A Statement by the President of the Crown Council of Ethiopia, His Imperial Highness Prince Ermias Sahle-Selassie Haile-Selassie
Pagume 5, 2014 (September 10, 2022)
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II fulfilled her promise to God and her duty to her People and all of the People of the World on ጳጉሜ 3, 2014 (September 8, 2022), and was given rest. We mourn and exalt her, particularly for her abiding friendship and commitment to the People of Ethiopia and to our own late ግርማዊ ቀዳማዊ ኃይለ ሥላሴ His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I.
Queen Elizabeth swore to the Almighty that she would, as long as she lived, serve her People, and was anointed by God to do so. In that, and in the fulfillment of that promise, she was alike with our own beloved Emperor. They drew breath and were anointed of God only to serve, and to serve well with courage, wisdom, restraint, and kindness.
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and Emperor Haile Selassie were greatly devoted to each other and to the welfare of each other’s societies.
Queen Elizabeth visited Ethiopia to pay tribute to the Emperor, and it was her father, the King Emperor George VI, who gave refuge to our Emperor during the Second Italian invasion of Ethiopia, assisting him in preparing and waging the great battles to restore Ethiopia to its people after five years of brutal occupation. Little wonder that our Emperor saw in the manner of Queen Elizabeth’s reign over the end of the colonial period and the institution of stable constitutional monarchy a model for how Ethiopia could succeed in moving, itself, toward constitutional monarchy and democracy.
Her Majesty bestowed upon our Emperor, my Grandfather, two great gifts unique to such an ally: he was created a Knight of the Garter, Britain’s highest honour; and he was made a Field Marshal of the British Army. ጃንሆይ Haile Selassie bestowed upon Her Majesty and her Consort, Prince Philip, the highest Orders within the Solomonic gift. In every sense, they bowed to each other, with the compassion of understanding of the great things which harnessed them together in the service of their People.
Queen Elizabeth continued to represent continuity with the Emperor and Ethiopia, in many respects, after the coup of መስከረም 1967 (1974) and regicide ነሐሴ 21, 1967 (1975) against the Emperor, giving refuge and aid where possible to those of the Imperial Family who were exiled in the United Kingdom and unable to return to their homeland.
I was such a beneficiary of this kindness and understood intimately that the Queen and the British People were also the family and protectors of their Ethiopian Solomonic cousins.
Her Majesty retained her commitment to the People of Ethiopia even as her health declined. In 2021 she actively participated in the shaping the design of the Ethiopian Crown Council’s Victory of Gondar Medal, which, with its issue on November 21, 2021 (ኅዳር 12, 2014), celebrated the 80th anniversary of the joint Ethiopian-British (and Commonwealth) efforts to defeat the Italian occupation in ኅዳር 1934 (November 1941). The medal finally brought recognition to the thousands of Patriots (አርበኞች) and members of the British and Commonwealth forces who died to liberate Ethiopia, and Her Majesty played a role in that.
So Her Majesty never forgot us, as we will never forget her. She worked to bring Ethiopia into the greater community of global leadership out of respect for our Emperor and our Solomonic line, which gives us the oldest unbroken link to the time of King Solomon and Queen Makeda of Saba.
Her son, now His Majesty King Charles III, has been highly conscious of our shared links as Peoples. He has seen so many times our Emperor’s standard and arms in the chapel for the Order of the Garter, in Windsor, and was aware of Her Majesty’s abiding friendship with Ethiopia. So we share his grief at the passing of his beloved Mother in a way that shared families can share such feelings. And we wish him long life in his Great Service; as long a life as can be dreamed, and more, after his patient decades of apprenticeship for the Throne.
We, the Ethiopian Crown and People, wish him well, and offer him the same shared feeling of family that we have for so long felt with his Crown. We together face the turbulent future, knowing that what we can do to reflect the nobility, identity, and values of our People will determine the fate, safety, and wellbeing of our nations. We can do that together.
There can be no higher calling than that.
God Bless Queen Elizabeth II; go with our tears of thanks.
Long Live King Charles III; go forward with our hopes and prayers.
God Bless Ethiopia.
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እንደምናችሁ! መልካም አዲስ አመት!
Charity Starts at Home: I see the condolences for QE-II from the ‘Crown Council of Ethiopia’ BUT has it ever offered same to Ethiopians for the millions of Wolloyés who died in the Haile-Selassie Era Wollo Famine? I have never heard/read of any such thing!
I have always been the victim of humiliating derogatory remarks because of this Haile-Selassie Era Wollo Famine in ALL the educational institutions I attended in the White Supremacist West. Does the ‘Crown Council’ understand what the humiliation feels like?
Had the Ethiopian Monarchs cared about Ethiopians, the Wollo Famine could have been totally averted. Even air-dropping plane loads of bread to the starving millions could have catapulted them to world class heroes. Would apology & condolences hurt them?
Relevance of the Ethiopian Monarchy: Is the Ethiopian Monarchy really relevant in today’s Ethiopia where 75% of the population is under age 45? Is the monarchy’s track-record really appealing even to those Ethiopians of the Haile-Selassie Era? I wonder!
i_Mognu / don_Q
Yes the Ethiopian Monarchy’s “track record” is much more appealing, in hind sight, under the microscope and close scrutiny of all the filth, crass, inhumane riff ruffs that have come after HIM Emperor Haile Selassie. The commentator above glosses over and hides what followed after the so-called 1974 revolution. He exaggerates the lies and deliberate misinformation about the Wollo famine that were concocted and spread by the likes of Mesfin Woldemariam, who took it upon himself and as a personal vendetta against the cabinet of the dedicated Ethiopian public servant PM Aklilu Habetewold. Blame Mesfin and his entourage, including the butcher Mengistu Haile Mariam, the then ideological slaves and demagogues of EPRP, EPLF, OLF, TPLF, the Derg for your being the “victim of humiliating derogatory remarks….blah, blah”.
Stop blaming the West and take responsibility for the actions of your so called leaders. Your butcher Mengistu Hailemariam, massacred 60 plus highest civilian and military officials who served their country and motherland Ethiopia, with dedication, dignity, commitment with machine guns and buried them in mass graves dug by prisoners at Alem Bekagne prison. And you have the nerve to blame the West??????? He executed the Sorbonne educated PM Aklilu Habetewold and the Oxford educated young PM Endalkachew Mekonnen point blank. The crass, subhuman actions of your beloved Mengistu and the derby are what triggered and opened the floods of hell that followed and rained upon like bricks and stones on Ethiopians. The red terror followed with tens of thousands of youth executed and with their bodies riddled with bullets left on the streets of Addis and other major cities day in day out. The Somali war followed with simultaneous war with Eritrea in the north. An estimated 200,000 further perished. This was followed with the famine of 1984 that killed over 1 million. Just after using the the Wollo droughts of 1972/73 as pretext to overthrow HIM Emperor Haile Selassie’s government, the butcher Mengistu cause a famine that killed 10 times over what he accused his predecessors. Of course, you do not utter. Word about that, can you search and read about the “We are the world” era? After the demise of the butcher and his escape with tail between his legs, the ethnocentric Meles came and further divided the nation along ethnic lines and tribes. But alas, the trials and tribulations of the curse that followed the violent overthrow of the Ethiopian Monarchy continues to this day, with the new butcher and empty suit masquerading as premier of all Ethiopians while promoting and abetting the displacement of tens of millions of Ethiopians (Ethiopia has the highest IDP in the entire world), overseeing a three year long war that has killed hundreds of thousands and still on going.
So in a nut shell, yes the Ethiopian Monarchy is very relevant as the yardstick of the depth and degradation the nation and its wonderful people have suffered for nearly 50 years, since the era of Emperor Haileselaasie. A quick review of the videos, archived history and documentaries will reveal to anyone you referred to “75% of the population under 45” that the eras of Mengistu, Meles and Abiy are nothing but empty slogans and decades of mass emigration, refugee flights and abject poverty and wasted opportunities.
What is required is that instead of blaming the “West”, the current generation should do a robust soul searching and identify that none other than the self appointed Marxists -Leninist, ethnic liberators and ethnofronts, TPLF, OLF, EPRDF, PP, blah, blah, blah are the impediments to peace, growth and stability. The current generation will be very disappointed to find out the thieves, kleptomaniacs, butchers, murderers and gross human violators are none other than the fake, inexperienced, untalented, undisciplined,unpleasant, unprincipled riff ruffs and in the Ethiopian vernacular “gug mangukks” that have shown their ugly selves and nature as Mengistu, Meles and Abiy and their gluttonous, murderous, ravenous, unethical and untrustworthy sycophants clapping and swarming around day in day out.