Eskinder Nega has spent years behind bars for challenging the one-party state, but change is afoot. Ethiopian journalists Eskinder Nega and his wife, Serkalem Fasil, were jailed in 2005 — in separate prisons — on charges of treason. The couple didn’t know it, but Serkalem had just become pregnant with their first and only child. The sacrifices have been extreme for the pioneer of the Ethiopian free press since the fall of the DERG (the Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces, Police and Territorial Army; Ethiopia’s Marxist military government) in 1991. Eskinder, 48, has spent more than nine years in prison spread across nine separate stints. Now, his fight for freedom, democracy and nonviolence finally seems to be paying off. New Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has in four short months given Ethiopians more hope for democratic reform than they have had in decades by releasing political prisoners such as Eskinder, among other liberalizing steps. | 