Scenes from the “Red Terror”

"We admit that we are terrorists"

This hearbreaking photo shows young men and women, presumably EPRP suspects, being rounded up, wearing signs accusing them of being terrorists, agents of imperialism, and CIA agents. We don't know if this photo was the prelude to these activists being shipped off to prison, or to being summarily executed with their bodies dumped on the street, or eventually both. The repressive violence against EPRP was eventually declared by Colonel Mengistu to be a campaign of “Red Terror.”

“The killing grows from one plateau to another. Several dozen independent leftists were seized in the fall of 1976 and executed a few months later. In March 1977, local neighborhood associations and militia conducted house to house searches in the early hours of the morning (midnight to six o'clock in the morning) looking for EPRP supporters, presumably identified by the presence of leaflets, weapons, typewriters and binoculars. Dozens were executed nightly—some for having leaflets, some by error, some to settle personal grudges...As more people are killed, EPRP's charges that the government is a military dictatorship becomes increasingly a self-fulfilling prophecy.” —Monthly Review, July/August 1977

Two more photos showing reputed EPRP members captured with leaflets, banners, weapons.