Ethiopia: Ginbot 7 radio program jammed

Ethiopia: Ginbot 7 radio program jammed

November 20th, 2008 | Categories: Ethiopia | 10 Comments

DebreTsion is in charge of the Ethiopian Information & Communicatiion Technology Development Agency, but his main job is to block most Ethiopians from having access to information.

The Meles dictatorship in Ethiopia has jammed a radio program that was being broadcast to Ethiopia from Europe by the Ginbot 7 Movement for Freedom and Democracy, according to Ethiopian Review sources in Addis Ababa.

Voice of Ginbot 7 was launched on September 11, 2008, and had been heard through out Ethiopia and most countries in eastern Africa.

Similar attempt by the Woyanne regime to jam the Voice of America (VOA) Amharic program had been successful only for a few days. The VOA countered by running its program on multiple frequencies, each with 500 kilowatt, making it too expensive to jam them. VOA's transmission power can go up to 100 megawatt per frequency when supplemented with powerful antennas.

According to experts, it costs up to U.S. $10,000 per kilowatt to jam a radio program. To build and operate a facility that is capable of jamming multiple frequencies with 100s of kilowatt each, the Meles regime could be spending tens of millions of dollars. This is the money that could have been used to feed and cloth so many of Ethiopia's starving children who are unable to attend school because they are too weak from hunger.

Sources inside ETC say that the facility that the Chinese built for the bloodsucking Woyanne regime can jam frequencies only up to 100 kilowatt.

The Meles dictatorship is also unable to jam Eritrean Radio's Amharic Service, which uses both Short and Medium wave frequencies.

The jamming of radio programs and blocking access to web sites that are deemed critical of the dictatorship in Ethiopia is being carried out by Ato DebreTsion GebreMichael, a central committee member of the ruling Tigrean People Liberation Front (TPLF) and a protoge of Meles Zenawi.

Ato DebreTsion is chairman of the Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation (ETC) and Director General of the Information and Communication Technology Development Agency (EICTDA). His main assignment, however, is not the development of information technology in Ethiopia. His primary objective as Ethiopia's chief IT officer is to restrict access of such technology to most Ethiopians. He has been good at it. Under his watch, out of 80 million Ethiopians, only 2 million use mobile phones. There are only 20,000 internet service subscribers in Ethiopia — the lowest in Africa.