armed men broke into the residence Lucy Kassa rents in Addis Ababa
The current aid reporter in Ethiopia was attacked and beaten down in his own home on Monday morning. Three armed men broke into the residence Lucy Kassa rents in the capital Addis Ababa.
The attackers took her PC with them and threatened to kill her if she continued to write about the situation in the war-torn Tigray region.
By Gunnar Zachrisen
They came today while I was at home. Three unknown men knocked on my door, and when I opened they came in and beat me down, Kassa says in an e-mail that was sent a few minutes after the dramatic incident.
Lucy Kassa has been Bistandsaktuellt’s correspondent in the country for two years, and has written a number of articles on the political development in the time before and after the Peace Prize to the country’s Prime Minister Abyi Ahmed.
From individuals in the Ethiopian exile community in Norway, she has occasionally received criticism both for being too critical of the government and too critical of the “old regime” which was dominated by people from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.
Prime Minister Abyi Ahmed’s government and the TPLF are today the two opposites of the Tigray Civil War. It was government forces and TPLF forces that went to war against each other in November last year, after several months of hateful outbursts and growing tension.
Since then, there have been a number of reports that Ethiopian government forces have received extensive assistance from military forces from neighbouring Eritrea. However, spokesmen for the Ethiopian government have refused to give any official confirmation that the former enemy Eritrea is now an ally of the Ethiopian government forces.
Armed, but in civilian clothes
The 29-year-old journalist, who is originally from the Tigray region, says that the attackers came in civilian clothes, but were armed. They did not present themselves and did not show any kind of identification.
– They searched the home without having any search order. They threatened to kill me for writing bad stories about Tigray, says Kassa who is unmarried and lives alone.
She says the attackers spoke the local Amharic language. They questioned her about her relationship with the “TPLF junta” and criticized her for spreading lies. – I told them I had nothing to do with TPLF, but they continued to harass me because of my ethnic background. I do not know what they were looking for, but they made a lot of mess in the house. Before they left, they warned me: “Next time we will take you harder.”
Kassa has previously explained that in the shadow of the civil war in Tigray, there is a hateful and tense atmosphere in the Ethiopian capital and that it is especially aimed at people with a Tigray background.
She says she is too scared to inform the police or talk to a lawyer about the attack on her. On the other hand, she believes that international press coverage can be her best life insurance in the current situation, so that those behind it do not dare to attack her again.
Obtained material on controversial topic
Kassa, who has a law degree, started her journalistic career working for an English-language magazine six years ago. Since then, she has worked for several international media, including Al Jazeera, and she has worked on documentaries.
For the past couple of weeks, she has been working on gathering information for an article about the situation in Tigray for the American newspaper Los Angeles Times. She sent the article on Saturday, but was in the process of further investigations into the case.
– Pictures I had obtained were from the villages of Fiya K’eshi, Sebya, Kerestber and other small villages on the outskirts of the town of Adigrat, on the way to Zalambessa. There are many Eritrean soldiers there. They live in old, abandoned camps. Others have taken over schools and houses belonging to local farmers. It is in these villages where women are abducted and subjected to gang rape.
The article for the Los Angeles Times mentioned an incident in which a local village woman had been detained for a couple of weeks and repeatedly raped by several Eritrean soldiers. Other women in local villages have also been abducted, according to Kassa.
– I also planned to go to Tigray to investigate allegations of hunger and find out even more about the Eritreans’ behaviour in the area, the young journalist says.
Tronvoll: – Very worrying
One of the world’s leading experts on Ethiopia, Professor Kjetil Tronvoll, is seriously concerned about the freedom of the press in the country.
– When Abiy Ahmed took over in 2018, he was praised for releasing all journalists who were imprisoned and opened up for freedom of expression and the press. Already in 2019, a more restrictive line was seen against freedom of expression when new criticism was leveled against the Prime Minister. But especially since the summer of 2020 and the unrest in the Oromia region, and not least since the war against Tigray started in November, freedom of the press and expression has been severely restricted. Several journalists have now been arrested again in the country, Tronvoll says.
He himself knows many Ethiopian journalists and editors who admit that they exercise a high degree of self-censorship, in order to avoid getting into trouble or being arrested.
– It is not possible to talk about positive liberal “reforms” in Ethiopia, as many did when the Peace Prize was announced. They no longer exist, says Tronvoll.
The Norwegian professor is himself incited by Ethiopian authorities and has on several occasions been threatened with death by Ethiopians in exile. The heat has increased since the war in Tigray started in November last year.
The head of the Ethiopian intelligence service INSA, Shumete Gizaw, accused Tronvoll, among others, of being paid by TPLF to spread misinformation about the war in the Tigray region, writes NTB today.
The accusations, which Tronvoll firmly rejects, were disseminated by Ethiopia’s state news agency ENA and were quickly picked up by Ethiopians in exile, also in Norway. It triggered a flood of threats, including death threats, according to the Ethiopian researcher.
Tronvoll is a professor of peace and conflict studies at Bjørknes University College in Oslo and has been researching Ethiopia and Eritrea since the early 1990s.
This is what it looked like after the three perpetrators had searched every closet and piece of furniture in the journalist Lucy Kassa’s apartment. They took with them a PC and pictures she was to use in her journalistic work.
Ethiopia Autonomous Media
