VOA says Ethiopia may have blocked their website

The Voice of America (VOA) said yesterday that Ethiopia may have blocked its website in a move which may lead to further US criticism of its closest ally in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia holds national elections on 23 May, and international press freedom advocacy groups say the government is intimidating and harassing journalists ahead of the vote. The government denies that.

“We have received reports that VOA’s website is unavailable inside Ethiopia, and we are investigating the causes,” VOA Director Danforth Austin said in a statement. Government spokesmen were not immediately available to comment.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi this month accused VOA’s radio service in Ethiopia’s dominant Amharic language of broadcastng “destabilising propaganda” and said his government was testing its ability to jam it. Mr Meles compared VOA to Radio Mille Collines, whose broadcasts are blamed by many for sparking the 1994 Rwanda genocide. He said he would order the service jammed if testing succeeded. Residents of the capital, Addis Ababa, told Reuters they had not been able to access the VOA website since early on Sunday. Rights groups accuse Ethiopia of routine Internet censorship.

VOA says listeners in Ethiopia have been unable to hear its Amharic-language broadcasts for more than four weeks. Meles’ comments were sharply criticised by the US State Department. Ethiopia - reliant on foreign aid - is the key US ally in the Horn of Africa. VOA launched satellite broadcasts into Ethiopia a few days after Meles’ remarks and said it was exploring other methods of overcoming the jamming.
(Source: Reuters/Radio Netherlands Media Network Weblog)

Kim Andrew Elliott points out that the number of shortwave frequencies used for the VOA Amharic broadcast at 1800-1900 UTC has been increased to nine: 9620, 11520, 11905, 11925, 11975, 12140, 13835, 13870 and 15730 kHz.

Ethiopian government denies intentional jamming

There are reports that Ethiopian authorities are jamming some international radio broadcasts, a charge the Ethiopian government denies. The stations allegedly affected are the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) and the Voice of America (VOA). The chairperson of the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Network, Hassan Shire Shiek, says the Ethiopian government has created stations to deliberately disrupt the signals of DW and VOA's Amharic and Oromifa programs. Shiek, who is currently in Toronto, Canada, told VOA reporter Douglas Mpuga that the Ethiopian authorities are denying the people what he called their basic right to know what is going on in their country. He says the situation centers on the coverage of the controversial May 2005 elections, the Ogaden crisis and the Ethiopian government's involvement in Somalia.

"The government has been cracking down on democratic forces, including legitimate voices of the Ethiopian people, such as civil society, political leaders and media houses," he said. He added, "To deny the Ethiopian people the right to information, they (the Ethiopian government) have started targeting international broadcasters -- the only source of independent information." Shiek said, "Ethiopian involvement in Somalia is increasingly being questioned following the displacement of close to a million people and the highlight of grave violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in Mogadishu. So the (Ethiopian) government has become jittery."
But the Ethiopian government spokesperson, Zemedkun Tekle, described the allegations as baseless. Zemedkun told VOA that jamming international radio broadcasts is against [Ethiopian] government policy. "Maybe it is technical
problems, but we are not aware that any broadcasts are being jammed. Those are utterly baseless allegations."

Together, VOA's and DW's Amharic language broadcasts reach some 20 million listeners in Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea and hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians in the United States, Europe and other parts of Africa. VOA also
broadcasts to Ethiopia in the Orofima and Tigirinyi languages. (Douglas Mpuga, Washington, DC, Jan 16 at http://www.voanews.com/english/Africa/2008-01-16-voa42.cfm via Gupta)
(Source: DX Window #342 via Anker Petersen,DSWC Int'l)