The Face of Repression: Political Prisoners

Flyer from the Ethiopian Students Union in Berlin, October 1978

I’m pleased to present another original translation of an Ethiopian Student Movement flyer. This flyer was issued in West Berlin, nominally a part of West Germany, in October of 1978. By this time the worst of the so-called “Red Terror” had more or less run its course: the Derg and its agents had massacred untold thousands of civilian leftists, now including supporters not only of the EPRP but of Meison and WazLeague, and begun to consolidate its rule, its popular support bolstered by its defeat of the Somali invasion of 1977–1978. But the Derg’s repression was not over; the legacy of imposing its will on the Ethiopian people would be jails and prisons filled with dissidents. We can see that the rarified atmosphere of sharp political debate in the Ethiopian student movement has begun to take a back seat to calls for simple and concrete solidarity against repression, as it becomes clear that the Derg’s two years of vicious repression have borne bitter fruit.

Thanks again to the MAO Projekt for excavating and archiving these leaflets, and to comrade LM for the translation from German to English. I’ve made some minor edits to the translation.—ISH

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THE SITUATION OF 20,000 POLITICAL PRISONERS IN ETHIOPIA

Back of the flyer

The struggle of the Ethiopian peoples for independence, democracy and progress against the reactionary forces and the military junta led to many bloody disputes and have cost many people’s lives. The movement of over sixty nationalities of Ethiopia for the right of self-determination has been quelled repeatedly with armed violence by the military junta. In his speech in September 1978, Mengistu Haile Mariam admitted that during the wars between regular government troops and the liberation fighters in Eritrea over 70,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands made homeless. In the Ogaden War between Ethiopia and Somalia around 100,000 people were killed. At the same time several thousands of the oppressed minorities got shot by the chauvinist Amhara (“Neftegnas”).

For over a year the junta has been hunting down the leaders of the peasant, trade union, workers, women and youth organizations, religious leaders and intellectuals, who struggle for national independence and sovereignty, equal rights, wealth, progress and democracy; both openly and secretly with soldiers and death squads. Daily the number increases of those who are murdered during the day or night in their houses, in their workplaces, on the field, on the street, in private and public transport. We know from unofficial sources that almost 20,000 political prisoners are jailed under inhuman conditions in prisons. Because these 20,000 prisoners “cost much money” for the military junta, it cedes them — without any medical care — to illnesses and epidemics and starvation. Thousands have been partly or fully crippled by brutal torture and or have lost their mental abilities by brain injures. Many are disappeared, some are killed.

Since the end of September 1978, especially during one week, in both Ethiopian radio broadcasts “Radio Ethiopia” and “Voice of Revolutionary Ethiopia” and the two Ethiopian newspapers “Ethiopian Herald” and “Addis Zemen” and in public speeches of the members of the military junta the continuing of the “red terror” against political enemies is being propagated; their slogans include, “The prisoners must become canon fodder!” or “Instant execution of all prisoners!”. Not long ago we got information from unofficial sources, that the military junta already murdered some political prisoners; some are missing and the others are waiting for the so called “red terror”.

We Ethiopian students who live in Germany appeal to all who are for peace, freedom, independence and democracy, to unite in solidarity with the Ethiopian people’s masses and to condemn the repressive actions of the military junta and protest against it in public. We invite all democratic forces to withdraw support the military regime and stand against them with the democratic cause in Ethiopia. Challenge the Ethiopian newspapers “Ethiopian Herald” and “Addis Zemen” at the Ethiopian embassy in Bonn, Brentonastr. 1!

For further information on the founding of a committee for the release of political prisoners in Ethiopia contact: A. Selassie, Postfach 104804, 69 HEIDELBERG

(Ethiopian Students Union - Berlin) 

The attached protest letter should be sent directly to the Provisional Military Council on the following address: P.M.A.C. PO Box 5707, ADDIS ABEBA, ETHIOPIA

Contribution: “An injustice towards those who died for democracy and socialism”

Poster for a pro-EPRP solidarity event in Amsterdam, 1978,
protesting Soviet intervention on the side of the military regime.

I am very pleased to present an original contribution to this blog from a long-time veteran of the Ethiopian revolutionary struggle. A few words about how this contribution came to be.

I have been using social media like this blog and Facebook in conjunction with my book project as a resource to  promote my work, to meet and engage with people who can share their perspective and experiences, and to discuss some of the history and ideas confronted by my studies. I have met some amazing people, several of whom have helped my work out in significant ways. I'm very grateful to everyone who has communicated with me in the course of my research. The discussions that have been joined have helped me identify and formulate responses to some of the controversial and complicated political and ideological questions raised by my study of the Ethiopian left and its revolution.

Anyway, I shared some information and a photo on one aspect of my research, and it sparked a lengthy, and at times heated, conversation about the misguided role of much of the American left in supporting the Derg against the Ethiopian civilian left during the period of military rule in the 1970s. I provoked the discussion by stating,“The Workers World Party, with which the PSL shares political lineage, enthusiastically and uncritically supported the military regime that murdered an entire generation of Ethiopian leftists.” I backed this up with a 1970s-quote from the WWP, illustrating their endorsement of the vicious terror which took the lives of so many leftists: “Red terror was launched just a few months ago against these enemies of the revolution, and many have been killed or captured so that today things are quiet in Addis.” To my surprise, the discussion was joined by a WWP supporter who defended their abhorrent record. A number of other leftists and activists also engaged the conversation — including those with a long record of solidarity work — which focused in large part on how Cuba and the Soviet Union also supported the Mengistu regime against the EPRP.

The WWP apologist on this Facebook thread said drily “sometimes too much blood flows.” It really struck me that historical apologists seem to think it’s easy to wave away real-world horror with abstraction and rationalization; I have come to the conclusion it’s crucial to understand the humanity — or absence of humanity — behind the events we study. When we say the Derg regime eliminated the civilian left, that is an inadequate description of how that was really experienced. There was no button to be pressed to make thousands of EPRP members “disappear.” What there were, were mass shootings, mass torture, midnight raids, neighborhood dragnets. There was mass rape, there was unspeakable tortures involving male and female body parts and fire, iron, and leather. There were hot pincers. There were bodies bent in ways they shouldn't be bent. There were bullets fired into crowds of children. There were years of prison with no charges, often ending in a shot. There were parents asked to pay for the bullets that killed their children. There were piles of bodies left on streetcorners pasted with threatening signs. There were people killed for possessing leaflets and leftist papers, just like the kind most of us have lying around the house. Those who love and serve the people don't revel in such things; monsters do.

Sometime after this conversation, I received the following contribution in response to my post and the commentary afterwards. I am thrilled to be able to share it here; the author is known to me and published here in the tradition of most Ethiopian revolutionary writings under his nom de guerre. As a matter of record, his point of view is solely his own. —ISH

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By KASSAHUN

Sometime ago I read in one of your postings some comments made by others as regards Cuba's stand on Ethiopia and the rehashing of the Soviet camp stand on the EPRP. I will like to register some views as a founding member of the revolutionary party, the first political party in Ethiopia, the EPRP.

Fidel Castro was very much a demagogue and he did blunder big time when he declared “Mengistu is a genuine revolutionary” and supported him to the hilt. No matter if Mengistu, a military butcher, was trying to wipe out progressives who emulated Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh. The Cuban negativity to the Ethiopian revolutionaries had a history. It was clear that Cuba did not take a stand that in any way did not tag along with the Soviet stand.

The contact with what was to become the EPRP and Cuba tool place in Algiers, Boumedienne's Algeria the early 1970s. The Ethiopians who were to establish the EPRP were looking for passports to use for travel outside of Algiers and asked Cuba for one single passport as an initial aid. Cuba, which gave Miriam Makeba a diplomatic passport she did not need, refused to help. Not only that it did not need any relations with the EPRP. When the EPRP held its founding congress it resolved that it did not go along with Soviet line and policy but will keep this position to itself and will not take any part in the Sino-Soviet dispute in any way. This was a position forced upon it by the concrete situation it had to face, to work under. Obviously this was not a position appreciated by the Soviet bloc.

Fidel Castro with Mengistu Haile Mariam in Addis Ababa

Castro's endorsement of Mengistu the butcher as a revolutionary was stupid demagogy and a damage to the Ethiopian Revolution. No one can deny this especially after all these years.

Following the Soviet interest in the region, those parties following its diktat also fulminated against the EPRP. It is surprising that the American pro-Soviet parties still peddle the Soviet anti-EPRP attack and propaganda against the party which upheld an anti-feudal and anti-imperialist stand as its guideline. The organization was attacked by both Western imperialism and the Soviets because it championed sovereignty and refused to the Soviet bloc diktat. Workers World and others are but their Master' s voice.

The EPRP was formed on one part to fight against imperialism and did fight against it with persistence until today. That is why recycling the lies of the defunct pro-Soviet regime is of no value whatsoever. Those who besmirch the organization's name commit an injustice towards those who died for democracy and socialism (as opposed to real socialism). The EPRP fought for people's democracy and is still fighting for people's government and democracy. The reality on the ground imposes upon it the need to reduce the enemy opposed to it. The EPRP was strongly independent, did not bow to pressures (from China and South Yemen for example), kept its revolutionary line intact an paid high cost for that (expulsion from Aden, break with China, hostility from the Arabs especially from Sudan and Somalia).

To try to allege that the EPRP was with imperialism is to ridicule oneself to no end. The attempt by one poster that the fact that EPRP now stands for social democracy and market economy proves its pro-imperialism stance is pathetic to say the least. Thanks to the Soviet-supported Derg, socialism is now in Ethiopia a hated word and choice.

Secondly, given the actual world reality and the encirclement of Ethiopia by reactionary and pro-imperialist forces the party has to move carefully. In the past it rejected the so called non-capitalist path of the Soviets and the Third World theory of the Chinese and the whole Maoist line. As I said the cost was high. The demands raised by the EPRP resounded with the people and that was why people rallied to it. The demands then presented (democracy, people's government, sovereignty, the rule of law, real multi-party system etc.) have not been properly addressed up to now and that is why the struggle still continues.

One of the people who posted on your line sounded like an Eritrean groupie. The groupies did much damage then. So called progressives and leftists who adopted so called liberation Fronts and became unabashed god fathers of petty bourgeois movements should now regret their nefarious role. They should regret their support to the now ruling Tigrean and Eritrean fronts and their condemnation of the EPRP for advancing class struggle over ethnic championing.

If your interlocutors want to discuss more and have the determination to go above their defunct partisanship and echoing of outdated dogmas I am ready to engage with them to make them aware of the truth.

Research Update; Faces of History

Dr. Nigist Adane, date unknown

The central premise of the book I'm working on is that the Ethiopian revolution may have ultimately been hijacked by the military and become the story of a military regime, but it didn't start out that way. It was actually a much more complicated story than most histories acknowledge. I'm trying in part to humanize the generation of leftists who, while they were ultimately defeated, shared a dream of a liberated, socialist, and democratic Ethiopia.

I've been fascinated by many of the individuals who lost their lives during the revolution and during the period of military consolidation. It's one thing to read about the loss of nameless thousands, it's another to learn the details of the individual lives lost. Somehow finding photographs of the people one reads about adds a whole other dimension to understanding that history is not just dry words in books but the story of multi-dimensional real human beings meeting real-world challenges and suffering real-world loss. Photos humanize even the people who made terrible mistakes.

The photo above is a picture of one such tragic figure. Dr. Nigist Adane was a pediatrician educated in the Soviet Union, not uncommon for radical Ethiopian students under Haile Selassie. Initially in the orbit of the EPRP, she and her husband shifted and became leaders of the All Ethiopian Socialist Movement or Meison, a group which wound up supporting the military and shares responsibility for the military's bloody vendetta against the EPRP wing of the civilian left. She was active in building the women's movement during the revolutionary period ca. 1975-1976. In mid-1977 her group broke with the military regime and went underground, becoming targets of the same repression they had helped instigate. She was captured with most of the other leadership of the group. The story goes that these high-level leftist prisoners were strangled during a graduation ceremony of security forces cadets. She was killed in 1978. She is just one of the figures who as characters in my book, even small players, have drawn me into the human story of the Ethiopian revolution.

My book project is proceeding nicely. I'm following leads on additional research details and still attempting to acquire original materials. I'm still in need of various translation help. But my writing is really coming together; I'm approximately 2/3 done with a first draft. Finishing a first draft will only be a kind of new beginning: there will be an editing process I expect to be painstaking and frustrating; there are details and sources to add and probably some to delete. I will want to make sure the narrative is understandable, compelling, comprehensive and enjoyable. And I will need to make sure the overall political and historical content is accurate and what I want to communicate. I will soon be approaching a carefully chosen list of book publishers.  

Thank you for visiting my research blog and taking an interest in my project.

Senay Likke’s American Connection

Clip from The People’s Tribune with a photo of Dr. Senay Likke

The People’s Tribune was the journal of the Communist Labor Party of USNA, an American left party that was led by veteran communist Nelson Peery. The paper is still published even though the CLP itself no longer exists by that name. The CLP was formed in the early 1970s by the California Communist League, part of the burgeoning New Communist Movement that channeled so many people radicalized by the late 1960s student and anti-war movement into new communist organizations that looked more toward the leadership of Mao and People’s China over the ossified and reformist pro-Soviet Communist Party or the parties of the Trotskyist tradition.

Dr. Senay Likke was a leader of the Ethiopian student movement in the United States, but also a cofounder of the CLP. Upon his return to Ethiopia in the early 1970s, he was one of the chief conduits of Marxist-Leninist ideology to the Derg, and became a staunch supporter of the military regime. He became one of the leaders, with Meison’s Haile Fida, of POMOA, the Provisional Office of Mass Organizational Affairs, the so-called Politburo of civilian leftists who were Mengistu Haile Mariam’s advisors and supporters. Senay had long been a political opponent of the wing of the Ethiopian revolutionary student movement that would coalesce into the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party; the enmity carried forward after 1974 would morph into a lethally antagonistic relationship. The EPRP would accuse Senay Likke of being one of the chief architects of the Derg’s violent repression against the EPRP that began in earnest in late 1976. In a coup d’etat on the morning of February 3, 1977, Derg vice chair Mengistu executed the Derg’s chairman, General Teferi Benti, and several others, seizing full control of the military government for himself. That same day a disgruntled officer named Yohannes Mitike, who may or may not have been influenced by the EPRP, retaliated by assassinating Senay Likke in his offices, along with Derg security chief Daniel Asfaw.

Here is an obituary from Senay’s CLP comrades featured in the People’s Tribune of February 15, 1977. Ironically, Senay Likke’s followers would be purged and largely exterminated by the Derg in 1978 as Mengistu moved to eliminate leftists whom his Soviet advisors accused of being influenced by Maoism. Despite that fact — and the murder of more of its Ethiopian comrades — the CLP continued to politically support the Derg regime.

A short pamphlet by Senay Likke can be downloaded here. I find its politics somewhat horrifying, but for all the details on that, you’ll have to read my book.

Thanks to the editors of the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism Online for this newspaper clip. The original text follows.

____

Long Live the Ethiopian Revolution

Word has been received, confirming the murder of Comrade Senay Likke, Vice-Chairman of the Political Bureau of the governing Dergue, in Addis Ababa, February 3.

The Political Bureau of the Communist Labor Party expressed to the party cadre, and to all progressives, our profound grief and deep sense of loss.

Comrade Senay, a soon of poor peasants, was a revolutionary of exceptional intelligence and capabilities. After winning a scholarship, Comrade Senay came to the U.S. to complete his education. During the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Comrade Senay selflessly contributed his considerable talents to the formation of a real Marxist-Leninist party in the US. His theoretical clarity, principled activity, and ideological firmness, was of great value during the struggle to consolidate our Party. A devoted patriot, Comrade Senay returned to Ethiopian and plunged into revolutionary activity. 

Our Party pauses in this moment of sorrow to reaffirm our commitment of comradeship and support to the valiant Ethiopian people and to their history-making revolution.

The Derg’s Diary of Repression, 1976

A correspondent has forwarded to me a copy of a fascinating publication. (Thanks JM!) It's a magazine published by the PMAC on the second anniversary of the revolution in September of 1976, which means it dates from the period before Mengistu consolidated his power, and from the period of escalating internal violence and repression on the cusp of all out war between the Derg and the EPRP.

The publication is already a defense of the Ethiopian “Man In Uniform,” the rationalization for the military control of the revolution. As such, it is preoccupied with defending the revolution against “reactionaries” and calling for revolutionary unity. It does not name its enemies. An introduction from the Provisional Military Administrative Council itself says, “If members of the Ethiopian Armed Forces had not taken the necessary measures to safeguard the unity which is as precious as life to them whenever the situation so demanded, it is an incontrovertible truth that our Revolution would not have assumed its present form, shape, and direction.....The Struggle Continues! Reactionaries Will Be Liquidated! The People Will Be Victorious!” 

The photo-filled publication concludes with a several-page “Diary of the Revolution.” However, the diary soon becomes a list of executions. I'm not naive, I understand that revolutions are acts of political violence. The state is an institution of political violence itself. These are part of the basic understandings of Marxism, and recognition of these facts is not glorification of bloodshed. But this diary from the PMAC itself should set aside the notion that the EPRP instigated the violence which was soon directed against it.

To be honest I didn't have the heart to retype this increasingly disturbing list, so I am presenting scans of the last five pages. If you click on the photos, they should enlarge enough to be readable, at least on a computer monitor or tablet.

The deposition of the Emperor on September 12, 1974,  is on the first of these pages. The coup against Aman Mikael Andom is noted on November 23, with the mass executions of members of the previous regimes noted the next day. The execution of Meles Tekle is noted on March 19, 1975.  And of course the execution of Major Sisay Habte who we have been discussing here appears on July 13, 1976. As the months pass, the list of revolutionary achievements — and let it be clear, many of these were quite legitimate and impressive — alternate with an increasing number of repressive acts. It is not clear from most of this Diary, of course, which of these incidents involve actual opponents of the revolution, like the EDU, versus those who advocated civilian control of the revolution, like the EPRP.

Quick Review: Makonen Getu

The Undreamt: An Ethiopian Transformation
by Makonen Getu
Christian Transformation Resource Center (Philippines), 2004
188pp., paperback

This short but engaging memoir is another by a survivor of the Red Terror period, a member of that generation which went from studying at university to making revolution. What makes this memoir particularly interesting is that the author, Makonen Getu, today a development engineer with worldwide Christian NGOs, was in his youth a president of the Union of Ethiopian Students in Europe, and if I'm reading correctly, for a time a member of Meison's Central Committee during the period it went underground at the height of the “Red Terror.” Makonen's memoir is thus the first English-language account I've discovered from a Meison, rather than an EPRP, point of view.

Makonen tells the story of growing up in hardscrabble rural Wollo province. He becomes adept at herding his family's cattle as a small child. Eventually he is lucky enough to be sent to a school to which he must walk two hours each morning. Schooling awakens ambition in young Makonen, and dedicating himself to his studies he eventually finds himself attending university in Sweden at the height of the Ethiopian student movement in the early 1970s. Sweden seems to be the base of the Meison (the All-Ethiopian Socialist Movement) wing of the student movement, and Makonen is radicalized along with his peers, soon studying Marxism-Leninism along with his professional studies. His youthful poverty means he has a clear picture of the injustice and inequality of pre-revolution Ethiopia and he is highly motivated. He joins ESUE, and eventually becomes its president.

But Makonen does not return to live in Ethiopia until late 1977, after Meison breaks with the Derg and returns to the underground. The Derg's death squads are quickly effective in unearthing much of Meison's leadership, and so Meison asks Makonen to return home to help rebuild the underground apparatus and formulate new strategies for guerrilla resistance and the longterm survival of his organization. The central portion of his memoir, entitled “My Communist Years,” is therefore the most relevant to our studies here.

Makonen arrives home with a bag of books on guerrilla warfare, and makes contact with the underground. He doesn't describe the underground Meison in very much detail, nor does he get into many of the political and ideological details which framed the position in which Meison found itself in late 1977, but his account is still a fascinating read. He spends time dodging former acquaintances, watching friends get arrested or disappear, and using his PhD studies as a cover for his covert organizing. Eventually he seems to realize that Meison is losing its battle against its former allies in the Derg, and he manages to escape the country, flying out of Addis Ababa in 1978 on the same day Fidel Castro was arriving for revolution anniversary celebrations.

Makonen returns to Europe, makes contact with Meison in Paris and Stockholm, but in the process of returning to his studies, converts to pentacostal Christianity and leaves the revolution behind for the world of Christian relief and development agencies.

Makonen comes across as a genuinely decent person. While he abandons his Marxism-Leninism, he continues a dedication to social justice and quality of human life. While the more evangelical portions of the book may distract the historical reader, they're brief, and Makonen doesn't waste time with vitriolic anti-communist denunciations. For a member of Meison, he also doesn't spend much time attacking EPRP. He describes being roughed up in Europe once by members of the opposing student faction, but he doesn't get into the bloodletting between EPRP and Meison after the latter ingratiated itself into the lower levels of the Derg's state apparatus. This might be somewhat self-serving, but it is of course ironic that Meison succumbed to the same state violence it had once fostered.

It's really a shame that there is so little English-language literature from the Meison side of the intra-revolutionary conflict. Andargetchew Assegid has written a history of Meison but it is untranslated from Amharinya. Negede Gobeze's memoir is similarly untranslated. I know there is a document called “Meison's Self-Criticism,” but I have yet to discover whether this is available in translation. And Meison founder Haile Fida's prison testimony before his execution is also available, but again only in the original Amharinya manuscript.

One of the more interesting things I got out of this memoir were some hints that the ideological positioning of the Ethiopian left is more complicated than many observers would have it. EPRP is often called Maoist, and while its diaspora supporters inhabited the Maoist milieu, the label seems inaccurate and superficial. Makonen calls himself and Meison Maoist more than once, reminding us that after Mao's death (1976), the halting of the cultural revolution in China, the coup by Deng Xiaoping's faction, and worsening relations between China and the Soviet Union, that ideological silos were in a moment of flux. Perhaps English-translations of Meison materials will surface shedding more light on its political subleties.

The Undreamt is a worthwhile and quick read. Its descriptions of the author's rural childhood and in the dangerous terrain of the revolutionary underground are vivid and engaging.



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How the Derg Slandered the Left

Mengistu Hailemariam announcing the “Red Terror” with a bottle of blood, 1977

The Derg, and the forces behind it, waged an open campaign against its civilian left opponents. Initially, the pro-Derg POMOA (Provisional Office of Mass Organization Affairs) seems to have handled not only the propaganda war against the EPRP, but also some of the initial repression. This meant that Meison and Waz League, for instance, were not only arguing in public with the EPRP during the period of relative press freedom in 1975-1976, and were shaping the arguments on behalf of the initially much-less-ideologically-astute Derg, but through their role in the Derg's mass organizations were active participants, indeed leaders, of armed action against EPRP.

Indeed it was this muddying of the difference between certain groups and the state that set off the violent, if defensive, urban guerrilla campaign of the EPRP. Sadly for the Derg's initial allies, the military regime eventually treated groups like Meison and Waz League just like the EPRP, rounding up and imprisoning or shooting their membership. In any case, given the fact that the Derg officers largely lacked leftwing bonafides before seizing power, it’s pretty clear that the Derg’s ideological assault originated with its leftist advisors.

Let me repeat a crucially insightful quote from Kiflu Tadesse: “Because of POMOA/MEISON's involvement [in the Derg government—ish], the main differences that separated radicals themselves became the concern of the state power and apparatus.” (The Generation, vol. 1) The founders of EPRP, Meison, and Waz League had a long history together in the Ethiopian student movement; differences that seemed abstract in the diaspora or on university campuses exploded into matters of life-or-death importance after the 1974 revolution.

The Derg’s running propaganda war had several patterns. The first was to paint its opposition as “anarchist,” “Maoist” or “Trotskyite.” It was an unoriginal line of argument commonly used by pro-Soviet socialists against opponents deemed to be to their left. The second line of argument was to blur the distinction between the regime’s left and right oppositions, thus suggesting that the EPRP was aligned, objectively if not actually, to the monarchist Ethiopian Democratic Union (EDU). The final line of argument was that its opponents were engaged in subversion of the nation of Ethiopia to the benefit, if not at the agency of, reactionary separatists, western imperialism, or imperialism’s local allies like the suddenly US-backed regime of Mohammad Siad Barre in neighboring Somalia. This included the occasional accusation that the civilian left groups were creatures of the CIA. The war with Somalia that exploded in 1977–78 was in fact quite successfully exploited to consolidate political authority around the Derg. The military seems to have done so without the aid of left surrogates as the civilian left became tenuous and the presence of Soviet (and Cuban) advisors more ubiquitous.

So with that as context, here are some extended passages from English-language Derg propaganda about its efforts to extinguish domestic opposition to its rule. (By way of contrast, I have previously posted an example of an EPRP polemic against Meison.) Although I’m going to refrain from editorializing, or a point-by-point refutation of the Derg’s attacks, let me just say up front that I find the arguments here self-serving, remarkably hypocritical and cynical, generally unconvincing based on my research, and full of outright lies and distortions. When you consider that these arguments were being used to physically eliminate thousands of leftwing activists—many many of them teenagers—it becomes hard not to see the rhetorical flourishes as obscene rationalizations for murder.

(A note on the first entry below, Dr. Senay Likke was a significant figure in the student diaspora who returned to Ethiopia to become an advisor to the Derg. He founded the Waz League, and died the same day as Mengistu’s February 1977 coup against Teferi Bente. I'm preparing a much more detailed article on Dr. Senay's fascinating and troubling role to be published at a later date. The final two entries below, while not from official Derg publication, are from an official Soviet publication and a Cuban publication respectively, and can safely be presumed to be something approaching the official “party line.”)

From THE ETHIOPIAN REVOLUTION (Tasks, Achievements, Problems and Prospects)
by Comrade Senay Likke
no date or publisher noted, probably 1976 Addis Ababa

“When there is revolution, there is counter-revolution. Where there is success, there is failure and where there are achievements, there are problems. This is the inexorable law of Dialectics. The Ethiopian revolution is no exception ad it has its problems....

Imperialism and reactionary feudo-bourgeois states have not only limited themselves to help organize this union of Aristocrats —the E.D.U. They also serve as the mainstay of other reactionary feudo-bourgeois forces like the so-called Eritrean Liberation Front, so-called Tigrain Liberation Front, the so-called Oromo liberation front and the so-called Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Party (E.P.R.P.). The main difference between the E.P.R.P. and the other forces of counter-revolution is that the E.P.R.P. has tried to wear a Marxist garb. It is notoriously known for its revolutionary phrase flaunting — a basic characteristic of Trotskyites. The E.P.R.P. engaged in individual assassinations and lumpen-type gangster terrorism — a characteristic of Anarchists.”

From ETHIOPIA IN REVOLUTION
by the Ethiopian Revolution Information Center, Addis Ababa, 1977

“As the history of all revolutions, particularly that of the Russian, Chinese, Albanian, Korean, Vietnamese and Cuban peoples revolutions amply show that whenever oppressed classes attempt to overthrow an oppressive and exploitative socio-economic order, and begin to build a new, dynamic and revolutionary social system, representatives of the overthrown oppressive and exploitative system, attempt to place political, economic and military barriers on the path of the new social system. The Ethiopian peoples revolution has not been an exception to this dialectical law of revolutionary history....

Ever since the beginning phase of the Ethiopian peoples’ revolution, elements of the overthrown feudo-bourgeois order, agents of imperialism, particularly U.S. imperialism, such as the comprador and the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, the reactionary ruling classes of neighbouring countries, (like that of the Sudan, reactionary Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, North Yemen, etc) seccessionists in the northern region of Ethiopia and the so-called Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Party, EPRP the right wing section of the Ethiopian pettybourgeoisie, have been engaged in numerous counterrevolutionary political, economic and military sabotages in order to foil the oppressed masses revolution. All these counter-revolutionary forces, controlled and guided by their patron, U.S. imperialism, ever since, February, 1974 have been making frantic attempts in every corner of the country with the aim of destroying the revolutionary gains of the oppressed masses of Ethiopia and restoring the defunct feudo-bourgeois order in the country.”


From FOURTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ETHIOPIAN REVOLUTION
Speech delivered by Lt. Colonel Mengistu Haile-Mariam, Chairman of the PMAC (Derg)
September 12, 1978, Addis Ababa [with Fidel Castro in attendance]
Published by the Ministry of Information and National Guidance

“It can be recalled that imperialism for its anti-revolutionary activities recruited and organized feudalists, the petty-bourgeoisie and the lumpen elements. It deployed the so-called Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Party (EPRP), a Trotskyite group, carrying an apparently radical slogan. In unity with the feudalists, this organization established a network of country-revolutionary bases throughout the country. Using the youth and the lumpen, as murderers and assassins, it destroyed the lives of radical intellectuals, many workers, peasants and leaders of urban dwellers associations.... The activities of EPRP such as the burning of crops, the sabotaging of factories, the campaign among workers to decrease production and among peasants not to bring their crops to the urvab areas and the preventing of students from going to school can never be forgotten. On several occasions, it has tried to deprive the mass movement of revolutionary leadership by trying to hatch a right-wing coup d’etat. It has openly supported the Somali invaders and the secessionists in Eritrea.....

This was a time when the country was in a great difficulty and when counter-revolution seemed certain. It also was during this time that the right-roader, the All Ethiopia Socialist Movement (MEISON) betrayed the revolution and fled away from the revolutionary camp. This was also a time when imperialism and other reactionary forces made a major propaganda campaign to distort the image of the Ethiopian revolution....

In this connection we have been observing patiently and calmly...the Chinese situation, whose reactionary stance has become more and more evident. The Communist Party of China which has been degenerating from time to time.... has been a matter of concern among the progressives of the world. Revolutionary Ethiopia has been expressing her concern on this daily worsening reactionary tendency to members of China's Communist Party and to Chinese diplomats who have been to our country on different occasions.... If we consider China's stand regarding the Ethiopian Revolution, when she posed as a supporter at the initial stage and wanted to give some petty assistance, we expressed our goodwill and friendly feelings believe that it was done in a revolutionary spirit. True to the adage, with a handful of grain, approach the full sack, China continued to undermine us internally and divide Ethiopian revolutionaries. Nor did she stop there. By arming the so-called EPRP and separatists in collusion with the CIA, China had also become instrumental for the massacre of any oppressed Ethiopians.”

From THE MEN IN UNIFORM OF THE ETHIOPIAN REVOLUTION
by the Propaganda and Information Committee, Addis Ababa, 1978

“Ethiopia’s men in uniform....have waged a sustained political, ideological and military struggle against the so-called Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Party (EPRP), which conducted an all-out campaign to subvert the Ethiopian Revolution. During the white terror launched by the reactionary EPRP, the men-in-uniform have sacrificed a great many lives. By smashing the white terror of EPRP, they have been able to free Ethiopia's youth who were victimized by the EPRP and have enabled it to join the camp of the revolution.... In collaboration with Ethiopia's progressive forces, the men-in-uniform have played an important role in disseminating the ideas of scientific socialism among the laboring masses of Ethiopia, within their own ranks, and with the peoples militia. They are still continuing to do this. They have foiled EPRP's plan of capturing state power via a short cut before the masses were politically conscious, organized and armed....

Since a class shift occurs in all revolutions, the Ethiopian revolution has also witnessed the emergence of rightist tendencies. There is for example the case of the right opportunist All Ethiopia Socialist Movement, (MEISONE), which deserted the revolution at a very critical moment. Ethiopia's men-in-uniform are currently waging a struggle against this rightists MEISONE, just as they struggled against the EPRP....

While the broad masses of Ethiopia were this preparing for the defense of their country, the feudal remnants and the right wing petty-bourgeois groups such as EPRP, EDU the Eritrean secessionists and the right-roader MEISONE infiltrated the Tatek Military Camp and carried out a systematic sabotage to obstruct the training of the militia. They left no stone unturned in their attempt to hinder the recruitment and raising of the militia and to render its rank and rile nonchalant to the call of the motherland....

The struggle against the counterrevolutionaries and all enemies of the revolution started right at the training centre. By exposing each and every one who was engaged in anti-revolutionary activities, the militia soon cleared its own training center of reactionary elements.”

From ETHIOPIA: Years of Revolution
by Valentin Korovikov [Pravda correspondent]
Novosti Press Agency, Moscow, 1979

“Facts have come to light showing that certain diplomatic and some other representatives of the imperialist powers financed terrorist bands and supported the enemies of the Ethiopian revolution. Nor was the CIA idle.

But the forces of reaction pinned their greatest hopes on the petty-bourgeois anarchist leftist group that called itself The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP). It had been formed before the revolution from various student groups and led by Ethiopians who had returned from abroad, also for the most part students. The Eritrean separatists who had a wide network of agents in Addis Ababa also played an important part of this subversive organisation. They believed that their plans for separation could be furthered if the central authorities were weakened and disorganised, and if there was chaos, constant conflict and strife in the country. It was no accident that the EPRP practically always supported the demand for Eritrea's separation from Ethiopia.

The absence of  political revolutionary party in the country, ideological and practical inexperience of the Ethiopian youth, the dizzy successes of the first stages of the revolution, the leftist slogans of rebellion and anarchy, youthful impatience, under the impact of Maoist literature, to achieve socialism at one fell swoop and certain other factors were responsible for the EPRP acquiring some influence in the capital and other towns. This was also promoted by the fact that the EPRP used Marxist terminology which it applied very arbitrarily to Ethiopian realities.

For instance, the EPRP insisted that, since the army was the product of the Ethiopian monarchy, it could not lead the revolution and, consequently, power should be handed over to some sort of people’s government. This demand was put forward practically on the very next day after the overthrow of Haile Selassie. Ultra-revolutionary popular slogans were also used as a smokescreen for attacks on the Dergue and the army, which in the Ethiopian conditions was the sole force capable of completely wiping out feudalism, breaking the old state machinery, defending the country’s territorial integrity and crushing the armed resistance of the reactionaries.”

From ETHIOPIA’S REVOLUTION
by Raúl Valdés Vivó, International Publishers (CPUSA), 1978
translated from the Cuban original, Etiopia, la revolución desconocida, 1977

“It should also be noted that a great many students have adopted an entrenched antimilitarist stance, one that could only be justified if the armed forces had taken the side of the oppressors: in effect, because of this, many students have themselves ended up on the side of the oppressors, whether or not they want to admit it. The so-called Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP), that engages in counterrevolutionary terrorism in the cities, originally drew its ranks from the students. As was only to be expected, they had a source of inspiration in Maoism. For fear of joining the military, who only yesterday were at the service of reaction, and failing to understand that the army today serves the Revolution, these former students have fallen into the hands of the ousted landowners and into the network of plots engineered against the Ethiopian Revolution by international imperialism and Arab reaction. Of course, also present is the petty bourgeoisie's loathing of discipline, organization and giving way to the masses—even though it invokes their name at all times as the principal driving force in history.”

___

FURTHER READING: For an excellent account of how Meison and the Derg fell out with each other, see Dawit Shifaw's memoir, The Diary of Terror. For accounts of how the Derg's words translated into the terror against EPRP, Babile Tola’s To Kill a Generation is recommended, as is the second volume of Kiflu Tadesse's The Generation.

Regarding the Derg’s occasional accusations that the EPRP was backed by the CIA, there is an interesting account in the Wikileaks cables from the US embassy in Addis Ababa in the aftermath of the EPRP’s 1976 assassination attempt on Mengistu. (Herein, “EPMG” means Ethiopian Provisional Military Government, the PMAC or Derg.) The Embassy is upset that the false charges that the US/CIA is complicit with EPRP will reflect badly on the US, which was still aiding the Ethiopian government.

SUMMARY: EPMG STAGED LARGE RALLY MORNING SEPT 26 OF WORKERS FROM PEASANT AND URBAN DWELLERS ASSOCIATIONS TO DEMONSTRATE SUPPORT FOR PMAC AND CONDEMNATION OF SEPT 23 ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT ON PMAC FIRST VICE CHAIRMAN MENGISTU HAILE MARIAM. DESPITE LARGE CROWDS, RALLY WAS ORDERLY AND PASSED OFF WITHOUT INCIDENT. NUMEROUS PLACARDS LINKING ANTI-REGIME EPRP WITH CIA WERE EVIDENT. THIS CABLE RECOMMENDS THAT NEW REPRESENTATIONS BE MADE TO EPMG IN THIS LATTER REGARD.... 1. AS MEANS OF COUNTERACTING POSSIBLE HARMFUL EFFECTS ON PUBLIC OPINION OF SEPT 23 AMBUSH AND WOUNDING OF MENGISTU, EPMG MARSHALLED ITS FAITHFUL LEGIONS OF PEASANT ASSOCIATIONS AND URBAN DWELLERS ASSOCIATION WORKERS FROM CITY AND NEIGHBORING AREAS TO CONVERGE ON REVOLUTION SQUARE FOR LARGE SUNDAY MORNING SOLIDARITY RALLY. ALTHOUGH STREETS WERE HEAVILY GUARDED BY ARMED TROOPS, FOUR-HOUR DEMONSTRATION WAS ORDERLY THROUGHOUT, AS MASSES PASSIVELY LISTENED TO HARANGUES OF ORGANIZATION LEADERS TO EFFECT THAT REVOLUTION WOULD GO ON, DESPITE DESPERATION EFFORTS OF ANARCHISTS AND IMPERIALISTS, SUCH AS ATTEMPT ON MENGISTU'S LIFE. 2. LARGE NUMBER OF PLACARDS WERE IN EVIDENCE. MOST OF THESE QUOTED MENGISTU TO EFFECT THAT "REVOLUTIONARIES MAY DIE OR BE KILLED, BUT THE REVOLUTION GOES ON." MORE DISTURBING, HOWEVER, WERE FREQUENT REFERENCES TO ALLEGED CIA INVOLVEMENT IN ETHIOPIAN ANTI-REGIME ACTIVITY. AMONG SUCH PLACARDS, WHICH WERE THEN GIVEN PROMINENT PLAY ON NEWS BROADCASTS THROUGHOUT DAY, WERE THE FOLLOWING: "EPRP IS CIA", "AWAY WITH CIA AGENTS, DESGUISED AS TOURISTS", YANKEES GO HOME", NO MORE CHILES AND CIA", PAID CIA AGENTS", "ANARCHISTS DRUNK WITH CIA MONEY". MENGISTU HIMSELF, TO BEST OF OUR KNOWLEDGE, IN HIS SPEECH ON OCCASION, (OR ANOTHER SEPARATE ADDRESS TO TEACHERS SAME DAY), DID NOT MENTION CIA, MAKING INSTEAD ONLY USUAL REFERENCES TO REACTIONARIES, ANARCHISTS, AND IMPERIALISTS. 
3. THIS LATEST OUTBURST OF ANTI-CIA PUBLICITY AFTER WEEK OF QUIET COULD ONLY HAVE TAKEN PLACE WITH EPMG APPROVAL (OR AT LEAST ACQUIESENCE) AND WOULD APPEAR TO NECESSITATE FOLLOW-UP....OUR ARGUMENT SHOULD BE THAT PLACARDS ARE GRAPHIC EVIDENCE OF CHARGE'S CONTENTION TO KIFLE THAT PMAC OFFICIAL STATEMENT OF SEPT 15, WHICH INCORRECTLY LINKED CIA TO ACTIVITIES OF ETHIOPIAN ANTI-REGIME ORGANIZATIONS, CAN ONLY SERVE TO HAVE HARMFUL EFFECT UPON PUBLIC OPINION AND ATTITUDES TOWARD USG AND ITS REPRESENTATIVES IN ETHIOPIA. HENCE, IT ALL THE MORE IMPORTANT THAT SOME MEANS BE FOUND, SUCH AS DISAVOWAL, TO COUNTERACT HARMFUL IMPRESSIONS CREATED BY PMAC STATEMENTS....

Nega Ayele, Martyr of the Revolution

Class and Revolution in Ethiopia, by John Markakis & Nega Ayele

I am re-reading John Markakis and Nega Ayele’s definitive work Class and Revolution in Ethiopia for the first time since the 1980s. It’s an important book, and while dated, contains a lot of really useful analysis and information, untainted by the questionable analyses of certain Marxist intellectuals (deeply revisionist in my opinion), who were eager to rationalize the Ethiopian military as a legitimate force for socialist revolution. It was published in the US by Red Sea Press in 1986, though I believe a European edition appeared in 1978. It covers the period up to about the end of 1977; and it seems to still be in print.

I wanted to pay tribute to a haunting fact about this book: its coauthors were friends who met in academia. Both were scholars but Nega was also a partisan of the revolution, excited and involved in the history that was rushing up around him. They began working on the book in 1975, but Nega Ayele himself did not live to finish it. A member of the EPRP, he was murdered by a “Red Terror” death squad in March of 1977.

Co-author Markakis penned a touching intro to the book about his friend. It concludes with this passage:

“Nega himself disappeared in September 1976, when the battle against the military dictatorship was joined in earnest. His name was entered on the regime's wanted list; in effect an automatic death sentence. He managed to avoid capture for several months. On 19 March 1977, Nega and two of his comrades were caught inside a factory at the town of Akaki, near Addis Ababa, and were murdered on the spot. Three days later, the newspapers announced that he had been killed while trying to run away. In fact, Nega's leg muscles had been wasted by a debilitating disease, and he could walk only with difficulty.” (p. 14)

Hiwot Teffera recounts meeting Nega while he was underground, in her extraordinary memoir, Tower in the Sky:

“That day I went to my cousin Elsa's around six-thirty in the evening. Days before the assessa [Derg campaign against the EPRP], I went there to spend the night and saw a man sitting on the couch in the living room. I instinctively knew he was a Party member. I made friends with him easily and since that day, I sat and talked with him whenever I went there. I became his window to the outside world. At times, people came, took him in a car, and brought him back. He had an infirmity of his legs and I often wondered how he could survive the horrible conditions with his physical infirmity. I wondered if the man was still at my cousin's. He was not. My cousin sadly told me that he had been killed trying to leave town before the assessa. I learned that his name was Nega Ayele....”

Kiflu Tadesse has a more detailed account of Nega's death in volume 2 of The Generation. By way of context, though the Derg and the EPRP had already been exchanging blows, this was only a few weeks after the February 1977 incident in which Mengistu consolidated his mastery of the Derg by having several of his associates executed, blaming conciliation toward the EPRP. A systematic campaign of annihilation was then begun:

“In March 1977, while getting ready to withstand the search and destroy campaign, the EPRP lost four of its invaluable leading members: Yohannes Berhane, a member of the CC and one of the leading members of the Democracia editorial board; Melaku Marcos, a veteran activist and leading intellectual...a CC member without portfolio; Nega Ayele, an economist an a lecturer at the University of Addis Abeba and a member of the EPRP political department; Dr. William Hastings Morton, a British lecturer at the Addis Abeba and a member of the EPRP....

Arrangements were made [to escape Addis] and Dr. Morton came into the picture to provide means of transportation and to give the group a plausible disguise. On a Saturday morning, on the day that the campaign was expected to begin, the [four and another EPRP member named AY] left for the south via the Akaki Road...In order to avoid the checkpoint at Akaki, Yohannes Berhane, AY and Melaku Marcos stepped out of the vehicle just before the city limits. As they walked through an alley, past a factory gate in the Kaliti area...they encountered Abyot Tebeka [Derg-organized “defense guards”] members from one of the factories. They tried to run away, but they were chased by the Abyot Tebeka members and a mob of workers that was just going out on a break. Yohannes and Melaku were killed on the spot... Nega and Dr. Morton, who drove past the checkpoint peacefully were waiting for the others when they heard the gunshots, and sensing danger, cancelled the plan to drive to Langano. As they returned to Addis Abeba, members of the Abyot Tebeka opened fire and killed both of them. Neither the regime nor the Abyot Tebeka members knew that they had eliminated some of the most valuable members of the EPRP.” (p.196)

Since Dr. Morton was a British citizen, this incident actually made world headlines. I've attached the AP dispatch at left. Entitled “Espionage Claimed by Ethiopians,” it repeats the official Derg line that the four killed, including Dr. Morton, were counterrevolutionary spies, caught red-handed in an espionage mission. The news article obliquely refers to the beginning of the mass campaign of terror against the EPRP, then underway in earnest.

Back in the late 1970s when I first learned of Nega Ayele, I was profoundly moved by the idea of a leftist revolutionary who was murdered by a supposedly leftist government while writing an early chronicle of an unfolding revolution. He came to symbolize the generation of young revolutionaries who has haunted me for decades, inspiring me to begin this study of the revolution in earnest.

I was unfortunately not able to locate a photo of Nega Ayele to accompany this blog post. He's somebody we should never forget.



(updated May 28, 2016)

Quick Review: Tim Bascom

Running To The Fire:
An American Missionary Comes of Age in Revolutionary Ethiopia
by Tim Bascom
University of Iowa Press/Sightline Books, 232 pp. paperback, 2015

I expected this book to be a Christian tract about communists torturing Christians in revolutionary Ethiopia, and I’m pleased to report that this is much less that kind of propaganda tract and much more a fairly engaging growing-up story. The author is sixteen years old when his veteran missionary parents take him with them to Addis Ababa in early 1977 en route to a posting in rural southern Ethiopia where his physician father will combine spiritual evangelism with needed medical care.

Writing as an adult, it turns out that Bascom has spent quite a lot of time pondering not only the influential six months he spent in Ethiopia but the meaning and ramifications of revolution, Marxism, and indeed missionary Christianity itself. As a teenager he's pretty much hanging out with other MKs (“missionary kids”), going to school, growing up from shooting at birds with a slingshot to holding hands with a girl, and trying to make sense of what he's seeing around him, which includes random dead bodies deposited by the Red Terror, the frequent background noise of automatic gunfire, frightening kebele checkpoints, and an alien world and culture he's eager to experience. He comes across quite likeable, and raises plenty of existential points about the missionary tradition he grew up in, leaving the book free of missionary certainty and consequently highly readable. I think his attempt to understand — and deliver a verdict on — Marxism, especially Marxism’s view of religion, is well intentioned but unfortunately shallow and off-target, but that's pretty understandable given the contempt shown to Marxist theory in the modern United States.

For the purposes of my study, I found some of Bascom’s anecdotes fascinating:

 “When we passed a burnt-out hulk of a car,  [my friend Dan] said, ‘That's from before Christmas break. Some guerrilla dudes raided an army post and got a bunch of weapons, but they got trapped here.’ ‘It was totally gross,’ Dave added from my other side. ‘You could see bodies for a week.’ ‘Check out the bullet holes,’ Dan said. Then he frowned in a cockeyed way....Dan looked to the driver of the bus, a twenty-five-year-old Ethiopian who seemed a favorite with all the teens. ‘Hey, Yared...what do you think about the burned out car? Were those guys from the EDU?’ The driver, a slender guy with rippling forearms and a receding hairline, shook his head. ‘EPRP,’ he shouted.... I asked, ‘So what's the EPRP?’ ‘The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party,’ Dave explained. ‘They're the student radicals who started the whole thing. They say they want democracy, but they're more communist than Mengistu.’” (pp. 54–55)

He paints a pretty vivid picture of what it was like to experience Ethiopia as an expat kid, but the problem of course is that as a protected young foreigner, his exposure to the realities being lived by Ethiopians, at least as long as he remained in Addis Ababa, is largely watched through a fence or a window. 1977 was a crucial year, but to young Bascom the details are all so much nighttime gunfire. I wished for more of these kind of anecdotes and visual descriptions.

He eventually spends some of his time with his parents in their remote rural mission station, where it's clear that his family's protestantism is as out of kilter with the time and place as their foreignness. They have plenty of connections with a repressed evangelical community (Ethiopian Christianity being largely of an Orthodox variety), and the threat of legal repression seems ever present. Eventually, growing anti-Americanism and government resentment at missionary privilege and property forces Bascom’s family, and the rest of the missionary community, to evacuate Ethiopia in the latter part of 1977, and Bascom is left haunted by a few months of transformative experiences.

I didn't think this book was a crucial read for my research, but it was a fast read and I enjoyed it much more than I expected. Bascom is thoughtful, and his narrative largely avoids self-righteousness or, worse, American colonial/missionary resentment, and his self-questioning of his own coming of age means that this is accessible to readers who don't share his family's vintage 1977 missionary zeal.

How the EPRP Spiked U.S. Imperialism from the Ethiopian Labor Movement

I ran across a series of remarkable documents on Wikileaks that reveal a fascinating moment when both the Derg and US imperialism were taking action to suppress the radicalization of Ethiopian workers.

CELU Logo

An early June, 1975, cable from an Addis Ababa diplomat back to his boss in the State Department, reveals a US Charge d’Affaires Parker Wyman positively freaking out about developments within CELU, the Confederation of Ethiopian Labour Unions. In following a chain of self-referenced cables on Wikileaks, an incredible story is revealed which I haven’t actually read in this amount of detail anywhere else.

CELU was founded in 1962, assisted by pro-imperialist forces in world labor (aka the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, AFL-CIO) hoping to create a captive, docile labor organization with whom the “business community” could cooperate to forestall more militant working class organizing while claiming to promote the free organization of labor. Of course Ethiopian law forbade strikes, and it wasn’t CELU’s original intention to challenge that. It’s not for nothing that the AFL-CIO is jokingly referred to worldwide as the “AFL-CIA.”

However, bad timing for the AFL-CIO in Ethiopia: The development of an organized urban working class in Ethiopia coincided with revolutionary times, and Ethiopian leftists quickly identified CELU as a valuable conduit for expanding their influence among workers. CELU seems to have been beset by factionalism between its original leaders and younger revolutionaries, but joined EPRP May Day activities out in the streets in 1975. Shortly afterwards the Derg closed it down, and arrested a handful of its leaders. But by the end of May, the Derg relented and allowed CELU to continue to function. The younger generation seized the moment to win leadership of CELU.

Kiflu Tadesse, in the first volume of his landmark The Generation history of EPRP, tells the story in more detail of how the leftists, mainly from EPRP but also from Meison and Senay Likke's WazLeague, gained control of CELU from its old guard. But he doesn’t tell a key part of the story of what was actually an impressive, albeit temporary, EPRP success. Let's piece it together.

Here are excerpts from the cable, which reveals palpable panic over sudden communist subversion of CELU:

"IN SESSIONS JUNE 2 AND 3 NEW CELU PROVISIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE BEGAN CONSIDERATION OF NUMEROUS PROPOSED CHANGES. FIRST ACTION TO BE TAKEN WAS VOTE TO SUSPEND OLD CELU CONSTITUTION.... FIVE POINT RESOLUTION NEXT CONSIDERED.... DEBATE INCLUDED EXTENSIVE CRITIQUE OF AMERICAN LABOR RELATIONS WITH "SOCIALIST COUNTRIES" GOING BACK AS FAR AS BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION. AFL-CIO ESPECIALLY CONDEMNED FOR ALLEGED ANTI-SOCIALIST ACTIONS IN CHILE IN RECENT YEARS. PRESENTATION WAS IN SUCH GREAT DETAIL THAT IT WENT FAR BEYOND KNOWLEDGE OF LABOR GROUP PARTICIPATING IN DEBATE. CONCLUSION PROBABLY THAT MATERIAL WAS FED IN EITHER BY CELU STAFFERS GIRMACHEW LEMMA...AND/OR KIFLU, WHO SPENT SEVERAL YEARS STUDYING JOURNALISM IN RUSSIA. IN ANY CASE, THIS WAS FIRST SPECIFIC APPEARANCE OF COMMUNIST LINE AND CONTENT WAS DISTINCTLY RUSSIAN."

Germatchew (Girmachew) Lemma, EPRP labor leader

Germatchew Lemma and Kiflu (Tadesse), were two former student activists who had become leaders in the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Party. At this point in 1975 EPRP was largely underground, and while its “Democrasia” paper was widely circulated, the name “EPRP” was not yet publicized until later that year.

Germatchew was a respected activist. In his memoir Wore Negare, former EPRP activist Mohamed Yimam recounts, “He was an electrifying speaker who mesmerized the audience. Charismatic and towering, he had a commanding presence that that eclipsed anyone who stood near him.... In Girmachew I saw a leader that I was instantly attracted to and seemed capable of leading people to do anything that he wanted them to.”

Kiflu is of course the author of the definitive Generation books we’ve just cited. While he did go to university in the Soviet Union, to attribute his intervention here to Soviet subversion shows how clueless the US embassy was about the dynamics on the ground. While the USSR was not yet in 1975 fully the patron of the Derg, it was then — and ultimately — completely disinterested in the civilian left, and in the end backed the Derg’s state-controlled labor federation.

Back to the cable, again full of insinuations that a dark communist conspiracy is at hand:

MARKOS HAGOS, NEW CHAIRMAN, WAS NOTIFIED LATE JUNE 2 THAT HE APPOINTEDORER DELEGATE TO ILO GENEVA CONFERENCE. FACT THAT HE COULD COMPLETE HEALTH, PASSPORT, TAX AND ALL OTHER FORMALITIES TO ENABLE HIM TO DEPART NEXT DAY SUGGESTS HE MUST HAVE BEEN PREPARED WELL IN ADVANCE....IT IS BECOMING MORE APPARENT THAT STRATEGY OF MAY 31-JUNE 1 MEETING WAS CAREFULLY PRE-PLANNED. SEVERAL INFORMANTS, RELIABLE IN PAST, BELIEVE THAT PRIME MOVERS WERE GIRMACHEW LEMMA OF CELU STAFF AND GETACHEW AMARE WHO SUPPOSEDLY OBTAINED SUPPORT OF LT. COL. ATNAFU ABATE, 2ND VICE CHAIRMAN OF PMAC, AND LEFT-WING GROUP IN DIRG. FORMER OPPOSITION LEADERS, MAINLY FROM SMALL UNIONS, ARE SAID TO HAVE JOINED IN ENTHUSIASTICALLY AND WERE REWARDED WITH SEATS ON PROVISIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

Markos Hagos, leader of CELU in 1975.

Markos Hagos, the new leader of CELU, was in fact an EPRP member. He was not a former student leader, but came out of the rank and file of insurance company workers. CELU staffer Getachew Amare seems to have also been EPRP, at least he was accused of being so when he was put on a Derg deathlist in 1977 (Kiflu, v1, p.144). Atnafu Abate was one of the three leaders of the Derg in 1975. The reference here is curious: while Atnafu seems to have often disagreed with eventual Derg sole leader Mengistu — indeed he was eliminated by Mengistu in late 1977 — but I have yet to see a source corroborating communication between EPRP and Atnafu at this time, only later after Mengistu's first, early 1977 purge.

The cable goes on to urge its distribution to US agents attending the upcoming ILO conference to be on the lookout for CELU radicals.

FOR GENEVA: PLEASE PASS FOREGOING INFORMATION TO PAT O'FARRELL AND JERRY FUNK OF AALC ATTENDING ILO CONFERENCE.

AALC is the acronym for “African American Labor Center.” Here’s a brief background on AALC from Beth Sims’ Workers of the World Undermined: “The African-American Labor Center (AALC), founded in 1964, is active in some 31 countries ranging from Angola to Zimbabwe. Its founder and first director was longtime labor activist and CIA operative Irving Brown.' He molded the institute into an anticommunist organization that spread the doctrine of labor-business harmony and bread-and-butter unionism to its African beneficiaries. Under Brown, the AALC became a vehicle for funneling U.S. aid to procapitalist, economistic African trade unions, a role which it continues to play today.”

The US embassy was so clearly concerned about the presence of revolutionaries within CELU, it wanted to keep an eye on the CELU organizer during his trip abroad. And so the relationship between the US government and advocates of labor peace is exposed.

As mentioned,  it wasn’t just the US embassy that was worried about CELU and worker radicalization. The U.S. Embassy was watching the Derg’s repressive moves against CELU with optimistic caution. A previous cable is fascinating. From May 1975:

6. COMMENT: IF CAUSE OF RUCKUS IS -- AS ASSERTED -- SIMPLE EXASPERATION WITHIN DIRG WITH CELU IN-FIGHTING AND MOVE TRIGGERS REASONABLY STRAIGHTFORWARD ELECTIONS, LABOR MOVEMENT COULD CONCEIVABLY EMERGE STRENGTHENED FROM THIS EPISODE. HOWEVER, IF RADICALS HAVE THEIR WAY, THE STRENGTH TO OVERRIDE OPPOSITION IN AT LEAST SOME UNIONS, AND THE MOMENTUM TO PRESS AHEAD WITH ATTEMPT FOIST MORE PLIANT LEADERSHIP ON CELU IN PREPARATION FOR ITS TRANSFORMATION, DIFFICULT DAYS COULD LIE AHEAD.

That May, Derg representatives went to workplaces where the workers were represented by CELU to justify trying to shut down the confederation. Another cable discusses a confrontation between EAL workers (Ethiopian Airlines, organized by CELU) and the Derg:

DIRG CAPTAIN THEN TOOK FLOOR AND WENT THROUGH EXPLANATION ON REASONS FOR CELU HEADQUARTERS.... CAPTAIN PLACED EMPHASIS ON "CAPITALIST ORIGINS" OF AND SUPPORT FOR CELU. HE NOTED THAT SUCH A CELU HAD NO PLACE IN SOCIALIST ETHIOPIA. THIS ELICITED IMMEDIATE REJOINDER FROM SEVERAL EAL EMPLOYEES WHO NOTED THAT CELU HAD BEEN IMPORTANT TO THEM; ASKED BY WHAT AUTHORITY DIRG HAD CLOSED IT; AND DEMANDED TO KNOW WHAT DIRG PROPOSED PUT IN ITS PLACE. "WE HAVE SUPPORTED CELU WITH OUR VOTES AND OUR MONEY* WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR US?" OTHER EMPLOYEES THEN REPORTEDLY SPOKE UP TO SAY THAT DIRG HAD DISSOLVED STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS WHICH HAD SUPPORTED ITS RISE TO POWER AND TO NOTE THAT DIRG NOW SEEMED BENT ON DOING SAME TO UNIONS. DIRG SPOKESMAN REJOINED THAT "CIA" HAD FINANCED CELU AND IT OBVIOUS THIS COULD NOT CONTINUE. SEVERAL EMPLOYEES THEREUPON IMMEDIATELY RESPONDED THAT DIRG WAS FINE ONE TO TALK ABOUT AMERICAN SUPPORT. IT WAS BEING SUPPORTED BY AMERICAN FUNDS AND AMERICAN SUPPORT FOR ETHIOPIA WAS SURELY NOTHING NEW. DIRG MEMBERS THEREUPON WITHDREW. NEW EAL GENERAL MANAGER TRIED CONCLUDE SESSION ON PATRIOTIC NOTE EMPHASIZING NEED FOR DISCIPLINE. EMPLOYEES TOLD HIM THAT EAL WAS DISCIPLINED ORGANIZATION, BUT THAT DID NOT MEAN EMPLOYEES UNPREPARED SPEAK THEIR MIND TO HIM OR TO DIRG.

And so the Derg’s attempt to use a left-wing posture to justify its repression of CELU was rebuffed, and as noted, the Derg at least temporarily relented.

Yet here is the meat of the US concern, and actually the Derg’s concern as well. In the resolution at that June meeting, the workers of CELU under their new, revolutionary leadership, actually did the right thing and formally renounced ties with the AFL-CIO. This gets at the heart of the competing socialist strategies in the Ethiopian revolution: the Derg attempted to impose its will, the EPRP went to the people. The text of this amazing resolution is reported in another cable:

WHAT IS AFL-CIO?
1. THIS ORGANIZATION SHOWED ITS TRUE REACTIONARY NATURE BY SEVERING ITS RELATIONS FROM THE WORLD WIDE LABOR UNION WHICH WAS LED BY PROGRESSIVES AND FROM THE SOCIALIST RUSSIAN LABOR UNIONS ESTABLISHED IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY. 2. THIS ORGANIZATION WAS ANTI-BOLSHEVIK AND WORKED AGAINST THE ANTI-REACTIONARY CAMPAIGN WHICH WAS CARRIED OUT IN THE WEST WHEN THE GREAT BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION CRUSHED THE REACTIONARY ELEMENTS. 3. THIS IMPERIALIST ORGANIZATION REFUSED TO RECOGNIZE THE RUSSIAN PROGRESSIVE GOVERNMENT EVEN AFTER PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT TRIED TO ESTABLISH RELATIONS WITH THE NEW REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT OF RUSSIA. 4. FROM EARLIEST TIMES, WHEN AMERICA DECLARED WAR AGAINST SPAIN THE MADE THE PHILIPPINES ITS COLONY, THIS ORGANIZATION SUPPORTED THE INVASION IN THE NAME OF THE WORKING CLASS AND IS THEREFORE ANTI-WORKING CLASS. 5. THIS ORGANIZATION SUPPORTED THE AMERICAN INVASION OF VIETNAM, WHICH CAUSED THE DEATH OF OVER TWO MILLION PEOPLE. 6. THIS ORGANIZATION HAS SOUGHT TO RULE OVER THE THIRD WORLD AND HAS BEEN A SABOTEUR ESPECIALLY IN AFRICA, THROUGH SUCH ORGANIZATIONS AS THE AALC. 7. THIS ORGANIZATION SUPPORTED THE PREVIOUS LEADERSHIP OF CELU AND CHANNELED ALL ITS MONEY TO REACTIONARY ELEMENTS. THEREFORE, CELU HAS SEVERED ITS TIES WITH THE AFL-CIO AND IS READY TO FACE ANY HARDSHIPS WHICH IT MAY ENCOUNTER AS A CONSEQUENCE.

It’s a remarkable statement, clearly contextualizing AFL-CIA activity within the aggressive agenda of imperialism. Of course this is not an accident: it was written by the EPRP.

In yet another cable the embassy’s informants describe the authors of this resolution, again worriedly insinuating the authors are agents of the Soviet bloc. It’s clear the embassy is unaware of dynamics out on the street, highly confused about the nature of the opposition to the Derg. Their red-baiting is obvious, but their finger pointed at the Eastern bloc is laughable. It is again interesting that they tie the authors to Atnafu: One might note by implication that the embassy saw political stability in Mengistu’s wing of the Derg. Indeed in 1975 the Derg was still being armed by the United States. From the cable:

MESFIN GEBRE MIKAEL, ONE OF ORIGINAL FOUR FOUNDERS OF CELU, NOW WITH ILO, TOLD EMBOFF JUNE 7 THAT THE FOUR "TECHNICAL ADVISORS"LED BY KIFLU AND GIRMATCHEW WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR DRAFTING RESOLUTIONS PASSED BY CELU....HE ALSO BELIEVES THAT KIFLU, "THE BRAINS" OF THE GROUP, WHO HAS FOUR YEARS JOURNALISM EXPERIENCE IN RUSSIA, SECURED FINANCING FROM MOSCOW CHANNELED THROUGH HUNGARY AND BULGARIA AS WELL AS FROM "CHRISTIAN TRADE UNION GROUP-IN BRUSSELS TO PAY ORGANIZING EXPENSES.... PUBLISHED DOCUMENT IS ACTUALLY SECOND DRAFT. FIRST DRAFT WAS VERY RADICAL AND ANTI-DIRG.... GEBRE SELASSIE GEBRE-MARIAM, ANOTHER OF CELU'S FOUR ORIGINAL FOUNDERS AND NOW ADVISER TO MININT, AGREED THAT FIRST DRAFT WAS WRITTEN IN STRONG LANGUAGE AND ATTACKED DIRG.... HE IS FAIRLY CONFIDENT, HOWEVER, THAT ELECTION WAS CONTROLLED THROUGH ABOVE-CITED TECHNICAL ADVISERS WHO, HE ASSERTED, ARE IN TURN CONNECTED TO DIRG FACTION LED BY LT. COL. ATNAFU, PMAC SECOND VICE-CHAIRMAN.

Here is the coup de grace: This final cable, dated June 11, 1975, also recommends that AALC operations in Ethiopia be terminated because of CELU’s new, anti-imperialist position. And so, even in the face of suppression by the Derg military government, EPRP successfully drove US imperialism out of the Ethiopian trade union movement. Wow.

Unfortunately, CELU was finally banned by the Derg in September of 1975, leaving the newly radicalized CELU only a few months to organize. The Derg set up its own pro-government trade union association, the All Ethiopia Trade Union (AETU). A new labor code did not guarantee the right to strike. And so the “socialist” Derg continued the tradition of labor peace. The EPRP meanwhile continued to organize clandestinely in the working class, setting up an underground revolutionary union, the Ethiopian Workers Revolutionary Union, or ELAMA.

Markos Hagos went underground in 1976. Sources conflict on his fate: Kiflu says he was publicly executed as part of the first wave of the Derg’s “War of Annihilation” in 1977. The April-May 1977 issue of Forward, journal of the World Wide Federation of Ethiopian Students, says he was “killed on March 24 in a gun battle with fascists, who attempted to arrest him. In the fierce gun battle, the valiant revolutionary fighter had finished off well over 20 of the search squad soldiers before his death.”

Germatchew Lemma went underground with the rest of the EPRP leadership. Kiflu tells the story in vol. 2 of The Generation how Derg surveillance identified several EPRP safe houses in June of 1977. After a half-hour gunfight, Germatchew and a number of other party members escaped the initial raid. But Germatchew was killed attempting to reach a fallback safe house. Unbeknownst to him it had also been raided and Derg soldiers lay in wait. He “was killed on the spot.”

Atnafu Abate in 1975

Derg member Atnafu Abate, suspected by the embassy of being connected to the CELU rebels, was executed by Mengistu in November of 1977. Ironically Mengistu accusations against him included “consorting with CIA agents.”