Hosni Mubarak has plenty of company.
BY JOSHUA E. KEATING | JANUARY 31, 2011
ETHIOPIA
Leader: Meles Zenawi
Record: The 2010 election, in which Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's party won a remarkable 99.6 percent of the vote, was the culmination of what Human Rights Watch called "the government's five-year strategy of systematically closing down space for political dissent and independent criticism." This included attacks and arrests of prominent opposition figures, the shutting down of newspapers and assaults on journalists critical of the government, and doling out international food aid as an incentive to get poor Ethiopians to join the ruling party.
In addition to attacks on domestic media and NGOs, the government also jammed broadcasts by Voice of America and Deutsche Welle in the run-up to the elections. The U.S. NGO Freedom House downgraded Ethiopia to "Not Free" for the first time in its annual Freedom in the World survey this year.more....
