Human Security Centre Human Rights and International Security Research
By Sam Biden, Junior Fellow
9 October, 2026
On 1 August 2026, unidentified security personnel detained Yonas Kedir, editor-in-chief of the independent outlet Addis Standard, holding him for 24 hours over the publication’s reporting before releasing him without charge. The following day, security and intelligence officials raided the outlet’s offices, damaging equipment and confiscating hardware in the process. For Addis Standard, this was not a first encounter with the state. Four months earlier, plainclothes men had seized managing editor Million Beyene and held him incommunicado for nearly two weeks, releasing him without ever publicly explaining the grounds for his detention. In February, the government’s media regulator, the Ethiopian Media Authority (EMA), revoked the outlet’s operating licence entirely, citing alleged repeated violations of media law, a decision Addis Standard is now contesting in court.
The EMA has separately issued “final written warnings” to independent broadcasters Arts TV and Ahadu FM on 31 July, threatening suspension or revocation of their licences should further violations occur, while the vague, shifting grounds cited across these cases, national security, national interest, bias, suggest a regulatory apparatus being used less to enforce standards than to manufacture pretexts for closure. Concerns that the government would exploit the June elections to further restrict independent media have, therefore, proven well-founded, with repression only intensifying.
The new surge in arrests
The current climate builds directly on a documented surge in arrests that Human Rights Watch (HRW) first flagged in September 2025. On 3 September that year, federal police and plainclothes security officers arrested three employees of the private radio station Sheger FM 102.1, Tigist Zerihun, Mintamir Tsegaw and Eshete Assefa, days after the station aired a report on Ethiopian healthcare workers. Eshete was released the same day, while Tigist and Mintamir remained detained. Despite being granted bail on 17 September, neither is known to have been released, with police instead appealing the decision to the Federal Supreme Court.
Other cases from the same period point to enforced disappearances rather than formal arrest. On 13 August 2025, masked gunmen, some reportedly in military uniform, abducted Yonas Amare, a senior editor at the privately owned newspaper The Reporter, from his home outside Addis Ababa, confiscating residents’ phones and ordering them indoors before taking him away. Both the Addis Ababa Police Commission and the Federal Police Commission denied holding him, leaving his whereabouts unknown for nine days until his release on 22 August.
Similar incidents followed in quick succession. On 5 August, regional police in Ethiopia’s Somali region detained Khadar Mohamed Ismail, a reporter for the government-owned Somali Regional Television, after he published footage of residents criticising the regional government. Brought before a court on 9 August, he remained in custody more than a month later without charge. Overall, at least six media professionals were arbitrarily detained across a single month, several held incommunicado or without charge.
Legislative basis for the new crackdowns
Much of this activity follows from legislative changes enacted since 2008/09, being used in tandem to prosecute free speech. The Freedom of the Mass Media and Access to Information Proclamation No. 590/2008 (No. 590), first gave the government the tools to prosecute journalists for defamation or false accusations against constitutionally mandated legislative, executive and judicial authorities, notably even in cases where the official concerned had not personally lodged a complaint. Alongside this, the law imposed significant financial penalties for defamation, a mechanism that functioned less as a deterrent to genuine falsehood than as sustained financial pressure on independent publications simply for reporting critically. The same proclamation handed authorities sweeping powers over registration, licensing and permits, powers HRW found were routinely used to obstruct government-critical outlets rather than to enforce genuine standards.
The Anti-Terrorism Proclamation No. 652/2009 (No. 652) compounded this legal architecture considerably. No. 652 criminalized the writing, editing, printing, publishing or dissemination of statements deemed to encourage, support or advance terrorist acts, carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment. Crucially, the law’s definitions of “terrorist acts” and “terrorist organisations” were left broad enough that, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), ordinary reporting on groups the government had designated as terrorist risked being criminalised outright, regardless of its actual content or intent. Journalists told CPJ they received direct calls and warnings from officials and government supporters instructing them to censor coverage of No. 652 itself, a self-referential form of suppression that sought to prevent scrutiny of the very law enabling it.
International Media Support reports
The International Media Support (IMS), an organisation dedicated to supporting journalists and advocating for their protections in oppressive settings, published reports on media in Ethiopia in 2024 and 2025, characterising the state of freedom of expression as “in crisis.” IMS attributed the developing scrutiny of journalists to security concerns, compounded by government pressure, enacted by the threat of arrest and expulsion.
The consequences were most notable in conflict-affected regions such as Amhara and Oromia, where disinformation and propaganda have flourished alongside kidnappings, newsroom raids and equipment confiscation, producing a climate of fear that reaches from the regional level up to the federal government. This suppressive reach was not confined to traditional media either. On 11 December 2025, the government detained several TikTok creators, framing the arrests as necessary to “protect cultural values and young audiences.” One of those detained, reporter Eyob Shimelis, had in fact been covering corruption, undermining the government’s stated justification. Speaking at the launch of the Digital Ethiopia 2030 Strategy on 21 December, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed defended the arrests on the grounds that the creators needed to be “rebuked and advised” for failing to respect local culture, a framing that recast professional and creative expression alike as something requiring state correction.
Ethiopia’s position in Reporters Without Borders (RSF) global ranking reflects the cumulative weight of these developments. Of 180 countries assessed, more than 60 percent recorded a decline in press freedom, with conditions rated “difficult” or “very serious” in over half the world. Ethiopia itself slid from “difficult” into the “very serious” category, ranking 145th overall, a fall RSF attributed to rising inter-ethnic conflict, propaganda from both authorities and insurgents, arbitrary arrests under vague anti-terrorism and hate speech provisions, and widespread self-censorship driven by economic precarity as much as fear. Fourteen diplomatic missions in Ethiopia formally raised concerns over this deterioration, while the opposition Ezema party pointed to the intimidation of journalists as clear evidence of democratic backsliding, a marked reversal from the reformist optimism that had characterised Abiy Ahmed’s early premiership.
- Detention, violence, and suppression
The human toll of this suppressive environment during 2024 was considerable, with IMS’s 2024 assessment recording 43 journalists being arrested, imprisoned or kidnapped. There are notable cases of abductions and violence, such as that of Bizuayehu Birhanu, a senior cameraperson with the state-run Ethiopian News Agency (ENA), who was killed in June while on duty, allegedly in connection with a military helicopter incident in Amhara’s West Dembiya area. The state broadcaster offered only that he had died after receiving treatment for an injury sustained on the job, while CPJ’s own reporting specified that he died in a helicopter crash near Debresina Monastery, a discrepancy that, however, was never publicly resolved.
Abduction proved to be a recurring hazard for journalists working outside the capital. Tigrai TV journalist Tesfazgi Asbey, cameraperson Isayas Beyene and driver Ataklti Nigus were abducted while investigating illegal gold mining and smuggling, having spent three days interviewing residents about deaths allegedly linked to chemical exposure at the mining sites. The regional Afar Peace and Security Bureau (PSB) claimed it had not been informed of the trip and that the crew had been detained for failing to produce identification, yet Tesfazgi’s own account directly contradicted this, stating that their abductors never actually asked to see identification at all. Similarly, a Tigray Broadcasting Service (TBS) crew was arrested in Axum while interviewing residents about local grievances, with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) subsequently accusing the crew of working to incite unrest, despite offering no evidence beyond the absence of formal assignment letters. The chilling effect was made explicit weeks later, when senior TPLF official Fetlewroq Gebreagziabher declared in a party meeting that “we will shut down the media called TBS,” warning that “even the military has made its decision,” a statement that leaves little ambiguity about the political motivation behind the earlier arrests.
- Enforced disappearances
Enforced disappearance was already a documented pattern in 2024. A journalist from Amhara Media vanished in the North Showa zone in November of that year with no word since, his family suspecting a ransom motive that was never followed up with contact from the abductors. A Benishangul Gumuz TV cameraperson was abducted in January after armed groups stopped the public bus he was travelling on with his wife, singling him out specifically; nearly a year on, no active search for him had been mounted. A third case, involving a senior journalist taken from his home in August 2024, resolved only partially: a video circulated by insurgents in November allowed his family to confirm he was alive, though whether his appearance in that footage was voluntary or coerced was never established, and he remained in captivity until the end of December.
- Psychological impact
The psychological toll documented in 2024 was, unsurprisingly, substantial, if under-resourced. Two journalists sought mental health treatment that year with support from colleagues and family, though the assessment could not draw a direct causal link between their work and the specific health threats they faced. Journalists in Tigray, still processing the aftermath of the region’s war two years on, described intrusive memories tied to specific places and dates, alongside ongoing anger even after the formal peace deal; media outlets there acknowledged the importance of psychological support but lacked the resources to provide it. In Amhara, meanwhile, one regional journalist described restricting his own movement to a strict commute between home and office, having not visited family elsewhere in the region for over a year out of fear that travel could expose them to attack.
- Administrative measures
Administrative pressure, rather than physical force, was the dominant tool used against outlets throughout 2024. The EMA issued warning letters to Asham TV and Abbay TV, with a final warning to Asham on 19 October citing repeated disinformation that “undermines the mutual coexistence of the people,” a claim Asham disputed as unfounded and inconsistently monitored. Abbay TV’s warning, by contrast, concerned an entertainment broadcast accused of normalising “rape culture,” and was, notably, welcomed by journalists and women’s rights advocates alike, illustrating that the EMA’s interventions were not uniformly regarded as illegitimate. In September 2024, Addis Ababa’s mayoral office and its PSB warned media leaders against negative coverage of the city’s corridor development project and the Amhara conflict, while in April, journalists filming the demolition of Piassa, a historic Addis Ababa neighbourhood, were forced by security forces to delete their material. In both cases, the broad and elastic term “national interest” did the work of shielding politically sensitive projects, often those closely tied to the prime minister’s own circle, from scrutiny that would otherwise be considered ordinary journalism.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the struggle for Ethiopia’s free press is not merely a legal battle fought in courtrooms or a daily defensive action against arbitrary raids and arrests. When journalism is treated as a threat rather than a public good, the state does not just silence its critics but also sacrifices long-term stability for short-term control. The continued recession of progress will only cease when leadership recognizes that a resilient democracy requires the friction of independent scrutiny beyond the margin of appreciation they’re willing to afford their citizens.
