Carpe Diem Ethiopia

They have finally seen the outside gates of Kality Prison. (Can we hear a Hallelujah?) Some of the members of the Coalition of Unity & Democracy Party (CUDP) are senior citizens who languished in jail in bodies wracked with old age and rapidly deteriorating health. Others are parents to young children. They needed to be among their families, their followers, and their supporters, and only the most contemptuous would ignore the human story behind last week's negotiated release. And this is essentially what all of us sought: in numerous petitions, protests, articles, blogs, and support for various proposed legislative acts, Ethiopians and non-Ethiopians alike lobbied for the day to see the men and women who led the campaign to realize the electoral demise of the ruling party walk away from prison intact. Then there's the issue of the July 16, 2007 admission of culpability. The letter to the Prime Minister included language that frankly shocked our conscious, including ad...

Following the failed December 1960 coup d'état led by Columbia U-grad Girmame Neway and his brother Mengistu, His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I is said to have shuddered at the very thought of returning to his blood-drenched palace at Sidist Kilo. The carnage at Genete Leul Palace took place in the Green Salon, two floors below the monarch's bedroom. In that conference room—named after its lustrous olive-green drapery, the Emperor lost his closest and most trusted allies. The coup that began with lofty ideals and promises of a new age in Ethiopia had taken a nasty turn when the two brothers made a fatal decision to engage in a murderous rampage that set Ethiopia toward the now familiar path of extra-judicial killings of political opponents. Before HIM moved out of Genete Leul in1961 where he had lived since 1932, he donated the palace and its grounds to HSU (now AAU). Today, the university president and his staff occupy the first floor ...