Mengistu found guilty of genocide

[WUOrevolt]

Mengistu found guilty of genocide

Mengistu Haile Mariam has lived in exile for 15 years
Ethiopia's Marxist ex-ruler, Mengistu Haile Mariam, has been found guilty of genocide after a 12-year trial.
The former leader was tried in his absence. He has been in exile in Zimbabwe since being ousted in 1991 and many fear he will never face justice.

In a notorious campaign - known as the Red Terror - thousands of suspected opponents were rounded up and executed and their bodies tossed on the streets.

Mengistu and dozens of his officials could face the death penalty.

All bar one of the other 72 officials also on trial were found guilty of genocide. Thirty-four people were in court, 14 others have died during the lengthy process and 25, including Mengistu, were tried in absentia.

MENGISTU HAILE MARIAM
1937: Born in Walayitta
1974: Emperor Haile Selassie overthrown
1977-78: Thousands killed during Red Terror
1994: Genocide trial in Ethiopia begins
2006: Found guilty of genocide


Profile: Mengistu Haile Mariam

The BBC's Amber Henshaw said the atmosphere was muted at Ethiopia's Federal High Court in Addis Ababa as the elderly defendents shuffled in and out, dressed smartly in suits.

But she says there were joyful scenes as one of the men who was acquitted embraced his family.

Sentencing is expected on 28 December.

They were accused of killing thousands of people including the last emperor, members of the royal family, 60 ministers and top officials.

The court also found them guilty of imprisonment, illegal homicide and illegal confiscation of property.

"Members of the Dergue (Mengistu's junta) who are present in court today and those who are being tried in absentia have conspired to destroy a political group and kill people with impunity," said the High Court judgement. "They set up a hit squad to decimate, torture and destroy groups opposing the Mengistu regime," it said.

The evidence against Mengistu, who is nearly 70, included signed execution orders, videos of torture sessions and personal testimonies.

Rule

Mengistu's Marxist rule began in 1974, when he and a group of officials known as the Dergue, overthrew Ethiopia's emperor, Haile Selassie. The emperor had failed to come to grips with a poor harvest, and the situation escalated into a devastating famine.

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Mengistu soon emerged as the leader, and in the confusion following the emperor's death the government became embroiled in bitter clashes with students and leftist rivals.

Mengistu responded by brutally suppressing the unrest.

Declaring Ethiopia a Socialist People's Republic, he turned to the Soviet Union, which backed him in fighting an invasion from Somalia.

But a war fior independence in Eritrea rumbled on, and rebellion erupted in the province of Tigray.

Moscow re-armed the Ethiopian military, but it gradually crumbled until in 1991 the combined Eritrean and Tigrayan forces were on the outskirts of the capital, Addis Ababa.

Mengistu then fled to Zimbabwe, where his friend, President Robert Mugabe gave him sanctuary.

Mr Mugabe has so far refused requests to extradite Mengistu to Ethiopia.

Mengistu himself refuses to recognise the legal basis of the trial, accusing those who overthrew him of being mercenaries and colonisers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6171429.stm

[WUOrevolt]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6171927.stm

[Hiero]

Genocide against who?

[Rollo]

In the late 70s Mengitsu openly killed many of his own friends and comrades. I think something like 90 of his own party members were killed according to his demand.

I'm not sure about what happened in red terror exactly but looking for links explaining it.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

There was no "genocide" (defined as 'the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group'). This is bullshit and postering by the current Addis Ababa regime.

[Guerrilla22]

:lol: This verdict is meanigless considering he's been granted asylum by Mugabe.

[Hiero]

Originally posted by Compañ[email protected] 14, 2006 04:08 am
There was no "genocide" (defined as 'the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group'). This is bullshit and postering by the current Addis Ababa regime.
Excactly.

Mengistu could be charged maybe for incompetance, and maybe national oppression of the Eritrea people. I don't know the excact conditions. But first lets see the imperialist charged for aggression against Ethopia under Mengistu rule, and maybe charge thoose people who captured and blockaded Ethopia's ports.

[Prairie Fire]

I agree with Heiro and Companero de Libertad.
Mengistu did not commit "Genocide".

Now, I'm not going to uphold Mengistu as the symbol of what Socialism should
be, but as with all socialist leaders, I think the charges against him are grossly exagerated. Keep in mind that Mengistu was removed by an EXTERNAL force rather than an internal force.

I think that his biggest mistakes were trying to impose socialism in a putchist manner; The people of Ethiopia did not have a revolution, hence they did not make socialism their own. Also, in Zimbabwe now, he has become something of a land owner, perhaps proof that he was simply playing the "socialist" card to gain military/economic support from the Soviets.

Still, he made many gains. He tried to eleminate Tribalism, which is a force currently destroying Africa and killing millions. Near the later stages of his regime,
he did manage to end the famine in Ethiopia, the legacy of Halie Sellasie.
I don't doubt he killed a lot of people ( The consequences of a government imposed on the people, rather than composed of the people). Still, Ethiopa ( like
much of the socialist world) was a feudal nation that needed to be dragged into the 20th century kicking and screaming.

[Cheung Mo]

Mugabe's an idiot, and anyone who would ally themselves with him bust have been an evil bastard: I mean, this guy rants and raves about European imperialism while at the same time using the motherfucking Bible (Given to that corner of Africa by Europeans) as justification for his regimes persecution of sexual and gender minorities.

[Omri Evron]

Mangistu was a traitor of the revolution- the first people he killed and oppressed were other revolutionary leaders and members of the Dereg. After the old aristocracy was overthrown by the popular revolution, Mangistu's main opposition came from the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party and other marxists that wanted a more fundamental and revolutionary change in the Ethiopian life. Mangistu opposed these changes but adopted marxist slogans. It is true that even after the liquidation of he Dereg and the replacement of the democratic revolutionary bodies by Mangistu's dictatorial rule, Mangistu's government made many progressive reforms to the former kingdom that was ruled by the god-emperor Heila-Silasy (mostly the agrarian land reform and the campaign against illiteracy). But that does not excuse him from the terrible atrocities he committed against his own people: mostly Eritreans, Tigreans and other ethnic minorities and perceived political threats (most of which were also socialist-oriented), or the handling of the 1984 drought (mostly the forced transfer of hundreds of thousands of peasants) and the forced "Villagization" plan of 1986. We really should stop treating every dictator that uses marxist propaganda as a true socialist revolutionary.

[Prairie Fire]

Cheung Mo:

So... you have no idea about Mengistu, but you have allready condemed him, simply by association. This seems to be what you're good at:Condeming all
leaders/organizations with only minimal research.

Omri Evron has many good points about Mengistu. Of course he was not a Marxist
( Neither were most of the leaders of Afro-communist countries.). Still, what dogmatists like Cheung Mo can't wrap their head around, is that in some ways Mengistu, or at least the Derge, were better for Ethiopia than the alternative.
Omri and myself have pointed out a few examples.

[Janus]

The term genocide is slowly losing its original meaning due to the constant use of it to describe almost any type of event which causes large numbers of deaths.

Mengistu definitely oversaw some major purges and was responsible in part for the famine that ensued during his rule, but this still doesn't qualify as genocide as the others have pointed out.

[refuse_resist]

Mengistu Haile Mariam convicted by lackeys of imperialism

Friday, January 26, 2007
By: Eugene Puryear

Guilty of seeking liberation from capitalist exploitation

In December 2006, Ethiopia’s former leader Mengistu Haile Mariam was convicted in absentia for “war crimes” after a 12-year show trial spearheaded by the current pro-imperialist government. He was sentenced to life in prison on Jan. 11.

Ethiopia’s prime minister, Meles Zenawi, was the driving force behind the trial. He put Mengistu on trial along with 106 additional former officers of the Derg. The Derg was another name for the Provisional Military Administrative Council, a group of Ethiopian military soldiers and low-ranking officers that overthrew the government of the monarch, Haile Selassie.

Mengistu and the other Derg officers were tried for their participation in the "Red Terror" of the late 1970s. Zenawi’s government accused Mengistu and his supporters of killing thousands of people. But these crude, anti-communist lies slander the policies actually pursued by the Derg-led government of Ethiopia.

Mengistu currently lives in exile in Zimbabwe. Its anti-imperialist leader, Robert Mugabe, has said that Mengistu will not be extradited to Ethiopia. A spokesperson for Mugabe told the Ethiopian weekly The Reporter that, “As a comrade of our struggle [against white colonial rule in former Rhodesia], Comrade Mengistu and his government played a key and commendable role during our struggle for independence and no one can dispute that.”

Revolutionary Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, 1972-73 were years of severe drought and famine. Hundreds of thousands died. The ruling monarchy headed by imperialist puppet Selassie did little to resolve the crisis. Property relations were feudal and the landowners held supreme power.

Despite imperialist and religious propaganda that attempts to deify Selassie, workers, peasants and significant sectors of the middle class were oppressed, exploited and forced to toil in poverty under his rule. Ethiopia was also engulfed in a civil war with separatists in Eritrea.

During Selassie’s reign, Ethiopia’s life expectancy was only 38 years, and 90 percent of the country was illiterate. There was a narrow strata that constituted the privileged upper classes.

The famine and war created a deepening crisis for the Ethiopian government. In 1974, following a wave of strikes and other mass actions, Selassie was deposed by the communist-inspired Derg.

The Derg introduced broad and profound social revolution to the workers and peasants of Ethiopia.

The first act of the Derg government was to smash feudalism by expropriating without compensation all land over 25 acres and turning it over to the peasants. The peasants then worked the land either on cooperative farms or on small personal plots. Even on the personal plots, neighbors pooled their harvests.

The Derg quickly declared its goal was to establish a Marxist-Leninist state in Ethiopia. But Ethiopia’s economy remained highly underdeveloped because of centuries of colonialism and neocolonial rule. So the Derg declared that the task of the government and the people was to complete the national bourgeois democratic revolution to eliminate the vestiges of feudalism.

Facing imperialist opposition, but aided by the socialist bloc and Cuba, the Ethiopian revolution was able to quickly accomplish many important things. All land and most enterprises were nationalized, and there was a countrywide campaign to improve the status of women.

The Derg government also organized hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants into associations to defend nationalized property against active counter-revolutionary currents in society. The government recognized that only the vast majority of the Ethiopian people could move the revolution forward.

‘Red Terror’ fact and fiction

The Ethiopian revolutionary forces, led by Mengistu, did employ violence to counter the violence unleashed by the forces of counter-revolution and in order to defend and extend the revolution. Marxists recognize that the employment of force and violence is the inevitable consequence of the class struggle in the highest phase of confrontation in the revolutionary process. Both sides employ force in defensive and offensive operations.

The bourgeois press paints revolutionary violence as excessive and horrific. But this leaves out the reason why violence can be necessary—the ruling class never gives up its massive amount of wealth and class privilege without a fight. So, even after the Ethiopian revolutionaries triumphed, the imperialists and their counter-revolutionary proxies continued to organize and overthrow the revolution. In this pursuit, the counter-revolutionaries in Ethiopia, as elsewhere, used untold violence and terror.

Because of the intense imperialist pressure on the Ethiopian process, different political factions began to develop inside the Derg. One faction opposed Mengistu because they did not think building socialism in Ethiopia could succeed. Instead of principled opposition, these forces began to ally themselves objectively, and then outright, with the imperialists. They began attempting to disrupt the revolutionary process by attacking peasant farm collectives and factories, killing many workers and farmers.

In response, the pro-socialist Derg leaders rallied the Ethiopian people to defend the revolution. The country’s peasants’ associations, with 6 million members, raised a force of 500,000 to protect Ethiopia’s social gains. This army of the people was trained and armed by the Derg.

Additionally, every important factory and mass organization also raised a militia to defend their workplace.

It is this army and the people’s militias that are now dubbed the “Red Terror” by the imperialists and their lackeys, like Zenawi.

Contrary to what the capitalist press claims today, the “Red Terror” was not some repressive secret police force. Rather, it was the armed organizations of the Ethiopian people defending the gains of their revolution. Yes, they used force, sometimes necessary deadly force, all to prevent a return to the days of exploitation under Selassie.

Zenawi's hypocrisy

It should be no surprise that Meles Zenawi does not recognize the difference between genocide and revolutionary violence. He is a stooge of imperialism. Zenawi and his followers—armed and funded by U.S. imperialism and African client regimes, like Eritrea—overthrew the pro-socialist Derg government in 1991.

The many years of drought and famine under Selassie’s rule were difficult for the Derg to overcome, despite registering significant social and economic advances. The overthrow of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc also dealt the Derg a crushing blow. The government relied on the Soviet Union and its allies for critical funding and military support. By 1991, all that support was gone.

Mengistu was forced out of Ethiopia that year as Zenawi and his cronies ascended to power. Immediately, the Zenawi government reversed many of the Derg’s land reform policies and other progressive gains.

Since 1991, Zenawi's rule has been marked by an authoritarian bent. Tens of thousands of people have been imprisoned or killed, many of them Derg supporters. In June 2005, Zenawi’s police killed hundreds of anti-government protesters who demanded a voice in Ethiopia’s government.

In late December 2006, Zenawi oversaw the invasion of Somalia by the Ethiopian military. It was a proxy invasion initiated and directed by the United States to impose an unpopular puppet government on Somalia and displace a potentially anti-imperialist government in formation.

The actions of Zenawi and his government towards former Derg officials is no more than an attempt to rewrite history. The government wants to wipe away the achievements of Ethiopia’s revolutionary period. It also wants to divert attention away from the much-hated violent policies of the pro-imperialist Zenawi.

All revolutionaries and progressives should question claims of “genocide” and “senseless violence” when imperialists and their stooges use them against anti-imperialist governments or organizations. In the case of Ethiopia, the actions of the Mengistu government and the workers and peasants supporting it were taken to defend the pursuit of true equality.

http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?JServSess...ws_iv_ctrl=1261 (http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?JServSessionIdr001=dywe3jyzw5.app5b&page=NewsArticle&id=6327&news_iv_ctrl=1261)

[Mikhail Frunze]

Charges of "genocide" pressed by the Addis Ababa regime cannot be taken with seriousness. This is the same regime which murdered students in 2005 and subsequently had the audacity to charge workers and opposition political leaders with attempted genocide[!]. In Ethiopia, the term "genocide" pertains to political as well as ethnic groups.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6064638.stm

At the behest of western imperialists, Ethiopia has unleashed the same sort of savage aggression against Somalia which Ethiopia was subject to in 1977-78. If genocide has been committed, it has been by the current Zenawi regime against the Somali people and culture.

In the so-called "Red Terror", the Derg simply responded to the terro perpetrated by the "Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Army". Mengistu had mistakenly equipped his adversaries and bloodshed ensued. Overall, 5000 people were killed on both sides.


The EPRP's efforts to discredit and undermine the Derg and its MEISON collaborators escalated in the fall of 1976. It targeted public buildings and other symbols of state authority for bombings and assassinated numerous Abyot Seded and MEISON members, as well as public officials at all levels. The Derg, which countered with its own counter-terrorism campaign, labeled the EPRP's tactics the White Terror. Mengistu asserted that all progressives were given "freedom of action" in helping root out the revolution's enemies, and his wrath was particularly directed toward the EPRP. Peasants, workers, public officials, and even students thought to be loyal to the Mengistu regime were provided with arms to accomplish this task

Mengistu's decision resulted in fratricidal chaos. Many civilians he armed were EPRP sympathizers rather than supporters of MEISON or the Derg. Between early 1977 and late 1978, it has been estimated that roughly 5,000 people were killed.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/ettoc.html


And in regard to secessionist movements in Eritrea and the Somali-inhabited region, People's Ethiopia took measures to ensure her territorial integrity which is guaranteed by international law. At the behest of reactionary imperialist surrogates like Saudi Arabia and Somalia under the fascistic traitor Siad Barre, national chauvinists provoked vicious civil war with People's Ethiopia. The "Eritrean Liberation Front" was actively supported by reactionary Arab regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Today, Eritrea is basically a western imperialist port in the Red Sea.

Just take a look at how People's Ethiopia was harassed by the surrogates of imperialists:

Derived from 1977 Collier's Yearbook:


In Ethiopia's northern province of Eritrea, a loose coalition of nationalist movements, led by the Eritrean Liberation Front and supported by Arab countries, continued to make progress against government troops. The insurgents captured the important district capital of Nafka in March, and by August they were reportedly in control of at least 80 percent of the province.

In the northwestern provinces of Begemdir, Tigre, and Gojam, government forces combated the Ethiopian Democratic Union (EDU), a right-wing group seeking the overthrow of the PMAC regime. Neighboring Sudan's open support of the EDU was bitterly attacked by the Ethiopian government.

A wave of rebellion also engulfed the southeastern part of the country, where the Somali-speaking peoples of the Ogaden region have carried on a guerrilla campaign against the Addis Ababa government for several years. In July and August, the forces of the Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF), supported by troops and equipment furnished by neighboring Somalia, swept Ethiopian army units off the barren Ogaden plains.

Mengistu was a hero who rescued the Ethiopian people from the barbaric feudal system imposed by the emperor. The literacy rate which was just 10% before the revolution improved to a remarkable 65% in the beginning of the 1980s. The people were liberated from religious superstition when the oppressive Orthodox Church lost its official status; the church lost all the land it controlled before the 1974 revolution. The government nationalized rural land without compensation, abolished tenancy, forbade the hiring of wage labor on private farms, ordered all commercial farms to remain under state control, and granted each peasant family possessing rights to a plot of land not to exceed ten hectares.

However, I think a rather problematic part of People's Ethiopia was that the Derg was not a proletarian movement. It was basically a military government which dressed up as communist under the "Workers Party" in order to extract assistance from the USSR. The overwhelming majority of congressional delegates to the "Workers Party" in the 1980s were soldiers rather than workers. But this could be seen as necessary for Ethiopia's conditions because there has been an absence of either activism by political parties or the presence of a proletariat. In such a circumstance, the military could act as the people's vanguard.