Six and counting
Yesterday I was confined to my bed almost all day with the flu, with brief forays to the couch. By 4 PM I was not only going crazy from boredom but it became clear I was developing conjunctivitis as well, and I had to distract myself with an activity so I wouldn't scratch my eyeballs out. I dragged myself down the street to the market in the search for the closest thing I could find to ginger ale, which is what I always drank as a kid when I was sick.While trying to keep my balance holding 3 bottles of tonic water in the store, I ran across a colleague who works for an educational NGO, and as is always the case with real news here (most of the published newspapers are the equivalent to Fox news, or worse) he gave me a rundown of the day's events from a secondhand source who works for the UN.
The opposition supporters had scheduled a "honking protest" in the Piazza and Mercato, outside of where the AU (African Conference) was being held, to protest Meles' government, whose measures have become increasingly extreme. As military police poured forth to arrest the honkers, many of them Addis' taxi drivers, the clash became violent and the police opened live fire on the crowd, killing 6 people and injuring at least 25. Last night the government beat and arrested the opposition (CUD) leaders, who are still in jail as of today. I've been reading about it on a D.C.-based website, here.
Despite the increasing military presence in the city, petty crime--knifings, mugging, etc.-- has been on the rise in the past few weeks. It turns out the reason for this is in early October, when the opposition was allowed to take the seats they indisputably won in the elections, including ALL gov't posts in Addis Ababa, the government released incarcerated criminals in the city to make life difficult for the new regime. Meanwhile, thousands of political dissedents have been jailed without trial, some for over a year and a half. This may sound a bit conspiracy-minded, I know, but it has been corroborated by human rights orgs, Embassy staff and people whose relatives are among those jailed, and sadly, this kind of politicking is not anything new in this part of the world.
There are no taxis in the streets and Addis is eerily quiet today. A stay-at-home strike is scheduled soon in response but I believe tomorrow will be Eid, the end of Ramadan, which is a holiday anyway. There will also be strikes Nov. 14th-19th, and a boycott of government-owned enterprises. The level of hatred for this government is incredible; it is dubious how long the opposition's strategy of peaceful protests within constitutional limits will last. Paradoxically, while many people say that this government has fomented ethnic hatred, by giving preference to Tigray and Tigrayans in everything (the northeastern region) and dividing Ethiopia's peoples into ethnic regions, the hatred for the government certainly also falls along ethnic/regional lines--Amharas and Oromos vs. the Tigrayans etc.--and thus, it seems, ethnic divisions feed upon themselves.
posted by Margot @ 12:42 AM
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