(LOS ANGELES TIMES) — Reeyot Alemu missed an important dinner engagement in Beverly Hills. But she had a good excuse.
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| Reeyot Alemu |
The 31-year-old journalist is jailed in the notoriously brutal,
rodent-infested Kaliti prison in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.
She’s two years into a five-year sentence for daring to write about
poverty, opposition politics and gender equality.
The
dinner she missed Monday was the annual awards ceremony, at the Beverly
Hills Hotel, for the International Women’s Media Foundation, which
celebrates courageous women journalists.
This year’s honorees included Alemu, whose detention will be reviewed
next week by Ethiopia’s highest court, organizers said. There’s only
modest reason to be hopeful, although the attention of the award could
put pressure on the regime.
Even from prison, Alemu declined to be silent.
“Shooting the people who march through the streets demanding freedom
and democracy; jailing the opposition party leaders and journalists…
preventing freedom of speech, association and the press; corruption and
domination of one tribe are some of the bad doings of our government,”
she wrote in accepting one of three courage awards.
“I know that I would pay the price for my courage and I was ready to accept that price,” she wrote.
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