{"id":273351,"date":"2019-04-17T09:21:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-17T13:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/?guid=90653c35c3898d21e8e67effd04aa5a9"},"modified":"2026-09-12T11:22:59","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T15:22:59","slug":"ethiopias-former-jail-set-to-become-a-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/273351","title":{"rendered":"Ethiopia\u2019s former jail set to become a museum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Al Jazeera reported in April 2019 that authorities in Ethiopia\u2019s Somali Region planned to turn the notorious <strong>Ogaden jail<\/strong> in Jijiga into a museum after the facility was closed in the reform wave.<\/p>\n<p><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-427073\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Prisoners-photos.png?fit=780%2C439&ssl=1\" alt=\"Ethiopia\u2019s former jail set to become a museum\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The prison had a reputation for years of abuse against political detainees and others under regional security rule. Closing it and promising a museum was meant to mark a break with that past, at least on the surface of official messaging.<\/p>\n<p>Museums from prisons can be accountability tools or just tourism rebranding. The lasting test is whether survivors get truth, records, and justice, not only a renovated building with captions.<\/p>\n<p>As Horn reference, the Jijiga jail-to-museum story sits with other early Abiy-era symbols: dramatic closures and releases that mattered, while deeper questions about security doctrine and regional power remained unsettled.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2019\/04\/ethiopia-jail-museum-190417132151677.html\">Al Jazeera<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ethiopia: Former jail to become museum&nbsp;&nbsp;Aljazeera.comNew president closed it several months ago as part of reforms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":427073,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Prisoners-photos.png?fit=1280%2C720&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-196T","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273351"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":600845,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273351\/revisions\/600845"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}