Haile Selassie I addressing the League of Nations in June 1936 after the Fascist Italian invasion of Ethiopia in May 1936. Throughout this speech, Italians in the chamber kept up a horrendous noise and insults.
He re-entered Addis Ababa on May 5, 1941, the 5th anniversary of the Fascist invasion to begin to overlay its memory.
Today is the Emperor’s birthday.
He had very large failings: crimes, human rights and political: the failure to address repeated famines, the extra-judicial annexation of Eritrea which cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
But for courage, skill, cunning, imagination, fortitude, for his push for education and technology, his only equal was his great forbear, Menelik II, who drove the Italians out of Ethiopia at the battle of Adowa in 1896.
Homage to them both.
Haile Selassie I born Ras Tafari Makonnen (23 July 1892 –1975) was regent of Ethiopia from 1916 to 1930 and emperor from 1930 to 1974. ♠ “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of […]
via Haile Selassie on the Triumph of Evil — words and music and stories