Writer, journalist, blogger, and free speech activist Eskinder Nega, the 2012 recipient of PEN American Center's Freedom to Write Award, lived in Washington, D.C., before returning to his native Ethiopia to start one of the country's first-ever independent newspapers. On Friday, Eskinder was back in D.C.--not physically, but as the subject of a candlelight vigil at the African American Civil War Memorial that commemorated the first anniversary of the blogger's arrest and sent the message that those jailed for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of speech are never forgotten.
This is Eskinder's ninth imprisonment in 21 years while reporting the news in Ethiopia, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The most recent charges against him include involvement in "terrorism"--a grave charge that prosecutors backed with a YouTube video of a public meeting where he had discussed the implications of the Arab Spring in Ethiopia. The government charged him under the country's anti-terrorism law--the same legislation he had criticized in a column five days before his arrest. In the column, Eskinder had expressed his indignation at the imprisonment of 73-year-old actor Debebe Eshetu on terrorism charges and noted that dozens of political dissidents and a handful of independent journalists jailed with him did not fit the profile of terrorists.
There was much public condemnation, both from Washington and abroad, after Eskinder was convicted of involvement in terrorism in July and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Prominent voices increasingly questioned whether the U.S. privileged its strategic security relationship with Ethiopia at the expense of human rights.
We at Amnesty International's Young Professionals for Human Rights in Ethiopia decided that this event, unlike previous vigils and protests, would occur neither in front of the symbols of the U.S. government nor around the Ethiopian Embassy in D.C., but instead on U Street, where hundreds of Ethiopians, and Americans of Ethiopian origin, sprawl at any given time. Our motto: Take the event to the people!
Eskinder's aunt, who lives in the D.C. area, surprised us by appearing at the vigil, where she expressed her desire to see him out of prison. Maran Turner, executive director of Freedom Now, an organization serving as Eskinder's international pro bono legal counsel, spoke on the case that her organization had filed with the United Nations Human Right Council. We also thanked Jason McLure, a former Bloomberg News correspondent in Ethiopia and the founder of FreeEskinderNega.com, for his campaign that unreservedly calls for the blogger's release from jail.
Eskinder's case is symbolic of a wider crackdown on dissent that began in Ethiopia in the months following the Arab Spring, perhaps to pre-empt the possibility of organized anti-government protests like those in Egypt. Today, six journalists and dozens of political dissidents remain in prison in the country, most of them on terrorism and anti-state charges. Yet the most egregious weapon used by the Ethiopian government against critics has been the 2009 anti-terrorism law.
The terrorism law contains provisions so vaguely worded that they criminalize what are natural rights unequivocally enshrined in the constitution of Ethiopia. Some of the attendants at the vigil suggested that maybe our efforts would be better directed toward a complete repeal or partial amendment of the law so that it could be used only to prosecute genuine acts of terrorism. But we all agreed that Eskinder and other jailed political prisoners give a human face to the total injustice and unfairness of the law.
Mahlet Solomon, one of the organizers, told the group, "Dissent is not terrorism, and Eskinder's case is the true face of the violation of freedom of expression in Ethiopia. Remembering Eskinder is remembering the afflictions of all those who have criticized these violations and were persecuted."
This was the second event that we have organized around Eskinder and the issue of free speech. At the first event, in August, we discussed freedom of expression in the age of the Internet and social media. We plan to organize more events, sensitize more people to the cause, and campaign for free speech. Some dare us to "fight like man," an open invitation to violent confrontation of the oppressive regime, but we at the group say, "We fight like a civilized man and woman with our pens and notebook, with our keyboards and with our arts."
The following words, written by Eskinder Nega and read aloud at the event by Jason McLure, never fail to remind us of the imprisoned blogger's unwavering optimism.
Freedom is partial to no race. Freedom has no religion. Freedom favors no ethnicity. Freedom discriminates not between rich and poor countries. Inevitably, freedom will overwhelm Ethiopia.
Kassahun Addis was a special correspondent of The Washington Post and contributing reporter for Time from 2006 to 2009. He has also worked as a political commentator with Ethiopian newspapers The Sub-Saharan Informer and The Reporter. He lives in exile in the United States after being persecuted by the Ethiopian government for his independent reporting.
Vinton Cerf, the US computer scientist recognized as one of the fathers of the Internet, says the open Internet is threatened as never before. "A new international battle is brewing - a battle that will determine the future of the Internet."
Cerf is not alone in his prediction. "Yes - the Internet is in danger," Wolfgang Kleinwächter, professor for Internet policies at Aarhus University, told DW.
Censorship is a threat to the free, open and worldwide net - and it comes in many shapes: a government can block specific contents or entire sites; it can restrict connections to ensure that sites will only open slowly, if at all. Users may be forced to give their names when registering IP addresses, and governments create parallel net worlds with national offers of their own to discourage users from seeking out western websites.
From Internet to Intranet
The biggest risk is forcing the borderless Internet into 20th century borders, Kleinwächter warns: the Internet would thus become an Intranet. China has already installed cyber regulations in the form of a "Great Firewall" and Iran has created a "halal" network.
In 2002, four governments restricted access to the net. According to net activists, more than 40 governments now censor the Internet. In August, the Indian government blocked web pages and social media accounts to prevent the spread of rumors about religious strife. The Vietnamese leadership brings bloggers to trial. Even in Ethiopia, where less than 1 percent of the population has Internet access, the government filters websites, blocks connections and monitors e-mails.
Some 29 Internet activists worldwide were killed this year and 127 are in prison, according to the human rights organization Reporters Without Borders. The group says this is a clear breach of the UN Human Rights Council Resolution on Internet Rights, which calls on all states "to promote and facilitate access to the Internet and international cooperation aimed at the development of media and information and communications facilities in all countries."
"That is a fundamental statement," Kleinwächter said, adding it gives the Council a platform to criticize states that argue "online is different - we have to introduce restrictions for reasons of national security."
In the name of national security
The Council can't impose sanctions, Kleinwächter concedes, but it can expose individual states before the world. While this is far from a solution to the problem, he said, it can be quite effective.
"There are very few ISPs - Internet service providers - or countries that have no restrictions at all," says Jermyn Brooks, head of the Global Network Initiative (GNI). "Those restrictions are the result of very careful debate in democratic societies about what few areas of information are regarded as harmful and then can be censored. Child pornography is one. Extreme violence shown on the Internet could be another area."
The current debate about the video mocking the Islamic prophet Muhammad, which is available on the Internet and which was blamed for triggering violent protests throughout the Muslim world, is an example. Some states are vowing to ban the video or sites that make it available.
Democracy versus dictatorship
Swedenis a model online country: about 90 percent of all households have access to the Internet. The government offers numerous services online. The country heads the "Web Index," the world's first measure of the web's growth, utility and impact on people in 61 countries.
Yet even Sweden blocks some websites on the net: pages containing child pornography, for instance, are placed on a blacklist. While this may be a noble goal, activists criticize that those blacklists are not being compiled in a transparent way. Another point of criticism is that Sweden, along with other countries in the EU, has decided to store user data for six month even if there's no immediate suspicion.
But this data preservation doesn't mean that the Swedish system is as bad as in undemocratic countries, said Frank Belfrage, Sweden's deputy foreign minister. "Those regimes which use the Internet to monitor the individual - what they are after is to protect non-democratic societies. And there we of course have a total clash in terms of opinion."
Western software
For some companies in the west, selling surveillance technologies is a lucrative business: technologies that allow you to spy on computers and monitor the users. "Western countries are not limiting that trade. They are not putting any restrictions on what technology can go where. And that is a huge problem," warned Eric King of Privacy International, an NGO that is trying to monitor the export of surveillance technology.
A specialist in computer privacy, who prefers to remain anonymous, tells the story of Iranian activists: Their computers were hacked into, the data was passed on to the government - using a program developed in Germany and sold by a British company. Privacy International is calling for a ban on such exports - but politicians are hesitant.
"What's important to us is that this debate is getting kick-started and that we will then come to some results," Kleinwächter said.
The Internet in 2032
But there is also some good news: In China, for instance, about 10 percent of the users do mange to circumvent the regime's censorship and gain free access to the Internet. They use proxy servers or encoded networks. The TOR network, for instance, enables users to remain incognito on the web.
There won't be any swift changes, Brooks said. "But over time, particularly if one can show these countries model laws and explain whey those model laws will be to their economic advantage, then I think we have opportunities to move in the right direction."
Writer, journalist, blogger, and free speech activist Eskinder Nega, the 2012 recipient of PEN American Center's Freedom to Write Award, lived in Washington, D.C., before returning to his native Ethiopia to start one of the country's first-ever independent newspapers. On Friday, Eskinder was back in D.C.--not physically, but as the subject of a candlelight vigil at the African American Civil War Memorial that commemorated the first anniversary of the blogger's arrest and sent the message that those jailed for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of speech are never forgotten.
