Eritrean journalist Paulos Kidane died last month in an attempt to cross the border into Sudan, according to Reporters Without Borders. Paulos, a reporter on the state-owned Eri-TV and radio Dimtsi Hafash, was one of nine journalists arrested in November 2006 in a state crackdown.
Reporters Without Borders said in a statement issued Friday that Paulos set off in a group of Eritreans on his journey toward the Sudan border in early June. He became exhausted after many days of walking, and he had to stop a few kilometers short of the border.
The group traveled on without him, and there was no news for many weeks until the Eritrean Information Ministry told Paulos's family and state employees of his “accidental death” at the end of June.
The nine journalists arrested last year allegedly maintained contact with journalists who had defected from the state-owned media. The nine were held in an underground prison, Paulos told Reporters Without Borders in an earlier statement.
“We were beaten and tortured in prison for refusing to give the passwords to our e-mail accounts. In the end we cracked because the pain was too much,” he said.
When they were released, the journalists’ phones were tapped, and they were barred from leaving Asmara, the capital, Paulos said.
Paulos was a sports writer at two private weeklies before the Eritrean government banned privately-owned media in September 2001.
In May, Reporters Without Borders asked the European Union to impose sanctions on Eritrean President Isayas Afeworki for his government’s “terror” against journalists. This came after the the European Commission stated it was “very, very honored” by a visit from Isayas earlier that month.
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Earlier this month, state television journalist Fathia Khaled, one of nine detained in the November 2006 crackdown, was detained again for allegedly being in contact with the group attempting to cross the Sudan border.
In its 2007 annual report on Freedom of the Press Worldwide, Reporters Without Borders claimed that at least three of the 13 journalists imprisoned since 2001 had died in an army-run prison in the desert from “conditions reminiscent of a penal colony.”
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