Ethiopia says Al Jazeera report on Ogaden "seriously biased" BBC Monitoring Africa -
PoliticalSupplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring April 12, 2008 Saturday

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BBC Monitoring Africa - Political
Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring

April 12, 2008 Saturday

Text of report in English by state-owned Ethiopian news agency ENA website

Al Jazeera's Arabic programme has announced that it is planning to air a series of reports on the activities of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) in Ethiopia's Somali Regional State [southeastern Ethiopia]. The ONLF is the Eritrean backed organization which carried out the slaughter of 74 unarmed Chinese and Ethiopian Somali workers in April last year, and followed this up with a series of terrorist attacks on unarmed civilians and local administrative officials and police over the next few months.

Al Jazeera's announcement, as indeed the first program yesterday, makes it clear that it has no intention of making any effort to produce either a balanced or accurate production. The whole purpose of the programmes is clearly and deliberately intended to tarnish Ethiopia's image. It is already obvious that Al Jazeera is using inaccurate and misleading information, fabricated by opposition elements backed by a state which makes no secret of its efforts to destabilize not only Ethiopia but also the entire subregion. Al Jazeera even makes it quite clear in its announcement that accuracy will play no role in these programmes. The Somali Regional State is an autonomous region of the Ethiopian federal state, one of the nine states in Ethiopia. It has its own elective legislative, executive and judicial organs and its own locally elected local administrations. It decides all essential matters itself. Al Jazeera is content to ignore all the realities of government in the region, putting itself at the service of enemies of the region.

Al Jazeera has a considerable reputation in the Arab World as an international media outlet. However, its track record on the Horn of Africa, especially in Somalia and the Somali Regional State of Ethiopia, has always displayed a serious bias. It is hard to ignore the fact that Al Jazeera broadcasts out of Doha, the capital of Qatar. Qatar is a close ally of Eritrea. It would be totally unrealistic to imagine that any Al Jazeera programme on Ethiopia could be anything other than seriously biased. The introduction to these programmes and the first segment demonstrate all too clearly that Al Jazeera, regrettably, has made no effort to produce even a partially balanced programme.

Source: ENA website, Addis Ababa, in English 12 Apr 08