Mesfin Negash

Mesfin Negash (Amharic: መስፍን ነጋሽ) is an Ethiopian journalist, political commentator for Addis Neger and columnist for Sampsonia Way Magazine.

The paper faced intimidation and harassment under Ethiopia's anti-terrorism law, which criminalizes any reporting that directly or indirectly “encourages” or provides “moral support” to “terrorist groups.”[3] In August 2008 an Ethiopian judge sentenced Mesfin Negash to a suspended one month imprisonment for a news report that appeared in the July 26 issue on the trial of iconic musician Teddy Afro.

[4] In 2010 the staffers at Addis Neger shut down the newspaper and Negash fled Ethiopia, leaving his mother and wife behind.

In June 2012, Negash was found guilty of supporting terrorism along with 23 other defendants by an Ethiopian court and sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison.

[6] In a column for Sampsonia Way Magazine Negash commented on the conviction that “the sentences carry no practical consequences for the professional freedom of those ‘convicted’ living in exile” and that “anyone, Ethiopian or not, who supports the democratic hope of the nation in any manner is considered an enemy of the state, or a ‘terrorist.’”[7] Since May 2012 Negash has served as a columnist for the City of Asylum/Pittsburgh’s Sampsonia Way Magazine where he “shares Ethiopian views on pertinent issues related to journalism, culture, and, of course, the overarching subject of politics."