Argaw Ashine has served as a journalist
for 18 years at different media organizations inside Ethiopia,
including governmental, private and foreign media outlets. He was also
in charge of various journalism unions in the country.
Ashine was one of the people whose names were listed in a Wikileaks
report as a main source for the now defunct Addis-Neger Amharic
newspaper. He left Ethiopia on September 2011 after the Ethiopian
Federal Police gave him the ultimatum of either revealing his government
sources or fleeing the country. He now resides in the U.S. and works as
a researcher in media related issues. He also volunteers as the
editor-in-chief for Wazema Radio – a dissident podcast he established
together with other exiled Ethiopian journalists from Sweden and North
America.iREFUGEE talked to Ashine in an exclusive interview about his work at Wazema Radio — which marked its first anniversary this past June — and also discussed the release of jailed Ethiopian writers and other matters related to the Ethiopian media.
How and by whom was Wazema Radio established?
ASHINE: Wazema Radio was launched in June 2014 by four exiled journalists, namely the trio of the
