Sophomore Electrical Engineering Major Oromo Student Aslan Hasan
Aslan Hasan was one of thirteen Oromo students arrested from Haramaya University at the end of May 2014. Born and raised in Bakko Tibbee district of West Shewa zone, Oromia State, student Aslan was a sophomore in the Department of Electrical Engineering. His classmates and faculty members say he was a very bright student.
Student Aslan Hasan and 12 other students were abducted from Haramaya University campus by members of the TPLF Ethiopian government’s Agazi Army. The abductors did not tell anyone why they were arresting the students nor did they tell anyone where they were taking them to. Friends searched for the students at nearby police stations the next day, but they could not find them.
On Sunday, June 1, 2014, a police officer in Dire Dawa called his counterpart in West Shewa and told him that Aslan “killed himself” while in prison and that he wanted a message sent to his family to go pick up the dead body from the Menelik Hospital in Addis Ababa. The local police relayed the message to Aslan’s family immediately after that. The family rushed to the government-owned Menelik Hospital to get the dead body of their beloved son whom they had sent away to get higher education hoping he would get a job and help the family when he graduated.
Once they got there, the hospital staff told them to go and search the body from among about 30 to 40 corpses kept in a large room. Even though they went to pick up a dead boy, what they saw was way beyond what anyone could have expected. Two family members collapsed upon seeing what had happened to their beloved Aslan Hasan. He was killed in a gruesome manner. His throat was cut all the way through – leaving only the muscles and bones at the back of his neck connecting his head to the rest of his body. One of his eyes was taken out, and there were bruises and wounds all over his body.
It is hard to imagine any human being would do to a fellow human being what the TPLF Ethiopian government’s Agazi Army had done to student Aslan Hasan. Such brutality had not been seen in Ethiopia, even during Mengistu Haile-Mariam’s Red Terror campaign.
Once the family had identified the body, they were told that they have to pay Birr10,000 (US$500) since the government-owned Hospital transported the body from Dire Dawa to Addis Ababa. They were told that the body could not be moved from where it was unless the money was paid in full first. The family did not have that kind of money. So they went out to the city, borrowed money from friends and relatives, and paid the government Birr10,000 to pick up the body of their son killed by the TPLF Ethiopian government’s Agazi Army.
His body was laid to rest in Bakko Tibbee, West Shewa, Oromia, on Monday, June 2, 2014.
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