A 16-Year-Old's Death Is Forcing Ethiopia to Confront Its Sexual Violence Problem

Last year, on an October day like any other, Hanna Lalango was in a public mini-bus on her way home from school. Suddenly, one of the other passengers threatened her with a knife. Five men kidnapped the 16-year-old, taking her to a house belonging to one of them. Hanna was gang-raped and held in the house for several days. Afterwards, she was left in the street, severely injured. When she finally received treatment for her gynecological injuries, it was too late. She died on November 1, 2014.

Her tragic story was not mentioned in media until 15 days after her death. In fact, the brutal gang-rape might not have crossed the public's mind at all, if it was not for university lecturer and Yellow Movement AAU women rights activist Bléna Sahilu. Bléna stumbled across a brief report in a newspaper and decided to start the campaign #JusticeForHanna on Twitter. The Facebook page of the campaign states:

Seeking for an adequate punishment to all responsible for this heinous crime so that no other woman has to go through the same tragedy.

Soon after the launch of the campaign, the story went viral and #JusticeForHanna quickly became one of the top 15 trending hashtags in Africa in 2014.

Bléna described her motivation for starting the campaign:

What struck me and outraged me was the details of what happened to Hanna and how it was basically unnoticed by everyone, specially the media. I wanted to know more about her, about what happened and I wanted to see us speaking out against such acts of cruelty as a community. And we did.

The campaign has highlighted the issue of sexual violence and ignited debates on mainstream media and social media. In most cases, it has received a tremendous support from Ethiopians, although some commentators think that there might be other explanations for why women in Ethiopia are being exposed to violence.

Even if I accept the rights of ladies to wear whatever they like, I do not support [recommend] the idea of making themselves susceptible to violence by being naked like this. Therefore, our beloved sisters, please take care when you dress up so you do not expose yourself to violence. You can protect yourselves that way!

However, most people discussing the matter agree that the victim should not be blamed. In response to the above comment, Betty Negash wrote:

my friend, rape has nothing to do with how the women/girls dress. Rape is about POWER and the desire to have a complete control over others, which is a psychological problem by itself. you can check papers written by researchers (including male ones if you think the women can be biased on the subject) If you see the statistics in Ethiopia, many of the young girls and children are raped by a family member, a relative, an uncle etc. and most of the victims are literally children. Rape is also a result of pre-meditated , planned plot and not something that happens after a sudden sexual desire ( that supposedly get enticed by seeing a girl with mini-skirt). And finally, women have a right to dress in whatever way they wanted to dress. Trust me in developed countries like Britain, women go around town dressing almost underwear like clothes and rape is not as rampant as here, because people there are civilized and respect the rights of women and girls.

Today, many women fears meeting the wrong person on the street. Many women fear that they one day will be humiliated by their loved one. They fear that their own family will turn their back against them. Ethiopia is in great need of change, because if change does not come — there will be many more Hannas out there. What happened to Hanna has sparked an outrage, and that is encouraging. People are no longer willing to tolerate what is happening. Rape and the justification of it needs to come to an end – because fear is not freedom.


Written by
Melody Sundberg
@melodysundberg