Ethiopian running, but not from home
Distance runner Mesfin Hake is building a new life after gaining asylum in Canada
They come from training camps in Kenya and Ethiopia to win marathons all over the world in impressively fast times. They often speak very little English, and few race spectators in North America, Europe and Asia know much about these winning runners.
Feyisa Lilesa started to change that for Ethiopian runners with his marathon performance at the Rio Olympics in August.
He won a silver medal for his country but instead of celebrating at the finish line, he crossed his arms above his head in a sign of protest. It was to show support for members of his Oromo tribe, who are suffering in Ethiopia, and it was a move that he said he’d probably be killed for if he went home. After Rio, he secured a temporary visa for the United States.
Mesfin Hake, a distance runner who fled Ethiopia to seek asylum in Canada earlier this year, was watching his friend on television that day.
“It was perfect,” Hake said of Lilesa’s protest at the Olympics. “It’s making a difference. It’s attracting international media.”
Politicians in Ethiopia have tried to use the popularity of athletes for their own ends but Hake says it’s time for athletes to use the stage to tell the world about the country’s problems, as Lilesa did.
“He has a house, cars, money, but without freedom, without democracy, it’s nothing,” Hake said.
Ethiopia has been ruled by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front for 25 years and there is not a single opposition member in parliament. The government is dominated by ethnic Tigray, who make up 6 per cent of the nation’s population. Human Rights Watch has documented discrimination, human rights abuses and lethal force against largely peaceful protests by the Oromo, the east African nation’s largest ethnic group. But others, including Hake’s Gurage ethnic group, have also suffered, he said.
“I was told I would never succeed as an athlete if I do not join the ruling party. The ruling party and the athletes’ federation are hand in glove,” Hake said, noting that he was denied the necessary paperwork to go abroad for some races. “There is no freedom to work, there is no right to free speech, there is no democracy.”
Hake grew up in a farming family some 200 kilometres south of the capital, Addis Ababa, and he ran seven kilometres to school and back every day. As a teenager, he competed in the Great Ethiopian Run, a 10K race started by running legend Haile Gebrselassie that draws the nation’s best up-and-coming runners. When Hake crossed the line 89th in a field of more than 6,000 runners, he started to take running more seriously. He moved to the capital in 2010 to train with other elite runners.
“Athletics is my job,” said Hake, now 29 and living in Toronto.
It also gave him the means to get a foreign visa and the opportunity to build a better life somewhere else. Hake came to Toronto to run the Mississauga marathon in May and sought asylum here.
His refugee claim, along with that of two other Ethiopian runners in a similar situation, was just accepted. These are not the refugees from Syria who are welcomed at the airport by Canadian sponsors, but people who could be homeless and friendless if not for Matthew House, a social service agency that serves refugee claimants.
Hake will not run in the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon on Sunday. His training has taken a backseat to paperwork, to navigating bureaucracy, to his English classes. But he will run the 5K race with the Matthew House Toronto team, trying to raise $90,000 in the charity challenge.
“I’m happy in Canada today because there is democracy, right to freedoms here . . . I can do everything here, but I am interested to run again,” Hake said. “I miss my friends, my wife, my family, but at this time it is impossible to go back. Maybe, one day.”