The current tactics at work in Ethiopia to harass journalists were originally developed by Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime Minister of Singapore and were further perfected by Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Lee figured out that he did not need to kill his opponents – like the neighboring Suharto of Indonesia or Khmer Rouge of Cambodia – while he can easily maintain an iron grip over the island by using the “law”. By passing legislations such as the “anti-defamation” Act, he simply let his prosecutors and even personal lawyers go after anyone who dared to criticize him or his regime. For a single speech or piece of writing; journalists and opposition leaders faced multiple charges such as libel, allegation, indecency, slander etc. It became quite common to see a journalist charged with more than ten counts of crime for a single piece of writing.