Word: ethiopian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...army and navy installations. One exchange caught a group of 30 Americans, including the local consul, in a social club; they gamely sang John Brown's Body and other traditional songs as tracer bullets arced overhead. A U.S. communications base was hit in another assault. Throughout the week, Ethiopian planes bombed and strafed guerrilla concentrations and mud-hut villages suspected of supporting the rebels. By week's end, according to some accounts, as many as 2,000 people had been killed...
...fire. Only the next morning did the stunned citizens of Addis Ababa hear the radio announcement that the ruling Provisional Military Council, after nine months of relative moderation, had summarily executed 59 members of the regime of deposed Emperor Haile Selassie. "My God," said a Western diplomat in the Ethiopian capital, "they've wiped out the old aristocracy in a single stroke...
...year-old Mengistu except that he speaks for the council, a band of 120 men who range in rank from private to major. Though the council seems to be divided over exactly how Ethiopia should be ruled, a majority of its members obviously favor sweeping social reform. As Ethiopian nationalists, they also want to put down by force the Eritrean guerrilla movement. Aman refused to authorize the council to execute prisoners as it saw fit, and was reluctant to send troop reinforcements to Eritrea because he felt the problem of secession should be solved by granting the province greater autonomy...
...proclamation deposing Haile Selassie also suspended the Ethiopian constitution, banned strikes and antimilitary demonstrations and dissolved Parliament. The coordinating committee declared that a provisional military administration would rule until there are free democratic elections (no date was set) and a new constitution is drawn up to provide for-among other things -freedom of speech, land reform and the separation of church and state. Ethiopia's new leaders said that they planned to summon home from Geneva Crown Prince Asfa Wossen, 57, Haile Selassie's son, and anoint him as Ethiopia's King (significantly, not Emperor). Wossen...
...calm was undoubtedly the result of a carefully orchestrated campaign by the military to discredit Haile Selassie. It reached a crescendo last Wednesday, the Ethiopian New Year and the day before the Emperor's ouster. For the first time, Patriarch Abuna Teweoflos of the Ethiopian Orthodox (Christian) Church did not mention the Emperor-head of the church to which half the Ethiopians belong-in his sermon. Instead, the patriarch asked God's blessing for the officers' movement. Later in the day the coordinating committee broadcast a scathing attack on Haile Selassie, denouncing him for erecting statues...