An Ethiopian human rights group accused the police on Saturday of beating a journalist and throwing him off a bridge for refusing to reveal his sources for a popular column on wrangling in the ruling coalition.
Media watchdogs have repeatedly accused the Ethiopian government of harassing reporters and threatening the private press. The government denied police had beaten the columnist.
The independent Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRC) issued a photograph of a bruised-looking Araya Tesfa-Mariam (28) who they said was beaten by police early in October then thrown off a bridge into a gorge five metres deep.
"The abuse suffered by the journalist, Araya Tesfa-Mariam is a civil and human rights violation. It is also contradictory to the freedom of press that the government is obliged to uphold," the EHRC said in a statement.
"Due to the attack and fall from the bridge in the evening of October 1, 2003, the journalist suffered severe damage to his leg joints which has incapacitated him," it said.
A spokesman for the public relations department in the ministry of information denied the allegations, saying freedom of speech was guaranteed in the constitution.
"If he makes a mistake, he would be charged in a court of law, not be beaten by police," said the spokesman.
"The EHRC is not a human rights organisation, it is a political organisation based on lies," he said.
The EHRC said the beating followed threats made to scare Araya into revealing his sources for a series of articles about the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), a powerful member of the ruling coalition in the country of 67 million.
Araya's column entitled "What I gleaned from the TPLF village" appeared in the weekly "Ethiop" newspaper under the pseudonym Iyerusalem Araya.