OPride.com| Oromsis - Oromo News, Ethiopian News, Oromia News, Oromo Music, Oromo Videos

By Oromsis Adula*

EthioMedia reports that Jason McClure, a correspondent for Bloomberg News, was detained and eventually ordered to leave "the country within 48 hours".The unconfirmed report cites a prominent opposition figure who noted that the journalist was first detained in Mekelle after traveling to investigate public complaints about government abuses of food aid.

If confirmed the move, intended to intimidate foreign journalists, is a grim tale of things to come as yet another sham election looms. The authoritarian regime in Addis Ababa is turning its face to the few and daring foreign correspondents having muzzled out independent press in the country.

McClure has been fore front in reporting on hot button issues that involve corruption and deception of the Tigrean oligarchic elites. In the past year alone, he has offered daring reports among other things on human rights violations, the growing repression and the consolidation of country's economy under ruling party’s conglomerates --- he has also called Ethiopia, "Washington’s unreliable ally".

In a most recent article titled Ethiopian Farms Lure Investor Funds as Workers Live in Poverty, McClure wrote about unfair work conditions and the government’s auctioning of virgin lands to foreign investors as millions of Ethiopians languish in poverty.

Read the full report at EthioMedia.com.