I went to attend class as usual. I found out that students have gathered in a relatively big area in front of the Library which was near to the office of the president of the university and I approached the crowd to know why they were gathering. A student leader was reading a letter that was drafted to the university administration. He was saying that we demand the right to assembly, freedom of speech, removal of the police station from campus. Since the 1993 student strike, while I were an undergraduate second year student, there has been a police station on campus to quell students freedom. I asked one of the students as what is going on he told me that some students was attending a public meeting led by Professor Mesfin woldemariam and he told me that they devised to voice about their demands so that our rights must be respected. While I was there students identified two security agents who own a radio communication. When they asked about their ID they don’t have a student ID They were infiltrated amongst the student to transmit the ongoing boycott on a security communication radio they own. After a while, hundreds of Special Forces arrived on campus in military trucks and started chasing and beating on us. Students were confused as to what to do as they were in a completely peaceful demonstration. Consequently, everyone started running to their dormitories and out of campus. I was not sure what to do, so I flew to the nearby dormitories where most students were running. While I was running a police perusing me, throw a stick club to hit me with a club. After running in all of my might, I found myself in a dormitory with other students. We managed to close the door and reinforced it with chairs and tables. We could hear a few gunshots outside. I later learned that the Special Forces had forced open some dormitories and beat students bitterly in the dormitories and on the corridors. After the police left the compound, I also left to my home and did not return back to school for a week. Following this incident, Minister of Education Mrs. Genet Zewde spoke on a press conference that the students’ request for the police force to be removed from the University Campus was quite worthless and the ministry will see to the matter in due time. She also said that the University administration reserves all the right to formulate and publish a new discipline codebook without the student council’s participation.
This caused even more agitation among the student body and the students’ council announced that no student would go to classes unless this matter got resolved. As a result of this decision, students continued their peaceful protest against the draft code book and the presence of police force on campus. They demanded that the police force on campus and the associated detention facility be replaced with an independent, non-partisan security force accountable to the University administration. They also demanded that the draft codebook should incorporate the views and opinions of the student body.

After two days of continuous demonstration and peaceful protest, the ministry of education announced that students should resume classes without any conditions and they should undergo a registration process. Following the media announcement from ministry of education to resume class, I went to the campus lest I would be dismissed. After I found out that there were no classes being conducted, I started to go home when I met a friend of mine in the area and he told me that students were leaving the campus to take refuge in St. Mary’s church. As I got out of the campus I saw that the area was under a lot of in trepidation and police were surrounding the area. Some hooligans and gang groups had by then used this turbulence to rob businesses in down town and caused damages to public property. When students learned of the Ministry education decisions and realized that the peaceful protest was turning into a riot, they decided to leave their dormitories and seek refuge in the nearby St. Mary’s church.  because the city were under turmoil and  it was thought that the St Mary church will be the safest place.  On April 17,2001 after being surrounded within the church for more than 12 hours by Special Forces, we were ordered to take off our shoes loaded on trucks and driven back to Science Faculty campus around 7:00 p.m. We were held on the parking lot until midnight, at gunpoint, lying flat on our chest. At midnight, we were all (boys and girls) stuffed in open military vans (Urals) and transported to Sendafa Police Academy-about 45 km away from Addis Ababa. Even the Ethiopian Orthodox Church could not protect innocent citizens and children of the poor public from violent attacks by the military and police forces. When our families gathered and pleaded the EOC Archbishop to speak to the authorities about their children, they were massively beaten in the most disrespectful manner.
We were directly taken into a big warehouse where we were ordered to sleep on the marble-finish floor without anything to wear. To make the matter even worse, we were woken up at 5:30 the next morning and ordered to take off our shoes again and walk about 400 meters on bare feet to a marching area. Here, not only were we forced to run, jump, meander on our knees and work out heavy exercise on the gravel- surfaced field for more than 4 hours, we were also deprived of food for 36 hours until they gave us a loaf of bread and water for everyone. Similar routines continued everyday for the next 8 days. 

During our detention in Sendafa, the Special Forces have imposed on us every kind of physical punishment they could think of when we were unable to cop up with their orders and instructions. During the interrogation, the soldiers were using verbal harassment in addition to beating and heavy exercise.

After about 10 days of detention, harassment, beating, intensive physical exercise and life threats, I was fingerprinted and forced to sign a statement saying that I would never be involved in any kind of student movements, meetings etc which otherwise would be a threat both to my education and my life. …