WHO IS … MENGISTU HAILE MARIAM?
At the height of the Mengistu terror in Ethiopia, the families of people executed by militias attached to the Kebeles or street committees were forced to reimburse the state for the bullets used to kill their loved ones if they wanted to reclaim the bodies.
Thousands of people were killed in the purge officially dubbed the “Red Terror”, which raged throughout Ethiopia between 1976 and 1978. The terror was the work of the Marxist Dergue (or committee) made up of about 100 junior army officers, led by Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, which tightened its grip after the overthrow of the feudal madness of Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie.
“Imperialists and counter- revolutionaries”, Mengistu dubbed the soon- to-be victims, as he launched the Red Terror in the capital, Addis Ababa, in highly dramatic fashion – smashing bottles filled with a bright red substance to symbolise the blood of the enemies of the revolution.
In reality however, after the cohorts of the former emperor had been disposed of, the victims of the terror were mostly students, intellectuals and the supporters of rival left-wing groups, notably the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front – later to emerge as the leading force in the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).
Ironically, it is the institutionalising and bureaucratising of the violence of the state that has haunted former military dictator Mengistu since he was forced to flee Ethiopia as the Dergue was finally deposed – by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front in 1991 – after a struggle that was continuous from the time that the military officers of the Dergue seized power from the ashes of the Haile Selassie regime, thus pre-empting the rule of the liberation armies that had brought the emperor to his knees.
Much of the violence orchestrated by Mengistu’s quasi-Marxist regime was in fact effected through the agency of so- called Kebeles, neighbourhood watch committees which also served as local government structures as well as the security apparatus of the government on the street.
These Kebeles would meet under regular and formal circumstances to discuss how to eliminate perceived enemies of the state. Each member would sign documents to confirm the decisions taken at the meeting.
These sinister minutes would then be forwarded to the next level of the single party apparatus of government.
However the Red Terror was only the beginning of a reign of terror and barbarism that lasted 17 years, with the overt and covert sponsorship of both the United States and the Soviet Union as the two powers sought supremacy in a Cold War fought largely on foreign soil. Between 1974 and 1977 alone the US sold arms to the value of $180-million to the Dergue.
When relations with the US soured in the complexities of Cold War politics, the Soviets were quick to step into the breach, piling up $1-billion in arms and securing the services of 15 000 Cuban troops to assist the Dergue in their campaigns against the Eritrean and Ethiopian liberation armies.
Meanwhile, when killer droughts hit Ethiopia in the early 1980s, Mengistu’s government systematically and cynically blacked out information on the famine causing the deaths of tens of thousands of Ethiopians. The reason was that the areas worst hit by the drought were areas controlled by the resistance.
Later the famine was used as an excuse to forcibly relocate, hundreds of thousands of villagers from northern Ethiopia to the south.
Supposedly the relocations were aimed at moving people out of famine-ridden areas into the more fertile parts of the country, but in reality the intentions were entirely political, with the goal of starving rebel forces of potential supporters. More than 100 000 people died in the forced relocation process alone.
When the new government established a special prosecutor’s office in 1992, after the EPRDF took power, there were mountains of chilling bureaucratic paperwork detailing the atrocities committed in the name of the revolution to help them in their task. When, in January 1997, a war crimes tribunal was set up, charges were brought against no fewer than 5 198 agents of the regime, of whom 2 246 were already in detention, while 2 952 were charged in absentia. Included in the list were 72 top-ranking officials of the Dergue, with Mengistu listed as accused number one.
The Nuremberg-style tribunal – which is empowered to pass the death sentence – reports to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
When Mengistu was finally deposed, he left the country with a debt of $8,6- billion, according to his successor. An estimated 750 000 people had been forced to become refugees from the assorted purges of the Mengistu regime; 60 000 children had been left crippled by starvation and 45 000 orphaned. Agriculture, the mainstay of the impoverished country’s economy, was down by 40%. According to Human Rights Watch, at least 200 000 people had been killed in the rule of the Dergue.
However, Mengistu – reportedly with the connivance of then US secretary of state Herman Cohen – had been granted refuge by President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who refused all appeals for extradition.
Living at government expense in Harare, Mengistu has allegedly served as adviser to the Zimbabwean state security service. Costs for the upkeep of Mengistu, who has subsequently been granted Zimbabwean citizenship in defiance of immigration procedures, have been quoted at $50- million.
TWO WEEKS AGO MENGISTU, 62 YEARS OF AGE, WAS ADMITTED TO THE GARDEN CITY CLINIC IN JOHANNESBURG FOR HEART TREATMENT, APPARENTLY WITH SECRET GUARANTEES THAT HE WOULD NOT SUFFER EXTRADITION TO FACE CHARGES OF CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.