100 March to Celebrate Rebel Victory in Ethiopia

Approximately 100 people marched from MIT to the Cambridge Common yesterday to celebrate the victory of Ethiopian rebels over the authoritarian regime of Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam and the establishment of a provisional government in the war-torn, East African region of Eritrea.

"We are celebrating the end of 100 years of colonialism in Eritrea," said Ghermazien Tesfai, deputy representative of the Eritrean Peoples' Liberation Front (EPLF) to the U.S. and Canada. "It is a day of jubilation."

The former Italian colony--bordered by Ethopia, the Sudan, and the Red Sea--was annexed by Ethopian Emperor Haile Selassie in 1961.

Now that the Ethiopian dictator is gone, the EPLF will hold a nationwide referendum to determine how Eritrea will be governed, according to Tesfay Aradom, EPLF spokesperson and member of the Association of Eritrean Workers in Boston.

In the internationally supervised vote, Eritreans will choose whether they wish to be independent from, federated with or united with Ethiopia, Aradom said.

"The EPLF doesn't want to proscribe a destiny for the Eritrean peoples," Tesfai said. "The EPLF is prepared to abide by the decision of the Eritrean people."

Wearing traditional garb called zuria, participants waved small EPLF and Eritrean flags and sang and danced around the statue in the center of the Common.

Most of the 400 to 500 Eritreas who live in the Boston area moved to the United States in the early 1980s, Aradom said.