Eskander ran for an hour in total darkness the night the military burned down his family
home and killed his father and brother. That night, the soldiers forced his mother to sign
over ownership of their family farm to the state.

Eskander had already been imprisoned for four months almost 100 miles away from their
family farmstead in Dima. Dima is in the regional state of Oromia, the homeland of the
Oromo people: a large minority ethnic group who have been subject to political oppression,
cultural suppression and victims of internment and state violence. He took part in a student
protest at the technical college where he was studying electrical engineering when the
military opened fire on protestors. Eskander was one of many students who were arrested
and taken to a military camp, before being sent to an underground prison where he was
beaten with sticks, cut with knives and tortured with hot metal bars.

In 2011, after he’d lived in hiding with his uncle for five months, his mother sold her
possessions to raise funds for Eskander to escape.

Leaving Ethiopia was only the beginning of a decade of turmoil that saw the teenage college
student progress through his twenties working for two years without pay on a building site
in Sudan, imprisoned in Libya by people smugglers, crossing the Mediterranean in a plastic
dinghy, being subjected to a brutal assault by a group of men in Italy, living in a bus station
near Milan and spending time in Direct Provision Centre in Monaghan before finally
boarding a bus to seek a new life of safety in Belfast in April 2019.

After he arrived in Northern Ireland, a doctor suggested that running would be a good way
of helping manage the trauma of his past experiences. He has since won many races as part
of the Annadale Striders Running Club. The medals and trophies he has won adorn his
bedside table, along with newspaper cuttings about his athletic achievements.

In Northern Ireland, a doctor suggested that running would be a good way of helping manage the trauma of his past experiences. He has since won many races as part of the Annadale Striders Running Club, and in 2022 his talents earned him a place in the Northern Ireland and Ulster athletics team, a team that he proudly led to a silver medal in the British Inter Counties Cross Country Championships. The medals and trophies he has won now adorn his bedside table, along with newspaper cuttings about his athletic achievements.  

Since finding sanctuary and security in the UK, Eskander has married, and has now started a family with his wife Amina. They have safety, love, and their own family home. 

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