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Abebe Gellaw is an award-winning Ethiopian journalist and human rights activist based in the United States. The exiled journalist is best known for interrupting and vocally condemning the late Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi at the G8 food security symposium that was held in the Ronald Reagan Building on May 18, 2012..

Education Born in Addis Ababa, he went to Yekatit 12 Comprehensive Secondary (Menen) and joined the Addis Ababa University (AAU) in 1991. In 1993 he was one of the student activists opposed to the controversial referendum that allowed Eritrea to secede without making any concessions to Ethiopia’s right to have access to the sea. He was also one of the student leaders and organizers that challenged the summary dismissal of 42 lecturers and professors from AAU, where he studied Political Science and International Relations. He was jailed for weeks until he was released on bail. Career and activism Abebe worked for private as well as state-owned newspapers including Habasha, which was owned by jailed journalist Eskinder Nega. He also worked for the Ethiopian Herald as senior reporter and editor. He says working for the Herald was an eye-opening experience that exposed him to the entrenched discrimination within the TPLF-dominated regime. Abebe was editor of Addisvoice.com and also joined the Ethiopian Satellite Television where he produced and edited Insight, a program that featured high-profile guests that included Herman Cohen, former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs and Ambassador Vicki Huddleston, who was U.S. chargé d'affaires during the 2005 clamp down. Exile In 1998 he was awarded a Reuters training bursary in Fleet Street, London. He decided to remain in the United Kingdom and became an activist and journalist. In 2008, he went to the United States after he won the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University. The late Ethiopian dictator Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who ruled Ethiopia with an iron-hand fist for 21 years. During the G8 food security symposium on May 18th, 2013, Abebe humiliated Zenawi by interrupting him with condemnations and a call for freedom. It was reported that over 800 heads of states and governments, ministers, special advisers, diplomats, corporate CEOs, celebrities like Bono and world class experts were gathered at the Atrium Hall within the Ronal Reagan Building. President Obama opened the meeting with a keynote speech that recognized the African leaders for their “leadership” in food security. When Meles was talking about private and public partnership in agricultural development in Africa, Abebe interrupted him. “Meles Zenawi is a dictator!...Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!...”

Awards and recognitions He is the first Ethiopian journalist to win the John S. Knight Fellowship for Professional Journalists as well as Yahoo International Fellowship in 2009 at Stanford University. The following year he was a visiting scholar at the Center on Democracy Development and Rule of Law (CDDRL) and Hoover Institution at Stanford. Abebe, along with supermodel Liya Kebede, was honored as one of the 2010 Young Global Leaders by the World Economic Forum. He is also a recipient of the coveted Human Rights Watch’s Hellman/Hammett award for persecuted writers and journalists in 2011. He was voted Ethiopian Person of the Year in 2012 by listeners and viewers of the Ethiopian Satellite Television and Radio.