Bloggers Behind Bars: Ethiopia’s Zone9ers and Threats to Online Speech Across the Globe · Global Voices
“We want more openness, more transparency,” Ethiopian writer <PERSON> told me in a phone interview. “People deserve choice; people deserve access to the world’s knowledge.” For expressing views like these online, his friends were scheduled to go on trial for terrorism in early August—though the trial was later adjourned to October 15. It briefly reconvened last week then adjourned again until early November.
In July, <PERSON> wrote a detailed post here on Global Voices describing the origins of the Zone 9 bloggers collective, and why they chose that name, and the implications of their case in Ethiopia. In a nutshell, two years ago <PERSON> (as his friends and colleagues like to call him) got together with several like-minded young Ethiopian writers and journalists to launch a hard-hitting blog called “Zone9.” The blog’s name derives from Addis Ababa’s infamous Kaliti prison, divided into eight zones with political prisoners confined to Zone Eight. They chose the name Zone9 intending to suggest that the entire nation was becoming a virtual prison—effectively a ninth zone. “All of Ethiopia is part of it,” explains Endalk. In 2011, one inmate, journalist <PERSON>, was arrested for the seventh time after writing a column, which ironically criticized the Ethiopian government’s habit of arresting journalists on terrorism charges.
Such edginess was too much for their government to take. Six of the Zone9 bloggers were arrested this past April. Three months later, they were formally charged with terrorism and “related activities.” <PERSON>, pursuing a graduate degree in Portland, Oregon when the arrests took place, is now their informal spokesperson, blogging and tweeting the latest developments. The group’s alleged crimes include attending trainings by international technical experts on how to use software tools to shield themselves from electronic surveillance. They are also accused of clandestinely organizing themselves into a blogger collective—a bizarre accusation given that Zone9 is a public website.
For the past two years, Endalk and four other Zone9 members also ran the Amharic edition of Global Voices Online. The group translated to Amharic (the dominant local language in Ethiopia) Global Voices posts written by contributors from around the world—particularly those related to activism, freedom of expression, and censorship— of strong relevance to an Ethiopian audience whose state-controlled media is heavily censored.
Bars around the world
The Zone9 bloggers are not the only Global Voices contributors who recently found themselves behind bars, as governments in a growing list of nations have recognized that modern-day connectivity can prove a lethal challenge to their legitimacy and very existence.
<PERSON>, a Syrian-Palestinian computer engineer and open Internet advocate, has been imprisoned in Damascus since March 2012. <PERSON>, an Egyptian activist and blogger arrested in November 2013 for violating Egypt’s new Protest Law, was dealt a 15-year jail sentence along with 25 other activists this past June. 960
He is currently free on bail, but already facing new legal challenges allegedly due to his behavior while in prison. Tajik author <PERSON>—a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto—was arrested while carrying out academic research in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of Tajikstan. Eventually he was accused of espionage. While he has since been released and allowed to return to Canada, he has yet to be cleared of the charges.
The idea for the Global Voices network came out of a 2004 meeting of bloggers from around the world. It was a time of heady optimism, when bloggers seemed poised to break down barriers and help create a better world. We created a website with the tagline “The world is talking. Are you listening?” As our manifesto put it:
“Thanks to new tools, speech need no longer be controlled by those who own the means of publishing and distribution, or by governments that would restrict thought and communication. Now, anyone can wield the power of the press. Everyone can tell their stories to the world.”
We recruited editors and volunteers from across the globe who helped to curate, translate, and contextualize what bloggers were saying about their countries and regions—what they were observing in their communities, and how people around them were reacting to world events. Eventually, the site came to be translated back and forth in over two dozen languages, mainly by volunteers like the Zone9ers.
Digital connectivity can indeed be revolutionary. In the 21st century, networked technologies are a necessary condition for social and political change. But over the past decade we’ve learned they are insufficient on their own to prevent widespread and systematic human rights violations–let alone bring about a more democratic and just world. 148