Mengistu Haile Mariam
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Mengistu Haile Mariam (born 1937[1] [2]) was the President of Ethiopia from 1977 to 1991. During much of this period, the country was led by the Mengistu-allied Workers' Party of Ethiopia. In December 2006, he was convicted of genocide in absentia for his role in a domestic terror campaign known as the Red Terror (1977-1978).[3]
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[edit] Family history
On his mother's side, Mengistu is said to be a direct descendant of Empress Zewditu's maid and Dejazmach Kebede Tesemma, an aristocrat known for his involvement in a series of court intrigues. Kebede was Zewditu's butler in the 1920s, and a confidante of the Regent, Ras Tafari Makonnen, later Emperor Haile Selassie.
Kebede met Mengistu's grandmother, while she was an umbrella bearer to Zewditu. In defiance of court custom, he made her pregnant, and Mengistu's mother was born. Kebede's uncle prostrated himself before the queen and took the blame. Zewditu ordered Totit to leave the palace. The child was brought up at Kebede's home.
Zewditu died mysteriously in her palace on the same day her Gondare husband, Ras Gugsa Wole, was killed in battle. Swiss doctor, Aner was suspected of carrying out an assassination. It is uncertain whether or not Kebede knew of the doctor's mission.
Mengistu's grandmother was still alive when he seized power, and had become a nun of the Ethiopian Orthodox faith. On the special orders of her grandson, the nationalization of land did not apply to her. She continued to own the land near the Holotta Military School just 30 miles from Addis Ababa, which Zewditu had granted her for services prior to her expulsion from the palace in 1928.
Mengistu's father was a former slave who was bought by an aristocratic sub-provincial governor, the Shoan landowner Afenegus Eshete Geda. Eshete encountered Mengistu's father, Haile Mariam, while he was on a hunting expedition at the administrative district of Gimira and Maji, (in Southern Ethiopia) then under the governorship of Dejazmach Taye Gulilat.
[edit] Early life
As a child, Mengistu endured derogatory comments about his Negroid features and dark color -- rooted in the Konso background on his father's side. As a result, he grew to distrust all light-colored Ethiopians with non-Negroid features. When he took power, and attended the meeting of Derg members at the 4th Division headquarters in Addis Ababa, Mengistu exclaimed with emotion:
In this country, some aristocratic families automatically categorize persons with dark skin, thick lips, and kinky hair as "Barias"... (Amharic for slave); let it be clear to everybody that I shall soon make these ignoramuses stoop and grind corn!
[edit] Military service
Mengistu was one of a committee of low ranking officers and enlisted soldiers known as the Derg who in 1974 overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie. Selassie's regime had lost public confidence following a BBC-produced documentary by Jonathan Dimbleby highlighting a famine in Wollo province. The Derg were able to undermine the imperial regime owing to the Emperor's advanced age, the failure of local officials to notify him of the situation, the demands of radical students for reform, and the economic stress caused by the 1973 OPEC oil embargo.[citation needed]
Selassie died the following year. It has been rumoured that he was strangled on orders from Mengistu himself, though Mengistu has denied these reports.[citation needed] Although several groups were involved in the overthrow, the Derg succeeded to power.
[edit] Leadership in Ethiopia
Mengistu formally assumed power as head of state and Derg chairman in 1977, although he had wielded power behind the scenes long before.[citation needed] The transition of power resulted in the execution of two of Mengistu's predecessors as head of state. Under Mengistu, Ethiopia received aid from the Soviet Union, other members of the Warsaw Pact, and Cuba.[citation needed]
[edit] Red Terror
From 1977 through early 1978, a rebellion against the new communist government ensued. In response to guerrilla attacks from the anti-Mengistu Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP), Mengistu declared that the EPRP had begun a campaign of "White Terror." Anti-Mengistu forces, however, accused Mengistu's Workers Party of waging a campaign of "Red Terror."
Mengistu's campaign against anti-government guerrillas was launched with a speech delivered in Revolution (formerly Maskal or "Holy Cross") Square in the heart of Addis Ababa. He included the Eritrean secessionists Shabia or Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), Jebha or the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), the monarchist Ethiopian Democratic Union (EDU), the Woyane or Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF) in this hunt along with the EPRP.
Mengistu gave counter-insurgency forces the authority to arrest, detain, and execute insurgents. From 1977-78, counter-insurgency forces pursued countless suspected insurgents. Military gains made by the monarchist EDU in Begemder were rolled back when that party split just as it was on the verge of capturing the old capital of Gondar. The army of the Republic of Somalia stepped in to aid the WSLF in the Ogaden region, and was on the verge of capturing Harrar and Dire Dawa, when Somalia's erstwhile allies, the Soviets and the Cubans, launched an unprecedented arms and personnel airlift to come to Ethiopia's rescue. The Derg regime turned back the Somali invasion, and made deep strides against the Eritrean secessionists and the TPLF as well. By the end of the seventies, Mengistu presided over the second largest army in all of sub-Saharan Africa, and a formidable airforce and navy as well.
During this period, tens of thousands of Mengistu's political opponents disappeared. Mengistu has subsequently been tried and convicted for genocide for his role in these disappearances.[4]
After out-maneuvering his rivals inside the Derg and his foes in the EPRP, Mengistu had a rift with the other major Marxist group that had originally supported him, the All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement (MEISON). He feared that its members had more loyalty to their party and to Marxist ideology than to the ruling Derg government and himself. By 1978, he had effectively eliminated all potential opposition from the EPRP and MEISON through three phases of purges; the first targeting the EPRP, the second targeting MEISON, and the third eliminating remnants of both groups. Meanwhile, he was still fighting against various opposition groups all around the nation. In an attempt to destroy the will of northern oppositions, one of the famous tragic attack was unleashed on the Hawzen town of Tigray where thousands of people were killed. His fighter planes dropped cluster bombs on the town.[5]
In 1984, Mengistu denied that famine was ravaging the north of the country. United Nations aid workers said Mengistu flew in planes filled with "loads of whisky" to celebrate the anniversary of his revolution. Meanwhile in Ethiopia, around one million more people died of starvation. [6] The killings continued throughout the decade and no one was spared from them as thousands of students, around 10,000 uneducated peasants and thousands of opposition group members (even inside Addis Ababa) were murdered until Mengistu's last days in Ethiopia.[7]
[edit] Embracing Marxism
In the 1970s, Mengistu embraced the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism, which was increasingly popular throughout Africa and much of the Third World in the 1970s among many nationalists and revolutionaries. By the beginning of 1978, Mengistu was killing his own friends and comrades at will.[8] Eighty of the 120 of his own original Party leaders were executed by his order. Mengistu justified their killing by saying,
"the revolution needed to be fed by the blood of traitors".[9]
By the end of 1978, the civil war was largely over, with Mengistu remaining in office. Mengistu, however, remained unpopular among large segments of the population and would find it increasingly difficult in the following years to deal with problems of widespread hunger. He had managed however to instil a culture of fear that kept him firmly in power.[citation needed]
In the early 1980s, under Mengistu's direction, Ethiopia adopted a constitution modelled after that of the Soviet Union and saw the establishment of the Marxist-Leninist Worker's Party of Ethiopia (WPE), now the country's ruling party. During the period, all foreign-owned companies were nationalized without compensation in an effort to redistribute the country's wealth.
On September 10, 1987, Mengistu became a civilian president under a new constitution, and the country was renamed the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
[edit] Famine and insurrections
Mengistu's government was faced with enormous difficulties throughout the 1980s in the form of droughts, widespread famine (notably the Ethiopian famine of 1984 - 1985) and insurrections, particularly in the northern regions of Tigray and Eritrea.
In 1989, the TPLF merged with other ethnically-based opposition movements to form the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). At that time, various anti-Mengistu forces and liberation fronts were forming from North, from North-west and from the Oromia-dominant south of the country. Meanwhile, in the United States, the Heritage Foundation's Africa expert, Michael Johns, labeled Mengistu's government "one of this century's most repressive regimes" and urged the George H. W. Bush administration to support Ethiopia's resistance and seek regime change as official United States policy.[10]
[edit] Fleeing to Zimbabwe
In May 1991, EPRDF forces advanced on Addis Ababa and Mengistu was forced to flee the country with 50 family and Derg members. He was granted asylum in Zimbabwe, as an official "guest" of Robert Mugabe, the president of that country. He left behind almost the entire membership of the original Derg and the WPE leadership which was promptly arrested and put on trial upon the assumption of power by the EPRDF. Mengistu himself blames the collapse of his government on Mikhail Gorbachev for letting the Soviet Union collapse and hence cutting off its aid to Ethiopia.
Mengistu still resides in Zimbabwe, despite attempts by Ethiopia to extradite him to face trial by the current Ethiopian authorities.
[edit] Trial and conviction for genocide
The trial began in 1994 and ended in 2006. 106 Derg officials were accused of genocide, but only 36 of them were present in the court. Several former members of the Derg have been sentenced to death in absentia. Mengistu was tried and convicted in absentia for genocide during the Red Terror. Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, had previously refused to extradite Mengistu.
[edit] References
- ^ "Mengistu Haile Mariam". MSN Encarta. Retrieved on 2006-12-13. "Mengistu Haile Mariam". Encyclopædia Britannica (Online). (2006). Retrieved on 2006-12-13."Profile: Mengistu Haile Mariam", BBC News Online, December 12, 2006. Retrieved on 2006-12-13. (in English).
- ^ Other accounts state May 21, 1941[1], May 27, 1941[2]
- ^ BBC, "Mengistu found guilty of genocide," 12 December 2006.
- ^ "Mengistu found guilty of genocide, BBC News, 12 December 2006.
- ^ Cluster bombs used on civilians in Tigray
- ^ One million people died in starvation kept secret
- ^ Cluster bombs used on civilians in Tigray
- ^ Mengistu's massacre of his own party members
- ^ Mengistu quote
- ^ Johns, Michael. "A U.S. Strategy to Foster Human Rights in Ethiopia", Heritage Backgrounder No. 692, The Heritage Foundation, February 23, 1989.
[edit] External links
- "Mengistu defends Red Terror", BBC News, December 28, 1999.
- "Timeline of "Red Terror", U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 1989.
- "A U.S. Strategy to Foster Human Rights in Ethiopia", by Michael Johns, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder # 692, February 23, 1989.
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mengistu Haile Mariam |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Former dictator of Ethiopia |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 21, 1941 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | |
| DATE OF DEATH | |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
