Ethiopia’s Red Terror Against Ethiopian Reds
Ethiopia’s Red Terror In the 1970s the political situation in Ethiopia was very chaotic, a military council called the Dergue replaced the Emperor Haile Selassie, meanwhile student movements, unions and political parties were making their presence felt. The Dergue soon felt threatened by these movements outside of its control and in response to rising violence declared a Red Terror and began imprisoning, torturing and murdering thousands of Ethiopians. The Dergue made no secret of this, its leader Colonel Mengistu talked openly about it in speeches in the radio and in the press, and Dergue agents often left the bodies of victims on display in the streets of Addis Ababa. Curiously the main targets for the brutal repression were those who arguably were its fellow travellers. The Dergue publicly supported Communist revolution of the Marxist-Leninist variety and developed close links to the Soviet Union and Cuba. Meanwhile it try to exterminate a rival Marxist-Lenini...