A NEW MASTER PLAN:COMPLICATED-TURNED-DEADLY
A recent plan to build a fantastic Addis Abeba is complicated and has turned deadly. It is not terribly late for a u-turn, but the first step may be the hardest: bringing justice to the dead Kalkidan Yibeltal For a number of universities located in Ethiopia’s Oromia regional state, the largest state in the country, the month May was no ordinary month. It was a month marked by extraordinary exhibition of solidarity by the country’s ethnic Oromo students who protested the coming into effect of a master plan by the Addis Abeba City Administration (AACA). As is always the case with Ethiopia, the protests resulted in the regrettable (and unnecessary) loss of lives, destruction of properties and disruption of the academic schedule. If one is to stick by it, the government’s own account put the number of deaths at 11, of which seven were in Ambo, a town 120 km west of the capital Addis Abeba. Other deaths occurred in Meda Walabu University in Bale, 320 km southwest of the country;