The Symbol of Intolerance
136 years back from today, during the time of Emperor Yohannes IV, in May 29, 1878 the council of Boru Meda was held. One of the main issues of this council was resolving the debate between the theological factions of Ethiopian clergy, namely the Hulet Lidet (tewahido) (who said Christ had only two births one from Holy Virgin Mary in time and One from His Father before the beginning of time) Vs. Sost Lidet (qbat) (Christ has an additional birth which happened to Him during his baptism in the hands of John the baptist). This debate hair splitting theological debate among the clergy was literally tearing apart the Ethiopian church. As the issue is a little vast, I will not try to expound the theological debates here. However, the way the theological dispute was resolved is something that always nudges me to think about the culture of dictatorship in Ethiopia.
As most of you know, Yohannes IV was known from the very start of his reign to be in favor of the Tewahido (Hulet Lidet) sect. Hence, the council was all about plucking out dissident voices. After the council was resolved favoring the Tewahido sect, the defeated ones were persecuted for their belief. Some were imprisoned, exiled and cut their tongues. Ethiopia lost some of her intellectuals of the time. As Bewketu Seyoum says that council proved it self to be the symbol of intolerance.
To make things worse, we don't seem to have learned from our bloody history. Even today, the world knows us as people and country where independent thinkers and critics are punished, exiled and tortured. Even though we are amazingly efficient at exhuming relics of those killed by the unspeakably horrifying Red Terror, we don't seem to understand the intellectual loss and the psycho-social trauma the Red Terror resulted. Yes, we are so efficient to build monuments for those people who died, but we still haven't learnt to respect the living ones. We curse the former regimes for being dictators, yet we try to build a nation under a laughable communistic oxymoron called democratic-centralism. Our TV tells us how Emperor Haileselassie was deaf to the agony of his people, yet I find it hard to convince myself that I am in the time of a humanly administration (not a regime) that listens to its people.
