The public beating of a mother and child by police shows Addis Ababa once the shining city of divergence and enlightenment now has a very dark soul of malevolence and nihilism.
I cannot get a video posted today from Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia out of my head. Two big Addis Ababa policemen find a small Tigray woman with her child of about 1 and 1/2 years on side walk street vending. Upon hearing her speak Tigrinya they viciously kick her feet out from under her and begin pummeling her head.
One has to understand that no Tigray would be out in the street of Addis Ababa where they are subject to such abuse or even disappearing without a trace in a detainment center where extrajudicial killings have happened according to prosecutors from Addis Ababa.
No doubt she was poor and needed money to feed her child. We don’t know the exact story of why she was there but losing her family to marauding death squads of Ethiopian or Eritrean soldiers, or starvation, or just being isolated because of the communication block could be one or all contributing to her desperate current plight.
There were many bystanders but not a single one defended her. Instead when they saw someone was filming the senseless brutality of police officers whose job is to protect the vulnerable they blocked the filming. What happened after that we do not know. Unfortunately though it is well known that for some time there has been no safe place for Tegaru in Addis Ababa.
If she goes to the Medhanialem Church near the wealthy social center of Addis in a neighborhood called Bole she would not find refuge now. Always in the past this Ethiopian Orthodox Church was a sanctuary for all Ethiopians where they could sleep, find water, clothes or other hand outs from fellow Christians. Today the Tegaru rightful head of this ancient denomination is under house arrest while Amhara replacements preach a false Gospel of death rather then life in those sacred abodes which once proclaimed the charity and brotherhood of Jesus Christ but now are replaced by hate even of a widowed mother and her small child.
Maybe it is time to return Addis Ababa to its original name Finfinne and to it’s original peaceful owners, the Oromo, who are known for creating Africa’s first democracy, Gadaa, before they were conquered and enslaved by Amhara expansion.