Yirgalem Fisseha Mebrahtu
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Yirgalem Fisseha Mebrahtu is one of the few women to have entered what is the dangerous profession of journalism in Eritrea. After the government closed all independent media in 2001, she worked for radio Bana until the authorities raided it in February 2009, arrested all the staff and took them to Adi Abeito military prison. She has now spent more than five years in May Srwa prison, where she has been subjected to inhuman conditions, including an entire year in solitary confinement, and is in very poor health. She has been hospitalized three times without her family being informed. President Issayas Afeworki’s government, which has already allowed at least four journalists to die in detention, is now playing dangerously with this journalist’s life.