A protest rally in Seattle (August 24, 2006)

ATLANTA – Nine out of 180 secretly invited Ethiopians in Atlanta City met with Deputy Prime Minister Addisu Legesse at the Four Seasons Hotel on Monday, a source said. The nine were in addition to the usual entourage of TPLF cadres and few officials making up the Addisu delegation.

Earlier on Sunday, there was quite a turnout of Ethiopians from the Boston area at the Knights of Columbus Hall, an obscure location never used by meetings of Ethiopians in the area.

Remarkably, the area was barricaded with a metal fence with no access to the place until police with a “jaws of life”-like instrument broke the gate open to let the TPLF loyals in. The colorful and noisy crowd organized by the support groups of CUDP and UEDF together, then followed them in to the hall and the noise continued. Addisu Legesse and the others stood on the stage behind the Secret Service officers, the Massachusetts State Officers and the Boston Police with a smile on their face. The noise continued.

With the apparent deadlock making any conversation impossible, the TPLF representative took to the mike and began to say something to the effect that on behalf of the Police, and if in fact Ethiopians in the hall were seeking to exercise their democratic rights, they had to take their seats and be silent. Nothing worked. In fact, an Ethiopian walked up to the stage and was given the mike. In Amharic, he announced that all were here on behalf of Ethiopians and that Kinijit is the winner!!

The faces of the party loyals, and the other delegates visibly changed, and they spoke hurriedly to the officers before the Ethiopian gave back the microphone. Then, they had everyone take their seats, but the noise continued. The delegation was visibly agitated. Police officers began to ask people to take down the signs that they were carrying, but people refused. One of those was Professor Mesfin Wolde Mariam’s daughter, who happened to be holding up her father’s photograph. When asked, she refused to remove her father’s picture, saying that this was her father, a 76 year old prisoner of conscience, and that she had a right to carry his picture.

Eventually, it was decided that the meeting would be closed and that everyone had to leave the hall. Ethiopians who had stormed the hall made sure that they were not singled out to leave the room while others stayed. So, they left the hall and continued to hold vigil outside at the entrance, until the Deputy Prime Minister Addisu Legesse and others had no choice, but to leave through a back door into their vehicles in a tight security, through a back alley and into the street.

An interesting feature of Sunday’s interaction was the profuse usage of profanity and obscene gestures by the TPLF local operatives and the officials, which gave the public reason to cover their mouths in mock surprise, and shout, “balege!, balege!”.

Not only was this event successful in demonstrating to the EPRDF officials that any meaningful dialog they wanted had to take place with the public in Ethiopia and their leaders first, but it also followed a similar success on Saturday August 26, 2006 where the delegation had invited business owners to a closed meeting. That meeting was attended by only four invitees of whom two were Somali nationals. Many who showed up returned.

As was previously reported, the function room reserved for the closed meeting on Saturday had been set up for 100. In a last minute attempt to avoid the appearance of empty seats in the room, the set-up had been modified to accommodate only 35. Yet, they only had 4 guests!

It is our hope that they get the message that any dialog will demand accountability and justice as well as begin at home and not in the Diaspora, while all those who perished have not been accounted for.

Thank you Boston!