Rastafarians who sought a spiritual homeland in Shashamene face eviction and arrest for flying flag of Haile Selassie’s empire
In 1999, Ras Paul, a west London DJ born to Jamaican parents, sold part of his voluminous vinyl collection to buy a plot of land and build a house in Shashamene, 125 miles south of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.
Seven years earlier, he had become a Rastafarian, around the time of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, whom the religion reveres as the Messiah. “As an Ethiopian descendent, I wanted to come home,” he says. “It’s the place I felt I belong.”
