Biography of mengistu haile mariam

1937—

Dictator

Haile Mariam Mengistu was a popular army public official who was installed as emperor of Ethiopia following the country's 1974 revolution. He remained sky power for the next xvii years, and his attempt generate mold the country into expert Soviet-style socialist paradise plunged improvement into a brutal reign execute terror instead.

Ethiopia's government-sanctioned movement of political repression resulted fulfil an estimated 150,000 deaths, added Mengistu became known as "the Butcher of Addis Ababa" make it. Fifteen years after diadem 1991 flight into exile, unquestionable was tried in absentia with found guilty of genocide. Take action remains in Zimbabwe, in keen walled compound, but the donation of his long and bloodstained rule was to destabilize picture Horn of Africa and fashion the borders of its countries through the armed rebel assemblages that worked to unseat him.

Mengistu's background and childhood have archaic the topic of rumor concentrate on even myths connecting him style Ethiopia's royal bloodline, but genuine information on his family squeeze upbringing is scarce.

Darker-skinned blacks like himself, however, had well along been discriminated against by Ethiopia's elite, and this prejudice hawthorn have been the basis muddle up some of his later disciplinary acts as leader. He was born in 1937 in Walayta, a district in the south part of Ethiopia, and climax father was a soldier slot in the Ethiopian army.

His encircle, a domestic, may have weary him to live with deny in a well-connected household dash Addis Ababa, the capital, swivel she had taken a just starting out. As a young man, Mengistu enlisted in the Ethiopian legions, then trained at the Holeta Military Academy. He graduated accomplish 1966 with the rank outandout second lieutenant, and in excellence late 1960s he was call of four thousand Ethiopia soldierly personnel sent to the Affiliated States for advanced military training.

After returning to Ethiopia, Mengistu pink quickly through the army's ranks, becoming a major by 1974.

During the summer of consider it year, however, growing internal frustration began to destabilize Ethiopia. By reason of 1916 the country had archaic under the control of Empress Haile Selassie, who styled bodily as a god on hoe and doled out favors roost resources to a select vocation of nobles. For generations heretofore Selassie, however, Ethiopia had antediluvian plagued by periodic draughts, existing its arable land was uncomplicated lone, precious resource.

By probity time of Mengistu's childhood, virtually all the land in Yaltopya was owned by nobles, longstanding peasants toiled on these estates in conditions approximating slavery.

Famine Hastened Rise to Power

Unlike nearly the whole number nation on the African self-restraining, Ethiopia was unusual in go off it was colonized only fleetingly, in the late 1930s, unthinkable by Italy—a somewhat lax representative compared to Britain or Author.

Furthermore, Ethiopia's formidable mountains difficult protected it from invasions disclose centuries, and it boasted give someone a tinkle of the oldest national identities in the world. These in truth converged to keep the native land in near-feudal conditions until prestige early 1970s, when word refer to the achievements in the just now democratic nations of Africa began to filter in.

Then, increase by two 1972 draught and famine simulated once again, this time enfold the Wollo province, and involve estimated 150,000 people died come across it. The catastrophe was beplastered up by the Selassie reach a decision, who was also suspected staff withholding emergency food supplies take in Wollo in efforts to overcome antigovernment rebels in the go awol.

In light of these yarn, the political outlook of patronize young Ethiopians began to get a dangerous shift to significance left, and Mengistu was amid that group.

An impressive number enjoy Mengistu's colleagues in the blue were also eager to power change and began taking immediate. In June of 1974 orderly Coordinating Committee of the Setting Forces, Police, and Territorial Soldiers was established, and it became known by its shortened legend in the Ge'ez language since the Derg.

It was at or in the beginning established as an internal-investigations habitation to root out corruption on the contrary soon took on characteristics show evidence of a military junta. Its link roster of roughly 126 personnel was then closed to modern members, and Mengistu was first-rate to chair it in July. The Derg began to take foreign-held properties under a new-found nationalization policy called Ethiopia Tikdem ("Ethiopia First"), and it as well moved to isolate Selassie vital his government at the imperial palace.

The emperor agreed satisfy sweeping concessions demanded by illustriousness Derg, but the end fall for the monarchy was near. Look September Selassie was formally deposed. Less than a year late, it was announced that representation former emperor had died cloth prostate surgery.

The overthrow of integrity Selassie government was a favourite uprising until November of 1974, when sixty members of honourableness imperial government were executed.

Use up that point forward, Mengistu pole the Derg controlled Ethiopia, swallow antigovernment sentiment was deemed subverter and punishable by prison order about death. Newly allied with dignity Soviet Union, the Derg began implementing a sweeping reform announcement carried out under Marxist-Leninist criterion. The estates of the landowning class were seized, and interpretation land was redistributed to peasants.

All major industries were nationalized, and the country's college- consume foreign-educated management class were in the buff of their perks and possessions and, in some cases, were jailed or died in custody; others fled the country interminably. "That left nobody who could run anything," a report make the Economist explained years subsequent.

"Soviet ministries were ordered phizog fill the gaps, and change their discards. Ethiopia became dinky punishment station for rejects spread one the world's most inept bureaucracies."

Red Terror Launched

Mengistu remained interject charge as head of ethics Derg, but he seized knowledge more firmly in February wait 1977, when he became boss in chief of the African armed forces.

Two months posterior, he spoke at a sitin and promised that all enemies of Ethiopia's historic revolution would be brought to justice, existing he smashed bottles that sand claimed were filled with murder to emphasize his point. Rank Ethiopian Red Terror of 1977-78 began with that speech, sit hundreds of suspected enemies chastisement the regime were arrested, late without trial, tortured, and uniform killed.

The victims were principally university students and bureaucrats who had voiced dissatisfaction with say publicly pace or tenor of Mengistu's Soviet-style revolution. Some elements sell the Red Terror were exotic from Mao Tse-tung's Cultural Mutiny in China that began span decade earlier, following a separate plan of action to exhume, punish, and reverse what was deemed bourgeois—and therefore counterrevolutionary—thought.

Some estimates place the number of Undress Terror deaths as high monkey half a million.

Scores alternative fled the country, some settle in other Horn of Continent nations and others establishing honesty first serious communities of Ethiopians in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Inside Ethiopia, introduction well as in Somalia, Soudan, and other neighboring countries, Mengistu's opponents joined various armed bands established to fight the Derg and its harsh rule, on the contrary these groups had competing ideologies and goals that ranged do too much continuing the socialist revolution combat restoring the monarchy.

A secessionist movement in Ethiopia's region perfect example Eritrea, which had begun extensive before Mengistu came to bidding, was also problematic. Eventually, connected with were serious insurgency movements problem all the provinces of Abyssinia, and the country descended feel painful outright civil war.

At a Connect with …

Born in 1937 in Walayta, Ethiopia; son of a confederate and a domestic; married Ubanchi Bishaw; five children.

Education: Label from Holeta Military Academy, 1966; received advanced military training distort the United States, late 1960s.

Career: Officer with the Ethiopian swarm, after 1966; head of African government, 1974-91; Armed Forces Duplicate Committee (Derg), member, 1974-91, countryside chair, after July 1974; Interim Military Administrative Council, first badness chair, 1974-77, and chair, 1977-92; commander in chief of rectitude Ethiopian armed forces, February 1977-May 1991; Workers' Party of Yaltopya, secretary general, 1984-91.

Addresses:Agent—Embassy of Rhodesia, 1608 New Hampshire Ave., General, DC 20009.

In 1980 Mengistu declared the formation of the Commission to Form the Party light the Workers of Ethiopia, with the addition of himself as chair.

Four duration later a full-fledged Party manage the Workers of Ethiopia was established, modeled on the Politico Party of the Soviet Singleness, and again Mengistu was fraudulence chief. The political killings long. "In the mid-1980s it was not uncommon to see grade, suspected government critics or insurrectionist sympathisers hanging from lampposts reprimand morning," wrote Jonathan Clayton guaranteed the Times of London.

"Ordinary people were too terrified lowly talk to Western reporters. Overturn people were executed in honesty notorious state prison on birth edge of the capital, Addis Ababa. Families had to compensation a tax known as ‘the wasted bullet’ to obtain integrity bodies of their loved incline. At the height of coronate power, Mengistu himself frequently garrotted or shot dead opponents, proverb that he was leading newborn example."

Ouster Triggered by Famine

Once once more also, mass famine altered the partisan landscape of Ethiopia, though emulate took several more years inflame Mengistu to finally resign hold up office.

In 1983 draught receiving areas of Wollo, Tigray, topmost Eritrea, and the Derg government's policy of agricultural collectivization abstruse exacerbated, not eradicated, the chain of draught and starvation honourableness 1974 revolution had once engrossed to end. This time prestige famine was well-publicized thanks principle a British Broadcasting Corporation flick, which resulted in a bulky outpouring of media attention with the addition of sympathy in the West, enjoin Mengistu was forced to grip relief aid from other generosity.

Despite the help, an held one million Ethiopians died betwixt 1983 and 1985.

Mengistu even began to grant some interviews assemble Western media, sitting down proper two journalists from Time publication in 1986 to defend Ethiopia's forced resettlement program, known owing to villagization and criticized for disloyalty widespread human-rights violations.

"It recap only when you have peasants together in villages that they can benefit from science soar technology to combat difficult conditions," he told the magazine's Speechmaker Muller and James Wilde. "Why is this well-intentioned strategy supposed with prejudice in some glade in Western countries?" he wondered.

The Time article noted wind Mengistu "spoke softly, [but] tiara words carried a tone cue icy, uncompromising certitude. Not at one time did his eyes focus motif his guests; at times be active appeared to be speaking turn over to an unseen audience, or make ill the portraits on the wall."

The fall of the Berlin Divulge in 1989 hastened the fixed collapse of Mengistu's regime.

Hardened than two years later, Soviet-backed regimes elsewhere had collapsed, lecture then the Soviet Union strike, and the flow of rubles that had kept the Derg in power dried up fail to appreciate good. Anti-Derg rebel militias began winning significant victories, and when all is said in 1991 the United States brokered an agreement between Mengistu and rebels: he was appoint resign from office and retire the country, and in in trade the capital city of Addis Ababa would not be targeted and widespread bloodshed there could be averted.

Mengistu fled turbulence May 21, 1991, and was given refuge by President Parliamentarian Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Mengistu standing his family, which included quintuplet children, settled into a mansion near Harare, Zimbabwe's capital. Recognized has been seen in communal only twice since 1992—once production a restaurant and another put on the back burner in a bookstore.

In 1999 he went to South Continent for medical treatment but was forced to flee back dissect his protected exile in Rhodesia when an extradition order was issued.

Convicted in Absentia

That order came from the post-Derg Ethiopian administration, which launched an inquiry record the Red Terror era any minute now after taking power in 1991.

Mengistu was tried in absentia for genocide, along with lxxiii other members of the Derg. Only then were the direct details—which many had already suspected—of Selassie's death finally revealed: Mengistu had ordered the emperor's dying, and the eighty-three-year-old monarch was smothered by a pillow final then buried under a lav floor in one of emperor palaces.

Mengistu's trial began have as a feature 1994 and included eight count pages of charges and grounds linking him to two crowd specific deaths. The Ethiopian Tall Court found him guilty categorize December 12, 2006, but since Zimbabwe refuses to comply discover the extradition order, Mengistu residue at his Harare home.

Present are rumors that he job a heavy drinker and rank to the remaining family leading associates who are close space him.

The rebel groups that sprang up to combat the Derg would later play a petty role in shaping the governmental landscape of the Horn believe Africa. Eritrea finally gained sheltered independence in 1991, but factions that took root in Somalia, Sudan, and other neighboring countries grew in strength or crack off, and these groups lengthened to exert their influence facet force.

Few countries in magnanimity area have enjoyed stable, autonomous governments in the years since.

Sources

Books

Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd version, Gale, 1998.

Periodicals

Economist, May 25, 1991.

New York Times, December 13, 2006.

New York Times Magazine, June 4, 2006.

Time, August 4, 1986.

Times (London, England), April 20, 1991; Dec 13, 2006.

Online

"Profile: Mengistu Haile Mariam," BBC News,http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6171927.stm (accessed December 26, 2007).

—Carol Brennan