Word: mengistu
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...Ethiopia's frightened capital (pop. 1 million) begins long before that. Shortly after sunset, armed members of the city's 291 kebeles (neighborhood associations) take to nearly deserted streets seeking "class enemies of the broad masses" -meaning opponents of the brutal Marxist regime of Lieut. Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam and his military administrative council, known as the Dergue. Scouring slum areas of the capital, kebele patrols kick open doors of mud huts in search of objects that would prove subversive intent. Among them: typewriters and field glasses. Justice is often administered on the spot-with a bullet. Foreign...
...massacres-another, in which more than 300 were killed, took place on April 29-reflect the jitters of a besieged regime. From the rebellious northern province of Eritrea to Ethiopia's southeastern frontier with Somalia, Mengistu and the Dergue face the gravest threat to their despotic rule since they overthrew U.S.-backed Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974. In and around the capital, the main opposition group is the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (E.P.R.P.), a Marxist organization, led primarily by students and young workers, that demands a return to civilian rule. E.P.R.P. has given the Dergue good reason...
Dergue headquarters, and even wounded Mengistu in an ambush. One rebel sympathizer accosted Correspondent Griggs on a busy downtown street and boasted: "We have 700 marksmen, and some of them are Mengistu's own soldiers. It will take time, but we will clean out the pseudo-Marxist military leaders eventually...
...While Mengistu's move may advance Soviet aims in Africa (see box), it also relieves the U.S. of the moral burden of backing yet another bloodthirsty dictatorship. During February and March alone. Mengistu's forces are said to have killed between 2,000 and 4,000 of their opponents. Getachew Mekasha, former Ethiopian Ambassador to Egypt, who defected in March, reckons that there are 25,000 political prisoners in Ethiopian jails. Says Mekasha, who is now teaching at California's Ambassador College in Pasadena: "The people in power in Addis Ababa today believe in the blind application...
...Mengistu does little to counteract that image. An erect figure in neatly pressed khakis, he is prone to waving red handkerchiefs, symbolic of blood, and leading crowds in shouting "Down with Yankee imperialism!" on public occasions. In a speech in Addis Ababa's Revolution Square last month, he engaged in one typically colorful bit of theater. First he raised his hand in a clenched-fist salute. Then he smashed to the ground six bottles filled with bloodlike dye-just to show how he would destroy all enemies of his rule...