A torture center that was once used to incarcerate political prisoners, interrogate dissenters and torment anyone who spoke a little too loudly against the excesses of the EPRDF government was shuttered last year and recently reopened as a museum. Instead of housing prisoners, Maekelawi now showcases paintings and has been turned into a tourist attraction of sorts.
Though some are marking the rebranding of Maekelawi as an occasion to celebrate, we see it as a continuation of a trend that started last year during the rise of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Glossing over the crimes of the past and giving Ethiopia’s gulag a new do is not only a missed opportunity to address and rectify the iniquities of the past, it does a grave injustice to the victims of the past 44 years who suffered for committing the cardinal sin of speaking their conscience.
The inability to acknowledge mistakes and atone for past misdeeds is once again preventing people in positions of power in Ethiopia from leading movements of truth and reconciliation. What we are treated to instead are photo ops and sanitized truths; in a lot of ways, turning a barbarous institution that terrorized Ethiopians into a glorified art studio is...continued...
Read full article at: https://ethiopians4cm.org/crisis-in-ethiopia-2019-9-6/
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