Amare Aregawi () is an Ethiopian journalist and the founder of Media & Communications Center, which publishes The Reporter (Ethiopia), an

Amharic Amharic is an Ethio-Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amhara people, and also serves as a lingua franca for all other metropolitan populati ...

and English newspaper headquartered in

Addis Ababa Addis Ababa (; ,) is the capital city of Ethiopia, as well as the regional state of Oromia. With an estimated population of 2,739,551 inhabitants as of the 2007 census, it is the largest city in the country and the List of cities in Africa b ...

, Ethiopia. He is the editor-in-chief of the bilingual newspaper and co-owner of the Ethiopian TV network ARTS TV.

Journalism career

Aregawi was previously in charge of Ethiopia's only public television network, EBC (formerly ETV) following the fall of the

Derg The Derg or Dergue (, ), officially the Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC), was the military junta that ruled Ethiopia, including present-day Eritrea, from 1974 to 1987, when they formally "Civil government, civilianized" the ...

dictatorship in 1991. In 2008 he was arrested in connection with an article about labor practices that criticized Dashen Brewery, a local beer brand. The brewery filed a defamation suit against the newspaper which led to the arrest of Aregawi on 22 August 2008. He was released shortly thereafter on bail.

Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders (RWB; ; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organisation, non-governmental organization headquartered in Paris, which focuses on safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its a ...

condemned the arrest and issued a statement saying ''"Amare's unjustified arrest exposes the unfairness of legislation that allows journalists to be imprisoned for defamation"''. Shortly after his arrest, and following a series of editorials criticizing the business community, Aregawi was assaulted and left unconscious following a parent-teacher meeting at his son's school. The

International Press Institute International Press Institute (IPI) is a global organisation dedicated to the promotion and protection of press freedom and the improvement of journalism practices. The institution was founded by 34 editors from 15 countries at Columbia Universit ...

connected the attack to his reporting and called on the government to ''"do everything in their power to ensure that Ethiopian journalists are free to carry out their profession without fear of attack".''

References

Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Ethiopian journalists {{Ethiopia-bio-stub