Journalist Ashine’s fate exposes Ethiopia's tyranny

There is no need to introduce to Ugandan men of letters who Mr John Nagenda is. Yet, since this publication is also read by non-Ugandans, a word or two about the gentleman is appropriate.

Nagenda is known more as a regular columnist in one of the Ugandan dailies, Saturday Vision. It is through his column that I also got to know him or rather about him.

Apparently, Mr Nagenda juggles as a regular columnist with his other important job: he is a Senior Adviser on Media and Public Relations to President Yoweri Museveni.

This venerable citizen of Uganda, who has impressed me as a man steeped in English literature as well as the history of Africa, later disappointed me with what appears to be a blind endorsement of every measure taken by Mr Museveni. That’s why I disagree with a description of his writing as “candid, compassionate, critical”, e.t.c by a BlogSpot Onemansweek.

Instead of criticising the heavy-handedness of the military and police against demonstrators during the Walk to Work protests, Nagenda described the people who were rightfully aggrieved as a “bunch of lumpens.”

He did not show outrage when another venerable citizen of Uganda was mercilessly roughed up in front of glaring cameras! Instead; he ridiculed the man on several occasions. Recently though, Nagenda caught everybody by surprise. In an extensive interview he gave to the Sunday Monitor, a newspaper he used to despise so much, he described his boss, Mr Museveni, as “autocratic.” Well, never too old to learn and never too late to turn.

Now, let us go to the other gentleman; Mr Argaw Ashine. Ashine is my fellow countryman, an Ethiopian who used to work in the state-owned media as a journalist. He somehow managed to extricate himself from the propaganda machinery of the state and joined the ever shrinking independent media.

He also secured a job as correspondent for the Kenyan-headquartered Nation Media Group and his stories have appeared in NMG publications such as Daily Nation of Kenya, The East African, Daily Monitor, Africa Review and The Citizen of Tanzania, in addition to being the chairman of the Ethiopian Environment Journalists Association.

Until recently-- except being Africans in the same business called media-- there is not much in common between Ashine and Nagenda. Yet, WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website changed all that and prompted me to compare the good fortune of one against the fate of another.

WikiLeaks reported that both revealed information that could make their respective rulers uncomfortable to American diplomats. While Nagenda who allegedly said Ms Janet Museveni, the First Lady, initiated the Anti-homosexuality Bill suffered no consequence even after he stood by his word, Ashine, who revealed the Ethiopian regime’s diabolical plan to incarcerate journalists of Addis Neger with a bogus terrorist charge, was forced to flee from his country after a gruelling interrogation to reveal his source.

When BBC Focus on Africa reported this, I texted a message by comparing the two situations and how this shows that Ethiopia, “even by African standards, is in the worst form of tyranny.”

BBC which exposes the excesses of the Ethiopian regime once in a blue moon and from which it occasionally manifests a tendency to backtrack like the story about diversion of aid money by Martin Plaut, didn’t also handle this story objectively.

BBC, which gave ample coverage to Meles Zenawi’s recent dishonest talk in Nairobi about “humanitarian corridor” to victims of famine in Somalia, didn’t utter a word about two Swedish journalists who were accused of a trumped-up charge of terrorism in Ethiopia on that very day!

Also, they made no mention of Ethiopian critics and dissidents who have been incarcerated in a new wave of a crackdown on the same bogus charges of terrorism among whom are journalists and a prominent actor. Instead, BBC made it sound like Ashine, like “many other Ethiopians, used the interrogation as an excuse to flee.”

Of course, the power of effective lobbying always does wonders, for if Ashine was an Eritrean, his departure might have been portrayed as an exodus. Also, my SMS which drew comparison between Nagenda and Ashine might have been spared suppression.

Mr Kiflu is an Ethiopian human rights defender exiled in Uganda. kiflukam@yahoo.com