{Rights group Amnesty International has issued a global appeal for the release from prison of an award-winning journalist in Ethiopia.}<\/p>\n
Amnesty on Wednesday said it was trying to raise awareness of the case of Eskinder Nega as part of a campaign called “Write for Rights.”<\/p>\n
Eskinder, in prison since 2011, is serving an 18-year sentence on terrorism charges.<\/p>\n
Amnesty says the journalist was a “thorn in the side of the Ethiopian authorities” for making speeches and writing articles critical of the government.<\/p>\n
Eskinder’s wife, Serkalem Fasil, who was arrested with him but later released, and who now lives in the US, said her husband was arrested for being a journalist and for repeatedly criticising the government.<\/p>\n
Ethiopian government spokesman, Shimelis Kemal, said Eskinder was not convicted for his criticism of the government but because he was running a clandestine ‘terrorist’ organisation.<\/p>\n
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Ethiopia has the second highest number of journalists imprisoned in Africa and is the eighth biggest jailer of journalists in the world.<\/p>\n
Agencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Rights group Amnesty International has issued a global appeal for the release from prison of an award-winning journalist in Ethiopia.} Amnesty on Wednesday said it was trying to raise awareness of the case of Eskinder Nega as part of a campaign called “Write for Rights.” Eskinder, in prison since 2011, is serving an 18-year sentence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000049521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-11683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000049521,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11683.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11683.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11683.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11683.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11683.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11683.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000049521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11683"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=11683"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=11683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}