Professor Asrat: a Martyr for Democracy in Ethiopia

Death of Prof. Asrat Called “Liquidation”

Professor Asrat Woldeyes, Ethiopia’s most famous victim of the current Addis Ababa administration and onetime leader of the All-Amhara People’s Organization (AAPO), Professor Asrat Woldeyes, passed away on May 14, 1999, at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, USA. He died from complications from a heart ailment which had been exacerbated by the effects of his long and internationally-con- demned imprisonment and ill-treatment at the hands of the Meles administration.

The Crown Council immediately said that Dr Asrat’s untimely death was “virtual state liquidation”, and was directly attributable to the Meles administration.

Prof. Asrat, a medical doctor and one of Ethiopia’s leading scientists and humanitarians, had been suffering from a variety of ailments, mostly centering around a heart disorder, when Meles administration officials — faced with daily protests around the world and mounting hostility from major governments — released him to seek medical treatment abroad just before Western Christmas 1998. He has been hospitalized ever since.

He had been personal physician to the late Emperor Haile Selassie I for a quarter century. He had been dismissed from his post at the Black Lion Hospital, in Addis Ababa, when the TPLF administration of Meles Zenawi seized power in 1991.

Prof. Asrat’s family, including his two sons, had gathered to be with him at the hospital at the end. As well, the President of the Crown Council, Prince Ermias Sahle-Selassie Haile-Selassie and Princess Gelila Fesseha, a niece of the Professor, were with him. Le’ult Gelila helped spearhead the campaign to have Dr Asrat released from his illegal imprisonment.

The Professor, who was in his seventies when he died, was preparing his legacy manifesto before his condition worsened in early May.

“Professor Asrat has already created his greatest legacy,” Crown Council President Prince Ermias said. “His legacy is that he has reaffirmed Ethiopia can only survive as a united, democratic country, and that this prize is worth sacrifice to achieve. Professor Asrat has always been a man of peace, dignity and intelligent reason. His imprisonment on trumped-up charges only serves to highlight the nobility of his non-violent protest and the bankruptcy of policies which are imposed by those who fear the will of the people. We cannot allow his sacrifice to be in vain. We cannot forget that his life has been shortened by what amounts to State murder, because he should have been able to complete his medical and teaching career in peace, and he should have been able to look forward to a long and happy retirement. All of this was denied to him, as such freedom is being denied to so many Ethiopians under illegal detainment by the Meles administration.”

The Meles administration released Dr Asrat when it became clear that his condition was deteriorating rapidly in prison. He had already become one of the focal points of protest against the administration, and officials feared that he would become a martyr if he died in prison.

“There is no doubt that Dr Asrat, who never saw himself as a martyr but rather as someone who needed to uphold principles of integrity and Ethiopianness, is now an even greater symbol of Ethiopia’s need for unity and for an end to the kind of repression which has characterized the totalitarianism of the Meles administration,” said one foreign diplomat in Addis Ababa, contacted by Negarit following Dr Asrat’s death. “His death, even released from custody, reflects on Meles.”

Source: Negarit Online, the Crown Council of Ethiopia

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Melaku says:

I have never met the Professor personally, what I know is from the media. I came to know that he was the private physician of the Emperor Haile Selassie I. Furthermore, I know that he was a leading surgeon in Ethiopia of his time. When I heard of his imprisonment in one of the dungeons in Addis Ababa while I was in Khartoum serving the current brutal regime as Second Secretary in Charge of the Consular Section, I felt unhappy to be associated with this government.

Upon my coming to the Foreign Ministry in Addis Ababa, and especially during the burial ceremony of Professor Asrat, I expressed my grief by shedding tears in my private room. It was that particular day, the day of the funeral of Professor Asrat, which became the cause of my desertion of the current government.