiopian journalists and artists are being imprisoned on trivial or trumped-up charges, human rights groups say.

One newspaper editor was convicted of criminal charges after she made a factual error in reporting the name of a judge in a court case. She was held in prison, then fined and released.

Last week, two journalists at Addis Neger were charged with “defaming” the patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church after they reported on internal politics in the church.

Another journalist was imprisoned this year in connection with a five-year-old article that documented human-rights violations against the Oromo people, one of Ethiopia’s ethnic groups. Another was imprisoned for years-old tax charges, although he was later acquitted.

In one of the most famous cases, Ethiopian pop singer Teddy Afro – sometimes known as the Bob Marley of Ethiopia – was imprisoned for 16 months for a traffic accident that killed a man, although the singer denied being in the car. His songs had become a rallying cry for many political dissidents.

“Ethiopia is one of the world’s worst backsliders on press freedom, a steady decline made worse by recent draconian anti-terror legislation,” said a statement by the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent group based in New York.