Word: juntas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...faceless, unpopular military junta in Addis Ababa known as "the Dergue" (literally, the shadow) last week launched an all-out campaign to end the 14-year-old civil war in Ethiopia 's breakaway northern province of Eritrea. Following an appeal by Ethiopia's strongman, Brigadier General Teferi Benti, to "crush the reactionary forces," government sources claimed that tens of thousands of peasant volunteers were marching toward the Eritrean border, reportedly armed with such crude weapons as spears and ancient muzzle-loaders. But it seemed doubtful whether the government would be any more successful in putting down the rebellion...
Pinochet and his military junta had not wasted any time in showing their repressive intentions, and after the bloody coup which overthrew Allende in September of 1973 quickly turned Chile into a murderous police state. The horrified reaction of the world press to the Chilean repression was widespread and still rang loudly in the ears of Videla and his co-conspirators. In addition, a U.S. Senate committee had just published its findings of CIA involvement in the Chilean coup, and the image of a murderous Pinochet aided by CIA support had become prevalent in an uncomfortable U.S. press...
...Some individual cases can be recounted here: Emilio de Ippola, a Paris and Montreal educated Argentine sociologist, disappeared on April 4 along with his wife and Eduardo Molina y Vedia, a reporter from La Opinion. A prompt international campaign of telegrams to Videla inquiring about the disappearances made the junta aware that the news had somehow leaked out. The junta admitted to having detained them for interrogation and assured that they were alive and well. The prompt campaign of telegrams may well have saved their lives. Antonio Misetich, an MIT-affiliated Argentine scientist, was arrested on April 19 (Globe 5/5/76...
...seems likely that the Argentine junta, sensitive to the international revulsion against a violent coup comparable to Chile's, decided to act in two stages. First, a moderate period with sporadic arrests and little censorship, then strict censorship and the imposition of a hard, repressive line. Videla, Agosti and Massera count on two things. This carefully orchestrated two-stage process may allow them to carry out repressive measures under less international pressure. Furthermore, the solidarity campaigns organized in the United States, Canada and Europe, which were so successful in saving many Chilean lives, have somehow become exhausted. Almost three years...
...junta's economic and social policies are essentially analogous to the Chilean ones: freezing of salaries to provide cheap labor and to promote heavy private foreign investment. In order to "restore morality and efficiency to the government, wipe out subversion and restore the economy," Videla dissolved the Congress, provincial and municipal legislatures, suspended all political parties, all trade unions, dismissed the justices of the Supreme Court and banned all political activities. A "Legislative Assessment Council" was formed (just as in Chile) which will assist the new rulers in their government. The death penalty was reinstated for attacks on members...