Reeyot Alemu is an Ethiopian journalist who served a 5-year prison sentence following an unfair trial in which anti-terrorism laws were used to silence her writing.
[1] In 2010, she founded her own publishing house and became the editor in chief of her own monthly magazine called Change, both of which were closed.
In June 2011, she was arrested by Ethiopian authorities on charges of terrorism, for which she was convicted and sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment and a fine of 33,000 birrs (US$1,850).
[4] In August 2012, an appeals court subsequently reduced the 14-year prison sentence to 5 years and dropped most of the terrorism charges against her.
[6] In 2012, the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) bestowed a Courage in Journalism Award on her in absentia for her “refusal to self-censor in a place where that practice is standard, and her unwillingness to apologize for truth-telling, even though contrition could win her freedom.”[4] She has also won Hellman/Hammett press freedom prize.