Ethiopia

Wikileaks just published the following statement:

"Recent statement by the New York based CPJ is misleading.

The Ethiopian journalist, Argaw Ashine, mentioned by the CPJ in its press release today, is not detailed by WikiLeaks cables as a US embassy informant. No journalistic source is named or identified in the cable. Rather, Mr. Ashine is mentioned, in passing, in relation to events in 2005 and 2006. Neither was Mr. Ashine named by the CPJ in a list of journalistic related redactions processed by us. While, it is outrageous for a journalist to feel the need to leave their country for a period, neither is it good for the CPJ to distort the facts for marketing purposes. Extraordinarily, the CPJ reserves more words for WikiLeaks, who has no influence on the situation, than it does for the Ethiopian government, or its military and intelligence backer, Washington.

The Guardian newspaper disclosed the Cablegate decryption password, and nearly a year of careful redactions, in a violation of our Memorandum of Understanding. The Guardian editor responsible has stated (to the Economist), that he "regrets" the error. Such issues are part and parcel of working with the mainstream press, which must be able to decrypt our material in order to read it. Understandably, we are reconsidering how we deal with such institutions, if at all.

In the last two weeks WikiLeaks has released details on the slayings of several journalists by U.S. forces. The CPJ has covered none of the new detail on these killings, or the dozens of other attacks on the press we have recently exposed in the last month. Nor has it spoken about the hundred raids or arrests on our supporters, or the unprecedented extrajudicial economic warfare levied against us. We hope that this is an oversight and not a reflection of CPJ's U.S. centric funding arrangements.

The broader issues are detailed in New Scientist: