Around 2,000 people showed up for the torchlight parade in downtown Oslo on Tuesday night to pay tribute to this year’s Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed.
A waving Ethiopian prime minister was greeted with timid cheers and massive celebratory cheer as he came out onto the balcony of the Grand Hotel on Karl Johan’s gate to receive the tribute at 7 pm.
– Abiy, Abiy, Abiy, the cries in the winter rain sounded.
Abiy Ahmed came out on the balcony with his wife Zinash Tayachew, he smiled and bowed several times to the torch bearers.
Singing about the country
The traditional Nobel torch parade, which this year supported peace building in Ethiopia and Eritrea, started at the Railway Square in Oslo at 5.30 pm on Tuesday afternoon. Several of the participants in the parade carried Ethiopian and Eritrean flags and pictures of the Peace Prize winner. Ethiopian song about the country spread across the crowd moving up Karl Johan’s street.
According to police, around 2,000 people participated in the torchlight parade.
Hope and peace
Already ten minutes before the celebration began at the Railway Square, the frosty smoke spread from hundreds of people. A shout of joy from conference organizer Hannah Wozene Kvam opened the speeches held by Lemma Desta of the Norwegian Christian Council, general manager Aurora Nereid of the Common Council for Africa and the KrF veteran Dagfinn Høybråten.
The speeches, which were about hope and peace, were followed by slam poetry from PlussHanna and music performed by Young Beirut. Both the poet and Dagfinn Høybråten also focused on the women in their speeches.
– “It is important to highlight the women’s stories. They are at the center of families. If you get women out of poverty, you get the families with them,” Hanna Asefaw, PlussHanna’s real name, told NTB after the performance.
© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today
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