Addis Neger (newspaper)
Addis Neger (Amharic "New Thing") was an Ethiopian weekly newspaper founded in 2005 and built to a circulation of 30,000, that ceased to exist in December 2009. It was one of the few independent voices in Ethiopia. In 2009 its editor-in-chief Tamerat Negera and other contributors quietly slipped out of the country, fleeing from intimidation towards the United States, half a year before the May 2010 elections in Ethiopia.
Allegedly, criminal charges were being prepared and staff were threatened.
Early December 2009, when all six of its founding editors were safely outside of the country, they announced the closing down of their newspaper. It was the culmination of "months of persecution and harassment" they said in a final statement. They feared that the Ethiopian government was planning a repeat of the crackdown that imprisoned thousands of people after the disputed 2005 election. Military and police officers then killed about 200 opposition protesters, and many journalists and politicians were jailed for the next two years. According to Reporters Without Borders, websites that criticized the government were blocked, and even text messaging on cellphones was restricted.
Tamerat Negera had been an opposition candidate in the 2005 election. The other co-founders of his newspaper were independent journalists who had been victims of the crackdown in the 2005 election [1].
At the moment of the closure of the newspaper, the Ethiopian authorities restricted the foreign funding of human rights and pro-democracy groups ahead of the national elections scheduled for May 2010. The U.S. Embassy issued a statement on December 10 expressing concern that such moves “contribute to a perception that space for independent media in Ethiopia is constrained.” [2] [3].
According to the Ethiopian authorities, the closure of the newspaper would serve to provide evidence for asylum claims in the U.S. and to feed accusations that independent media space in Ethiopia would be constrained [4]