The Arrest of Azeb Worku
Update: Late word has come that the authorities have now released Azeb Worku.
I’m going to leave this story up, however, because the arrest obviously never should have happened in the first place. It’s indicative of the widespread contempt that folks feel for the government that someone tartly wrote to me that they “won’t be surprised if [the regime] waits for the outrage to die down before arresting her again.”
Let’s all hope that doesn’t happen. But the government has amply proved it will try to intimidate anyone and has no bottom.
Here is what I wrote earlier:
Tyranny doesn’t just squat and rule. It’s a predator. It goes after those who shout and bang the stick, warning the wolf to get lost. It goes after the artists, the writers, the creatives, for the very basic reason that it’s the artists who can move you—who can wake you up. They can shake you out of your numbing complacency that sets in over what a tyrant steals, sometimes all at once, sometimes by degrees.
Azeb Worku sounded the alarm over what was being taken and destroyed. From what articles are telling us, she posted a message on Facebook days ago that criticized how people were being forced from their homes only to see them bulldozed in the name of “corridor development.” Just yesterday, a source was showing me how the government has been mutilating parts of Gondar, the same way it demolished Piassa in Addis—yes, mutilating is the right word for it.
And Azeb understood this. “People are being displaced without regard for the elderly, including those on their death beds, or for the children who have just started school,” she wrote.
I found an article on Ethioeyewitness that put it well, calling her FB post an “impassioned plea for a more humane approach to the demolitions. Her calls for adequate notice and support for those affected appear to have struck a nerve, prompting widespread debate.”
When they haul you away for questioning and to put you in a cell, yeah, I’d say you’ve struck more than one nerve.
I am reeling over her arrest because I had the good fortune to meet and converse with Azeb a couple of times way back in 2021. She was then CEO of Arts TV, the network which carried some of my television reports on the war. She was brilliant and charming and extremely considerate. And humble. Being a dumb, ignorant ferenji, it took someone else to tip me off that she had an enormous reputation as a playwright and screenwriter, the legendary mind behind some of the most respected and beloved drama series on Ethiopian TV.
I was in the process of pitching her a drama show to be shot in the country and aired in Amharic when she moved on from the network, and so nothing came out of our initial discussion. I subsequently filed more news coverage on the war for Arts TV under the stewardship of the clever, charismatic Daniel Belayneh, who was equally supportive.
And to be clear, I don’t know Azeb’s politics, just as I don’t know Danny’s, and this doesn’t matter. Both were consummate professionals who impressed me at the time with their compassion for their fellow citizens while the TPLF was devastating the country. They wanted their network to tell the truth, always. Nor am I trying to associate her politics with mine. That’s not the point. She obviously wrote her Facebook post, inspired by a profound caring and desire to put the spotlight on something very wrong taking place.
She “highlighted the plight of elderly residents, some of whom are reportedly bedridden, and children who had just begun the new school year, now displaced and at risk of homelessness.”
And the government’s response to that display of humanity… is to throw the author of this concern into jail?
She needs to be released now, but that depends on you. The cowards holding her will keep holding her as long as it’s politically expedient. Pressure is needed for her release. You can help with that.
After thugs for the regime murdered a two-year-old child, I urged people in another Substack column only a couple of weeks ago, “Make something that can spread the truth… be creative to keep the fight going. Grieve but don’t let grief overwhelm you and lead you to despair. Make something beautiful and true and lasting so that they hear a thunderstorm in Arat Kilo.”
Azeb Worku represents the very best of Ethiopia’s artistic community. Her conscience moved her to write, and we need to honor her not only with calls for her to be released, but by following her example. Find a way to make your voice heard. Don’t just curse the darkness, light the bonfire. Paint the stones and walls. Make so much damn art and prose and protest that you enrich your nation even as these petty, small-minded bastards seek to tear it down.
I hope I see Azeb again one day. I am nowhere near her league in terms of accomplishment, but as someone who can at least claim to be a creative professional, I have a duty to my fellow artist to demand she be set free. I hope we get to talk again, and maybe I’ll get the chance to interview her when she’s safe and out of danger, but I suspect that will require all of Ethiopia to be safe and free as well.
Which makes those creative projects by the rest of you all the more urgently needed.
Please get to work. Don’t let her example be a one-day news story flashing far too briefly in the diaspora communities. Let it be the start of something that builds and keeps building to change the country.
For Azeb Worku. For those she wrote about who are suffering. For yourselves and your children.