Remembering the Ethiopians who died on the Streets of Addis

By Teodros Kiros

Birth and death happen in mysterious ways. We are born because we must; we die because we are meant to die. Both events are rooted in our fate. The causes and the effects are outside of the sphere of our control.

When human life is measured by the yardstick of mysteriousness, life and death make sense, without our full understanding. Both make sense without being fully sensible. Both events occur to those whose fate is to be born and die, and that we are born because we are meant to die, and we die because we are already born.

We do not choose birth and death. They happen because they must. Birth and death choose us. Our fate is ground in the fact that birth and death happen to us.

Revolts and revolutions are world historical events in which birth and death occur. Some humans are born on revolutionary streets. Other are born to the streets to which they flood in defense of their dignity, in defiance of tyranny, and for the sake of a dream, a vision and a plan of life.

The 193 Ethiopians who died in 2005 on the streets of Addis were chosen by early death, while protesting against tyranny and oligarchy and in defense of the burning fire of freedom. They did not die in vain. Their death will loose meaning only if we forget them, if we erase them from memory, so that we can live our decadent lives.

The death of our brothers and sisters could be the spark of our uprising now. Let us remember their deaths and appeal to the Ethiopian army to side with the protestors, who will be marching on the behalf of the rights of all Ethiopians, including the Ethiopian army.

We must remind the military to restrain itself and defy orders when Ethiopians will protest again, on the behalf of Ethiopian dignity, and the rights of all Ethiopians.

The death of our brothers and sisters makes eminent sense, in the same profound way that the death of the lone Tunisian who burned himself. His death became the reason for the historic revolution in Tunisia, as did the death of Egyptian youth at Tahrir Square. The Tunisian and Egyptians died for the sake of starting the people�s revolution enveloped by the mysterious veil of the Eros Effect. Eros engulfed the protestors. Heroes were born on the streets and heroes died there. Life and death, festivity and mourning happened simultaneously, exactly like life itself-every joy is countered by sadness, mourning impregnates every celebration. Sometime both events happen at the same time. We are rooted in the paradox.

Our Ethiopian brothers and sisters died as beacons of change, as markers of beginnings. Revolutions are precisely these beginnings, whose ends we cannot predict. Our goal is to begin them, sometime by sacrificing our lives, and choosing to when we must. Our deaths are always meaningful. They are purposeful without having explicit purpose. They make sense without being
sensible.

Our brothers and sister did not die in vain. We can immortalize their lives by finishing the endless projects of revolts and revolutions for something better, as far as we can know,


Teodros Kiros
Professor of Philosophy and English (Liberal Arts)
Berklee College of Music