1936: Aboune Petros, Ethiopian bishop
Add comment July 29th, 2010 Headsman
On this date in 1936, the Italian forces occupying Ethiopia executed anti-occupation cleric Aboune Petros.
War on Ethiopia had been Benito Mussolini‘s monument to muscular Italian nationalism.
By May of 1936, it had forced Haile Selassie into exile and established control of the country. Mission accomplished!
At last Italy has her empire.
-Mussolini
As is often the case, the war of conquest instead transmogrified into a war against continuing resistance to foreign military occupation, and the colony of Italian East Africa was a short-lived and bloody affair.
The Duce will have Ethiopia, with or without the Ethiopians.
-Italian Gen. Rodolfo Graziani
(Though the progressive counterpart to Italy’s iron-fisted approach to troublemakers was monumental construction, and 1930s-era fascist architecture is still to be seen in Addis Ababa today.)
Ethiopian Orthodox patriarch Aboune — it’s a title that can also be rendered Abuna or Abune — Petros cut a public profile a little too sympathetic to the native subversives. When the Italians demanded that he tone it down, he replied (according to a hagiography that appears several places online),
The cry of my countrymen who died due to your nerve-gas and terror machinery will never allow my conscious to accept your ultimatum. How can I see my God if I give a blind eye to such a crime?
On July 28, Italians repelled a large* Abyssinian insurgent attack by the sons of Ras Kassa between Addis Ababa and Petros’s stomping-grounds of Dessie; the next day, Petros was escorted to an abrupt martyrdom to the mirroring causes of national self-determination and anti-insurgency realpolitik.
His sacrifice is commemorated in statuary as well as a couple of notable theatrical pieces, Yedam Dems (The Voice of Blood) by Makonnen Endalkachew** and Petros Yachin Saat (Petros At That Hour) by Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin.
* On the scale of thousands. It “showed a certain tenacity,” according to the London Times‘ droll Rome correspondent in a July 30 story.
** Not the same guy as the post-colonial Prime Minister who was executed in a 1974 purge.
On this day..
- 1869: Katkeena and John Anayitzaschist, Glyphs and Gallows - 2020
- 1948: Ruth Closius-Neudeck - 2019
- 1566: Agnes Waterhouse, the first witchcraft execution in England - 2018
- 1598: Lucas, waterboarded Guale - 2017
- 1741: Not Sarah Hughson, "stubborn deportment" - 2016
- 1629: Louis Bertran, martyr in Japan - 2015
- 1938: Janis Berzins, Soviet military intelligence chief - 2014
- 1879: Kate Webster, of the Barnes Mystery - 2013
- 1969: Joseph Blösche, Der SS-Mann - 2012
- 1947: Three Jewish terrorists and two British hostages - 2011
- 1600: The Pappenheimer Family - 2009
- 1747: Alexander Blackwell, who left them smiling - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Activists,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Ethiopia,Execution,Famous,History,Italy,Martyrs,Occupation and Colonialism,Power,Religious Figures,Shot,Wartime Executions
Tags: 1930s, 1936, aboune petros, abuna petros, abune petros, addis ababa, benito mussolini, dessie, endelkachew makonnen, fascism, haile selassie, imperialism, italo-abyssinian war, makonnen endalkachew, nationalism, rodolfo graziani, theater, tsegaye gebre-medhin
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