The Ethiopian Supreme Court reinstated fines on Monday against four newspaper publishing companies over their coverage of the disputed 2005 national election. The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Ethiopian authorities to end their continuing pursuit of politically motivated charges related to the election.

 

“The government continues to use the courts and administrative means to settle political scores against journalists who were acquitted after the 2005 election,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Tom Rhodes. “We call on Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to end his administration’s unrelenting harassment of these journalists, which contradicts his public statements in 2007 that the government did not harbor a ‘sense of revenge’ toward its critics in the press.”