539 days.
Imprisoned.
Tortured.
Blacklisted.
Denounced.
Abel Wabella had said something that you weren’t allowed to say.
We live in an age of cowboy journalism.
The media today is so much different than when I was a kid.
You can talk back now.
Nobody needs permission.
You can take pot shots at politicians while they’re still talking.
You can publicly mock advertisers while they’re advertising.
You don’t need airtime.
You don’t even need that much money.
The internet has changed absolutely everything.
But one thing it hasn’t changed is what happens when you start saying those words to an audience.
Screaming into the void is one thing, but screaming to a crowd?
That’s bound to get noticed.
And not everybody who notices you is going to like what you have to say.
The rise of the independent storyteller has not come without a cost.
Because the thing about striking it out on your own is that once that ax starts to fall for real,
the word independent starts to sound a lot like alone.
When I asked an Ethiopian friend to tell me about some of his personal heroes,
before I’d even finished the sentence he was telling me about Abel Wabella.
They’d gone to university together, and since they’d graduated
Abel had spent much of his time in a maximum security prison, held on charges of terrorism against the state.
But Abel was not a terrorist.
He was a normal guy, living a relatively normal life.
He’d graduated from university as an engineer, and had gone to work for Ethiopian Airlines,
one of the country’s most important companies.
But at home, Abel dreamed of a better country, and like so many people around the world,
he took to the internet to share his views.
Together with eight like-minded people, he created what would soon become known as the Zone9 blogs.
They named it after one of the country’s most infamous prisons.
Because in their eyes, the nation itself had become a prison, and they were its prisoners.
It wouldn’t be long before they learned what that really meant.
In two thousand twelve, the government has passed many restrictive laws.
Because of that most of the media outlets were closed.
Many journalists were in prison and some of them were in exile.
So everyone was staying away from the media.
So social media became the main platform to discuss things [that matter].
Then we started to get together and then once we have decided to start blogging together to amplify our voice.
I have been following the political and other aspects of the country,
so people who were in the media were not speaking what is really necessary for the society I belong.
So I started to say the unsaid words.
It was my obligation to speak up.
Because I’m a citizen.
People are deciding on the fate of the nation.
It is affecting me and people who I care much [about].
[Evan:] You must have known it was dangerous if the media was being shut down.
[Evan:] Did you feel the danger?
The first time after we meet together, we went to a prison called Kaliti to visit political prisoners at the time.
And I was shaking when I passed the door.
Then, I was sure about the danger.
At the time, speaking about political things were a taboo.
And everyone was unhappy, including my family, people who work with me, my friends were against my activity.
They agree with what I’m talking [about], but
They want to protect me from the danger [coming] from people in power.
I’m telling them, that it’s me.
These are my values, so I have to live for that.
After we ran a campaign on the freedom of assembly and the freedom to have a peaceful demonstration,
I felt that we are targeted.
It was a feeling but there are many people who inform us about the situation that we are targeted.
The government started to follow us.
On April 25th, 2014, Abel and the other Zone9 bloggers were arrested and hauled off to prison.
It’s hard to say if the government truly believed that they were the terrorists they’d accused them of being,
but their response was the same either way.
Over the course of nearly two years they worked over their captives in the hopes of convincing them
to admit to crimes they hadn’t committed, and for nearly two years those bloggers held out.
These weren’t military captives relying on their training to get them through the pain.
These were just ordinary people, committed to their belief in a better nation.
Abel Wabella was no journalist.
He was just a man expressing himself on the internet.
No different than you or me.
I’m sorry to have to make you relive the past.
Can you describe what happened when the government decided to shut you down?
One ordinary day, while I was working in my office in Ethiopian Airlines, they came.
First they take me to my home, for search.
They’ve been expecting some kind of explosive materials or a pamphlet for inciting violence.
But they didn’t find anything.
And they take me to Ma’ekelawi.
Which is a very infamous torture chamber in Ethiopia.
I’ve been tortured physically and psychologically.
It’s very difficult to tell someone who didn’t pass through that process.
It’s very difficult.
You are handcuffed and someone will come and hit you for no reason.
You’ll lose all your pride as a human.
Why did they torture you, what was their goal?
It was my confusion.
I was asking the interrogators why the government is afraid of ideas.
But it made them to be more angry at me.
And they were asking what is your aim of inciting public discourse in social media?
All I do is spreading good ideas for the people to discuss.
Did they torture you because they wanted you to change your mind or did they truly believe you were a terrorist?
In Ethiopia there are two categories.
Some people who are having relations with outlawed organizations, which are political organizations.
They’re armed against the authoritarian government.
Maybe morally they were right, but according to the law of the land, they’re terrorists.
But in our case, they need to silence us, it’s clear they know
that we don’t have any relation with this organization.
They want to break us.
But they didn’t succeed.
Why didn’t they succeed?
What stopped them from breaking you?
I was adamant not to cooperate with them.
I remember one day when I returned to my cell.
My back was beaten and there was blood.
And people were massaging me to minimize the pain.
And I was beaten on my left ear.
My left ear is not currently working.
At the time I was very tough.
More than this.
Because I was very humble.
I was just a normal citizen.
I was totally peaceful person, but they didn’t allow me to be a good person.
I didn’t have any other option than fighting against them.
I didn’t commit anything against the people or the government.
I think that you’re one of the most courageous people I’ve ever met, honestly.
It’s an incredible thing to do.
Has it changed you as a person what they did to you?
Yes.
Totally different person.
Before person Abel and after prison are totally different.
Before prison, I cared about society, I cared about democracy.
It’s not solid as I am right now.
If those people [don’t] believe in freedom of expression, democracy.
It is a good thing you have to pursue at any cost.
There is no any other option.
It is [the best] way to think.
Humanity has created its history of civilization.
Isn’t that the exact opposite of what they wanted to happen?
Yes, exactly.
I’m totally happy about what I’ve done.
Because I’ve contributed something to my freedom and the people who I care for.
Why were you released?
Our case was very difficult for the government to handle it.
It created so much diplomatic pressure.
All the diplomatic community were in the court room following our trial.
So it was very difficult for them to sentence us.
It took more than one year to reach the final verdict.
2018 was the first year in nearly twenty years that Ethiopia had no journalists in prison.
The new government has been, at least for now, outwardly supportive of a free press.
But as the world’s leading democracy's taken a hostile stance against their own freedoms,
so too have other authoritarian governments.
At least two hundred and fifty journalists are currently in jail somewhere around the globe.
That’s among the highest numbers ever recorded.
Many of them will be tortured.
Some will undoubtedly die.
Last year alone eighty journalists were murdered in cold blood.
In October of 2018, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia had Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist,
murdered on Turkish soil.
A multi-dimensional slap to the face of press freedom, international security,
and the search for an objective truth.
Yet even after it became clear that they’d hacked him apart, awake, with a bonesaw,
America’s president took their side.
That doesn’t go unnoticed.
For those of you who believe in freedom, the freedom of the press has to be foundational.
The truth should set you free.
Not bury you.
Abel Wabella spent 539 days in prison.
They tortured him.
They called him a terrorist.
They blacklisted him from the one job he’d always wanted to have.
And yet he’s standing here picking up the pieces and rebuilding everything better than it was before.
Because for all the beatings he’d endured, he is not a beaten man.
He is the common man.
And the common man cannot be kept down for long.
Never trust a leader who tells you that the press is the enemy of the people.
All that means is that the press is the enemy of them.
The press is the voice of the people.
They are far from perfect, but so are we.
The media landscape is changing.
Every day it becomes more true that when we lock up the press, we are imprisoning ourselves.
When Abel Wabella was shackled for speaking his mind, the BBC didn’t come muscling in.
The Associated Press sent no lawyers.
No vigils were lit in New York’s streets.
He was alone.
And yet, in spite of everything, the moment they released him he was right back behind the keyboard,
showing the world the truth as he saw it.
The internet has changed everything.
You don’t need permission anymore.
All you need is an audience.
For the first time in civilized history, the people are able to talk back.
But don’t think for a second that they aren't going to try to stop us.
This is Rare Earth.
If you have an opportunity to say something to the entire world, what would it be?
Don’t give up on humanity, brotherhood and equality of mankind.