A mob of Orthodox Church members led by priests attacked and
killed an evangelical Christian pastor in his home two weeks ago in Merawi, a
town in northwestern Ethiopia.
According to an Ethiopian evangelical who visited Merawi on July 21, Brother
Dantew was fatally injured on the evening of July 17, several hours after he
had asked for police protection for his church’s new property and its members.
A teacher by profession, Dantew was the leading elder in Merawi’s Full Gospel
Church. Last May, authorities allocated land to the congregation for a church
compound.
But when the congregation started to fence their new property on July 15, local
Orthodox Church leaders reacted violently. That evening, a mob came and tore
down the fence the church had built. Dantew informed the police and applied for
their protection in writing. The next day they started constructing the fence
again.
A night later, priests from the Mecha Wored Orthodox Church organized a larger,
agitated mob to attack the compound; the attackers dismantled the fence and a
storeroom on the property. Dantew sent messengers to the local police station
for help. Oddly, they found it unmanned.
By 9 p.m. that night, the evangelicals had fled to their homes, which they
locked and barricaded after hearing gun shots. “We were hoping that the police
would come to our rescue,” said some of the evangelicals. “But it did not
happen.”
A half hour later, eyewitnesses said, a large mob surrounded Dantew’s house,
throwing stones and breaking down the fence and main gate. They smashed the
doors, tore windows out of their frames and even dismantled the roof.
When Dantew’s wife, Tsige, was hit in the face by a stone, he begged her to try
to escape from the house, which she managed to do. When the attackers got
inside, they assaulted Dantew, finally felling him with an axe blow to the
head. This left him bleeding from a gaping wound.
Dantew’s two teenage sons, 15 and 17, hid under the bed with a woman servant.
When the attackers discovered them and wanted to beat them, the Orthodox priest
directing the attack ordered them not to harm them, reportedly saying, “We want
only the main leader.”
The attackers ransacked the house, stealing or smashing everything, then left
guards behind to prevent anyone from rescuing Dantew through the night. This
included a neighboring doctor who asked to treat his injuries.
The house servant was allowed to leave, but Dantew’s two sons spent the night
in the same room with their dying father. When the guards left the next
morning, Dantew was alive, but very weak. He died mid-morning on July 18 while
his wife was taking him to the hospital.
The homes of eight other evangelical families also came under attack that
night, which left their furniture and belongings destroyed. A believer
identified as Melkamu was hospitalized from a severe beating with axes and
sticks. His wife broke her left leg jumping from the fence around their
compound while attempting to escape. The next morning, some 50 evangelicals
fled to Bahir Dar, 25 miles away, to take refuge in the Full Gospel Church
there.
Local police who failed to intervene in the attack later declared that the
situation was “beyond their capacity,” the visiting source said. Reinforcements
summoned from Bahir Dar only arrived mid-morning on July 18, after the incident
was over.
Full Gospel Church leaders requested a formal investigation into the attack by
Bahir Dar authorities, resulting in the arrest of some 40 Orthodox Church
members, including six priests. Three of the priests were identified as Melake
Selam, Merigeta Bekatu and Meriget Addis.
Some 60 miles northwest of the capital Addis Ababa, Merawi has two evangelical
churches -- the Meserete Kirstos Church and the Full Gospel Church.
Since Protestant activities began in the area in 1987, both churches have faced
growing persecution from the majority Orthodox Church leadership, who consider
them a heretical sect and call them derisively “Pentes,” or Pentecostals.
“Persecution has happened sporadically, by means of beatings, robbery and
social isolation,” one evangelical believer said.
Over the past 40 years, Protestant Ethiopians have grown rapidly from less than
200,000 to 12 million, nearly 20 percent of the population.