During an exceptional meeting organized in the vast compound of the American embassy on July 7, the ambassador directly informed the Ethiopians hired as guards of the embassy or of diplomat housing that they could no longer receive help from the embassy to visit the United States. From now on, if they want to do so they have to proceed like everyone else who requests an American visa. The decision was motivated by the fact that a dozen of the Ethiopian guards who visited the United States took advantage of the situation to ask for political asylum, a behavior that Brazeal deemed ?completely unexpected.?
The embassy’s Ethiopian employees were caught totally off-guard by this measure – especially since American diplomats in post in Washington who had the opportunity to visit Addis Ababa in the last few month systematically gave homage to the activity of the embassy’s Ethiopian security agents. When the agents were informed of the July 7 meeting with the ambassador, they thought that she was going to announce a salary raise. This corresponded with an old claim from the American embassy’s Ethiopian guards, who deem that they are less well-paid than those at the United Nations organizations in Addis Ababa (ION 934).
The defection to the United States and to Europe of Ethiopian officials, MPs and journalists is a recurring problem for the Ethiopian authorities. Recently, the chairman of the Ethiopian parliament’s foreign relations committee, Zekaria Lingeso, defected to Ireland, while the head of the parliament’s economic commission, M. Eshetu, took asylum in the United States and another MP and member of the ANDM (governmental coalition party), M. Mulugeta, went on an official visit to England and ended up asking for official asylum in the United States. The editor in chief of the weekly Addis Tribune, Engidu Welde, has also just asked for asylum in Washington by claiming that he was threatened by a TPLF (hard core of the ruling coalition) leader in Vienna (Austria) after speaking out against the Ethiopian government’s new law on the press in a meeting of journalists. Engidu Welde passed through London to go to Washington at the invitation of a journalists’ association.
