Background
Wallelign was born in Amhara Sayint, in South Wollo, currently part of Amhara National Regional State.
Wallelign was born in Amhara Sayint, in South Wollo, currently part of Amhara National Regional State.
He graduated from Woizero Sehin Secondary School in Dessie.
Wallelign was the author of the highly influential but contentious article published in 1969. Wallelign enrolled at the then Haile Selassie I University as a Political Science student. Wallelign soon became involved in the radical student groups that were proliferating at the University.
Due to his student activism he was arrested and sentenced to five years imprisonment in April 1969, but was pardoned by Emperor Haile Selassie shortly afterwards.
Wallelign’s most famous article was published in the student movement’s journal Struggle in November 1969. As a result of the publication a police harassment and media campaign was unleashed against the student movement and Struggle"s publication was suspended.
The following month, Tilahun Gizaw, president of the University Students" Union of Addis Ababa, was assassinated by what is presumed to be agents of the state. Wallelign was arrested again in December 1969 and imprisoned until May 1971.
Sheger FM about wallelign By Sheger FM
Interview with Professor.John Markakis (Ethiopia)
ESATinterview with Zewge Fanta By Business School Amharic part 1
Interview with Zewge Fanta By Business School Amharic part 2
Doctor.Birhanemeskel Abebe Segini and Geletaw on Walelign"s views PART1 By Business School radio
Doctor.Birhanemeskel Abebe Segini and Geletaw on Walelign"s views PART2 By Business School radio
Yehedassew Wazema By ETV
ESATGust-journalist Mohamed Hassan By ESAT
After his release Wallelign worked in the Ministry of Ground Transportation and remained active in the radical movement.
On December 10, 1972, Wallelign and six fellow activists attempted to hijack an Ethiopian Airlines flight leaving Addis Ababa for Europe. Following a string of hijackings carried out by Eritrean and Ethiopian activists in the late 1960s and early 1970s however, Ethiopian security officers had been placed on such flights, and a shoot-out ensued that took the lives of five of the hijackers including Wallelign. He was buried in Dessie. to self-determination, including the right to secession".
The ongoing debate on this constitution bears witness of how controversial his views remain.
In this article Wallelign analyzed national oppression in Imperial Ethiopia and argued that as Ethiopia was not one nation, but rather a collection of different nations and nationalities, whose struggle for self-determination should be supported by the student movement as long as they are committed to Socialism. This was a highly contentious area which divided the student movement at the time, but Wallelign’s views eventually came to dominate the student movement as well as the political parties that it spawned. At the end of the Ethiopian Civil War the rebel Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front named its Wollo offensive Operation Wallelign in honour of the fallen activist.