CPJ chief executive Jodie Ginsberg, left, and Eritrean journalist and former political prisoner Yirgalem Fisseha discuss the Eritrea 16 at the African Investigative Journalism Conference in Nairobi on November 10, 2026. Credit: Courtesy of Aga Khan University, Nairobi, via the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The Committee to Protect Journalists demanded in Nairobi this week that Eritrea prove the 16 journalists it detained after the 2001 crackdown are alive, and release those still held.
The tribute took place on Tuesday at the African Investigative Journalism Conference, the first time the gathering has been held outside South Africa. Drawn portraits of the journalists by the Italian artist Gianluca Costantini were placed on empty chairs at the Edge Convention Centre, according to the artist’s site Channeldraw.
“For a quarter of a century, families have been denied answers about their loved ones,” said Jodie Ginsberg, CPJ’s chief executive. “The Eritrea 16 deserve recognition for their journalism, not for their decades of disappearance.” CPJ announced in August that it would give the group its 2026 International Press Freedom Award, and Ginsberg said the award “cannot replace truth, freedom, or justice.”
Yirgalem Fisseha, an Eritrean journalist who survived six years of imprisonment and torture before fleeing the country, gave the Carlos Cardoso Memorial Lecture and read from a letter to her mentor Amanuel Asrat, a poet and the editor of the newspaper Zemen. “You would have received awards for your writings in person, rather than for your sufferings in absence,” she read. Yirgalem asked the journalists in the hall to imagine the isolation of people held for decades, asking themselves every day, “Does anyone still remember me?”
Most of the group were arrested after September 18, 2001, the day the government shut all privately owned newspapers, which Eritreans remember as Black Tuesday. Those named by CPJ include Dawit Isaak, a dual Eritrean and Swedish citizen who part owned the newspaper Setit, the former war photographer Seyoum Tsehaye, and Ghebrehiwet Keleta, who was arrested in July 2000 and whom CPJ considers the world’s longest detained journalist. CPJ says they have been held without trial and that only glimpses of unverifiable information about them have surfaced.
Eritrea’s government has not put the journalists on trial or said where they are held, and Mereja Media found no response from the Ministry of Information to the Nairobi event by Thursday evening. Eritrean state media this week reported instead on seminars for Eritreans in the United States and the Netherlands on what it called national resilience. Mereja Media reported this month on UN experts urging Eritrea to free people held for decades without trial.
Sources
- Committee to Protect Journalists, CPJ demands answers from Eritrean authorities on disappeared journalists, Nov 10
- Committee to Protect Journalists, The Eritrea 16
- The Eastleigh Voice, CPJ urges Eritrea to account for 16 journalists missing for 25 years, Nov 11
- Channeldraw, Empty chairs in Nairobi, twenty five years without answers for the Eritrea 16, Nov 11
- Shabait on X, Resolve to strengthen national resilience, Nov 11
- Mereja Media, UN experts urge Eritrea to free people held for decades without trial