A French journalist, Antoine Galindo, has been imprisoned in Ethiopia since his arrest on February 22, with authorities accusing him of
“conspiring to create chaos”
in the country, his employer, the specialist publication Africa Intelligence, announced on Monday.
Antoine Galindo was brought before a judge on Saturday who extended his detention until March 1, according to Africa Intelligence.
The publication denounces
“false accusations”
which
“are not based on any tangible element”
and calls for the
“immediate release”
of its journalist.
Asked by AFP about this arrest, the Ethiopian authorities did not immediately respond.
Antoine Galindo, 36, head of the East Africa section, arrived in Ethiopia on February 13 to cover the African Union (AU) Summit in Addis Ababa, headquarters of the pan-African organization.
“Serious attack on press freedom”
“Antoine Galindo, a journalist known to the Ethiopian Media Authority (EMA)”
, the media supervisory body in Ethiopia,
“had a visa authorizing him to carry out his journalistic activity”
, underlines Africa Intelligence which criticizes a
“unjustified arrest”
constituting
“a serious attack on freedom of the press”
.
Antoine Galindo resided in Ethiopia between 2013 and 2017, four years during which he was the correspondent for several international media.
The second most populous country in Africa (120 million inhabitants) and a mosaic of some 80 ethnolinguistic communities, Ethiopia is undermined by several local conflicts, particularly in the two most populous regional states, Oromia and Amhara. .
After having greatly improved when the current Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018, the situation of press freedom has once again profoundly deteriorated in Ethiopia since 2022 and the start of the war in regional state of Tigray.