{"id":34592,"date":"2017-05-16T15:22:53","date_gmt":"2017-05-16T15:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/ethiopia-activist-guilty-of-terrorism-for\/"},"modified":"2017-05-16T15:22:24","modified_gmt":"2017-05-16T15:22:24","slug":"ethiopia-activist-guilty-of-terrorism-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/ethiopia-activist-guilty-of-terrorism-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethiopia activist guilty of terrorism for Facebook posts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{A judge in Ethiopia&#8217;s capital on Tuesday found a former opposition spokesman guilty of encouraging terrorism with a series of anti-government Facebook posts.}<\/p>\n<p>Yonatan Tesfaye was arrested in December 2015 after writing on the social media platform that the government had used &#8220;force against the people instead of using peaceful discussion with the public.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>While Yonatan&#8217;s lawyer and defence witnesses argued the former spokesman of the opposition Blue Party was exercising his right to free speech, judge Belayhun Awol ruled the comments &#8220;exceeded freedom of expression&#8221; and amounted to encouraging terrorism.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think the government&#8217;s intent and what it seeks is this: to restrict others from speaking freely,&#8221; Yonatan&#8217;s lawyer Shebru Belete Birru told AFP after the verdict.<\/p>\n<p>The guilty verdict for &#8220;encouragement of terrorism&#8221; means Yonatan faces a possible sentence of between 10 and 20 years under the country&#8217;s anti-terrorism laws, which have been criticised by rights groups and Ethiopia&#8217;s allies, such as the United States, for being used to stifle dissent.<\/p>\n<p>Yonatan&#8217;s comments came shortly after protesters belonging to the country&#8217;s largest ethnic group, the Oromos, took to the streets in towns outside the capital Addis Ababa, claiming a plan to expand the city&#8217;s boundaries into their region amounted to a land-grab.<\/p>\n<p>The protests led Ethiopia&#8217;s government to declare a state of emergency last October, which was extended for another four months in March.<\/p>\n<p>Yonatan was originally charged with being a member of the banned separatist Oromo Liberation Front, but prosecutors changed the charges against him last year. <\/p>\n<p>Shebru said he plans to appeal the verdict.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-20071 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/world06pix-2.jpg\" alt=\"President Museveni receives Ethiopia\u2019s Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn upon arrival at State House Entebbe recently. A court in Ethiopia on Tuesday found a former opposition spokesman guilty of encouraging terrorism with a series of anti-government Facebook posts.\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Source:Daily Monitor <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{A judge in Ethiopia&#8217;s capital on Tuesday found a former opposition spokesman guilty of encouraging terrorism with a series of anti-government Facebook posts.} Yonatan Tesfaye was arrested in December 2015 after writing on the social media platform that the government had used &#8220;force against the people instead of using peaceful discussion with the public.&#8221; While [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[160],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-34592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-theophile-niyitegeka"],"bylines":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","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":3}],"contributors":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","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":3}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34592","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34592"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=34592"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=34592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}