Birtukan Midekssa

Birtukan Midekssa, a 2012 Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, is a former judge and leader of the opposition Unity for Democracy and Justice Party in her native Ethiopia. From November 2005 to July 2007, and again from December 2008 to October 2010, she was imprisoned there for what Amnesty International called “the peaceful exercise of her right to freedom of expression and association.”