Word: mengistu
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...splenetic communique calling the stories "a shockingly big lie" that betrayed the tendency of "high-ranking officials of the Reagen (sic) Administration to go berserk once again on their usually familiar anti-Ethiopian campaign of denigration, disinformation and falsehood." Finally, last week, Ethiopia's Soviet-backed leader, Lieut. Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, conceded that the mass exodus had indeed taken place--at the command of a misguided local official. The offender would be punished, he said, and the refugees welcomed back to Ibnet...
...full story of the forced move became clearer last week when foreign relief workers at Ibnet informed a visiting delegation of United Nations and Ethiopian officials. The government of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam denied - the accounts. The evacuation, it said, had actually begun a month earlier, with several thousand people leaving each week. The army had not been involved; as for the fire that consumed shelters, officials variously described it as an accident, a precaution against an outbreak of cholera, and the work of a demented arsonist. The authorities insisted that departing refugees were given rations to sustain them...
...rule of the late Emperor Haile Selassie. In the mid-1970s, the insurgents were joined in the struggle by Tigrean guerrillas demanding greater autonomy for their 25,400-sq.-mi. province. The insurgencies have intensified in the years since the 1974 coup against Haile Selassie that eventually brought Mengistu to power. The secessionist Eritreans, who number about 20,000, say they control 85% of the Eritrean countryside, while the Tigrean autonomy movement, also with an estimated 20,000 fighters, claims mastery of 90% of Tigre. The people of those areas have paid a heavy price: Mengistu...
...harshest charge being leveled against the Mengistu regime is that it is using Western food aid as part of its "pacification" program. Though Ethiopia says it has 211 famine-relief centers operating chiefly in its northern provinces, all in towns under government control, Mengistu's opponents maintain that little food is reaching most of the residents of Eritrea and Tigre. The main reason: the government refuses to distribute aid in "unsafe" regions, meaning those under guerrilla control. Those who visit government food centers must display identity cards showing that they belong to state-controlled peasant organizations or neighborhood associations. Says...
...relief effort. Operating out of underground bunkers in Eritrea, they organize occasional truck convoys to ferry supplies from Port Sudan on the Red Sea into their territory. What the insurgents lack, however, is access to adequate relief supplies and the means to transport them through a war zone. The Mengistu government has refused rebel offers of free passage for food aid intended to reach the hinterland's of the war-torn provinces...