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RETHINKING THE ETHIOPIAN RED TERROR: APPROACHES TO POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN REVOLUTIONARY ETHIOPIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2019

JACOB WIEBEL  and
SAMUEL ANDREAS ADMASIE
JACOB WIEBEL
Affiliation:
University of Durham
SAMUEL ANDREAS ADMASIE
Affiliation:
International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
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Abstract

This article examines the role of trade unions and of the Kebele – the most local urban administrative structures of the Ethiopian state – in the making of the Red Terror, a period of unprecedented political violence that closely followed the Ethiopian revolution of 1974. Drawing on a broad range of new source materials – from labour union files to oral histories and East German State Security archives – this article shows how the Red Terror was in large part the product of synergies between diverse groups and actors within these structures, and how it was rooted in histories, motives, and collaborations that have scarcely been considered in the historiography of revolutionary Ethiopia. In turn, the Red Terror radically reshaped both trade unions and Kebele administrations, affording Ethiopian state actors an unprecedented means of control over civil society and urban residents.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , November 2019 , pp. 457 - 475
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers and to Justin Willis for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this article. The first author received financial support for the research on which this article is founded from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Corresponding author: Jacob Wiebel, jacob.wiebel@durham.ac.uk

References

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2 Giorgis, D. Wolde, Red Tears: War, Famine and Revolution in Ethiopia (Trenton, 1989)Google Scholar.

3 The concept of ‘red terror’ is contested and has been put to work in pursuit of divergent political projects. The Derg invoked it in order to portray its violence as legitimate in the face of allegedly anti-socialist resistance and to cast its opponents as counter-revolutionaries. More recently, the concept has been used to compartmentalise and denounce particular forms of violence during this period, a shift that had also affected the conceptualisation of terror in the aftermath of the French revolution. This paper refers to ‘Red Terror’, in keeping with historiographical convention, to describe the violence sanctioned by the Derg and thus named at the time.

4 See the discussion in Wiebel, J., ‘The Ethiopian Red Terror’, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History (Oxford, 2017)Google Scholar.

5 Abbink, J., ‘The impact of violence: the Ethiopian “Red Terror” as a social phenomenon’ in Bräunlein, P. J. and Lauser, A. (eds.), Krieg und Frieden: Ethnologische Perspektiven (Bremen, 1995), 137Google Scholar; First author's interview with Kassahun Berhanu, 24 Aug. 2012.

6 Zewde, Bahru, ‘The history of the Red Terror: contexts and consequences’ in Tronvoll, K., Schaefer, C., and Aneme, G. Alemu, The Ethiopian Red Terror Trials (Oxford, 2009), 27Google Scholar.

7 Democrasia, 4:11, 5. First author's interview with Gedion Wolde Amanuel, 19 Mar. 2012.

8 Compare e.g. the distinct periodisation and account of culpability in Tadesse, Kiflu, The Generation, Part II: Ethiopia: Transformation and Conflict. The History of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (Lanham, 1998)Google Scholar and in Andargachew Assegid, በአጭር የተቀጨ ረጅም ጉዞ: መኢሶን በኢትዮጵያ ሕዝቦች ትግል ውስት [‘A Long Journey Cut Short: Meison in the Struggle of the Ethiopian People’] (Addis Ababa, 1993 E.C. [2000]).

9 See esp. Zewde, Bahru, The Quest for Socialist Utopia: The Ethiopian Student Movement, c.1960–1974 (Oxford, 2014)Google Scholar; Kebede, Messay, Radicalism and Cultural Dislocation in Ethiopia, 1960–1974 (Rochester, 2008)Google Scholar; Milkias, Paulos, Haile Selassie, Western Education and Political Revolution in Ethiopia (New York, 2006)Google Scholar; Balsvik, R. R., Haile Selassie's Students: The Intellectual and Social Background to Revolution, 1952–1974 (East Lansing, 1985)Google Scholar.

10 See esp. Bahru Zewde, ‘The history’; Andargachew Assegid, በአጭር የተቀጨ ረጅም ጉዞ:; Kiflu Tadesse, The Generation, Part II; Tiruneh, Andargachew, The Ethiopian Revolution, 1974–1987: a Transformation from an Aristocratic to a Totalitarian Autocracy (Cambridge, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 See esp. Andargachew Tiruneh, The Ethiopian Revolution; Lefort, R., Ethiopia: an Heretical Revolution? (London 1983 [Paris, 1981])Google Scholar; Halliday, F. and Molyneux, M., The Ethiopian Revolution (London, 1981)Google Scholar.

12 See Bahru Zewde, ‘The history’; Tareke., Gebru ‘The Red Terror in Ethiopia: an historical aberration’, Journal of Developing Societies, 24:2 (2008), 183–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 The concept of ‘levels of analysis’ is here being used in the sense elaborated by Williams, P., War and Conflict in Africa (Cambridge, 2011), 35–52Google Scholar.

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15 Thus e.g. Bahru Zewde. ‘The History’, 28–9.

16 See Branch, D., Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya: Counterinsurgency, Civil War and Decolonization (Cambridge, 2009)Google Scholar; Russell, A., ‘Rebel and rule in Burundi, 1972’ International Journal of African Historical Studies, 48:1 (2015), 73–91Google Scholar; Pearce, J., Political Identity and Conflict in Angola (Cambridge, 2015)Google Scholar; Straus, S., The Order of Genocide: Race, Power and War in Rwanda (Ithaca, 2006)Google Scholar.

17 Comparative elements in studies of the Red Terror have been limited to engagement with the ‘classical’ revolutions of France and Russia – most explicitly in Gebru Tareke, ‘The Red Terror in Ethiopia’ – and a discussion of divergent state violence in Ethiopia and Cambodia: Kissi, E., Revolution and Genocide in Ethiopia and Cambodia (Lanham, 2006)Google Scholar.

18 Officially, the archives of ‘The Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic’, located in Berlin.

19 Ethiopian Herald, ‘Six persons executed for dastardly inhuman murder of 24 persons’, 3 Apr. 1977. First author's interview with Estifanos Terefe, who witnessed the public executions as a teenager, 10 Sept. 2012.

20 Clapham, C., Transformation and Continuity in Revolutionary Ethiopia (Cambridge, 1988), 56Google Scholar; Bahru Zewde, ‘The history’, 19.

21 Mengiste, Maaza, Beneath the Lion's Gaze: A Novel (New York, 2010), 234Google Scholar.

22 As Hannah Arendt observed in Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York, 1963), pointing to individual dispositions in contexts of systematic violence is common but rarely provides satisfactory explanations. See the excellent discussion in Huggins, M., Haritos-Fatouros, M., and Zimbardo, P., Violence Workers: Police Torturers and Murderers Reconstruct Brazilian Atrocities (Berkeley, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a recent examination of an African parallel, see Anderson, D., ‘British abuse and torture in Kenya's counter-insurgency, 1952–1960’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, vol. 23:4 (2012), 700–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Confederation of Ethiopian Trade Unions Archives (CETUA), CELU resolution, ‘ከመስከረም 8-11-1968 ዓ.ም. ድረስ ተሰብሰቦ የነበረው የኢ.ሠ.ማ. ልዩ ጠቅላላ ጉባኤ ያሳለፋቸው ውሳኔዎች’,1975.

24 A. W. Hummel Jr, ‘Wildcat strikes appear to wane’, Cable 1975ADDIS11720_bfrom the US Embassy in Addis Ababa, October 1, 1975, Public Library of US Diplomacy. Available on <https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1975ADDIS11720_b.html>. [Last accessed 22 July 2019].

25 Kiflu Tadesse, The Generation, Part II, 151–3.

26 Ethiopian Herald, ‘Six persons executed for dastardly inhuman murder of 24 persons’, 3 Apr. 1977. For an extensive description of such meetings, see UK National Archives, FCO 31/2257-29, ‘Embassy cable to EAD and FCO’, 25 Apr. 1978.

27 Kiflu Tadesse. The Generation, Part II, 151–3.

28 T. Killion, ‘Workers, capital and the state in the Ethiopian region’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Stanford University, 1985); E. Fayessa Negassa, ‘The Confederation of Ethiopian Labour Unions and its first general strike (March 7–11, 1974): causes and impact’, (unpublished MA thesis, Cornell University, 1977); S. A. Admasie, ‘Dynamics of assertive labour movementism in Ethiopia: organised labour, unrest and wages in a socio-historical perspective’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Universities of Basel and Pavia, 2018).

29 Ethiopian Herald, ‘Organized labour grows in strength in this country’, 25 July 1974.

30 Whether Aberra was assassinated or felt compelled to take his own life has not been conclusively determined. Either way, as Killion has compellingly argued, ‘the cause of his death was state repression’: Killion, ‘Workers’, 467.

31 Ibid., 537.

32 One example of such violence was organised by the leader of the Dire Dawa Textile Factory. See Ibid., 508.

33 Second author's interview with Demmelash Tebekaw, 7 May 2015; Killion, ‘Workers’, 512–13.

34 Admasie, ‘Dynamics’; Kiflu Tadesse, ኢትዮጵያ ሆይ, part I (Addis Ababa, 2016).

35 CETUA, CELU resolution ‘ከመስከረም 8-11-1968 ዓ.ም. ድረስ ተሰብሰቦ የነበረው የኢ.ሠ.ማ. ልዩ ጠቅላላ ጉባኤ ያሳለፋቸው ውሳኔዎች’, 1975.

36 ICFTU Archives, Institute of Social History Amsterdam, F. Luyimbazi, ‘Report on the main activities of ICFTU Research Office and general labour situation in Ethiopia from October 1974 to date, January 9’ (1976).

37 Ethiopian Herald, ‘PMAC declares State of Emergency’, 1 Oct. 1975.

38 Public Library of US Diplomacy, Cable 1976ADDIS10880_b from the US Embassy in Addis Ababa, October 8 1976 by A. T. Tienken, ‘Tensions in Addis Ababa’ [available on <https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1976ADDIS10880_b.html > [last accessed on 22 July 2019].

39 Andargachew Assegid, በአጭር የተቀጨ ረጅም ጉዞ, 339.

40 J. Wiebel, ‘Revolutionary terror campaigns in Addis Ababa’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Oxford, 2014), 157f.

41 CETUA, PMAC memorandum ‘Provisional Revolutionary Guard Committee የአብዮት ጥብቃ ኮሚቴዎች የተቋቋሙባቸው ድርጅቶች በ26-1-70 የታጠቁ’, 1977.

42 CETUA, AETU report ‘ከግንቦት 11 እስከ ሓምሌ 29 ቅን ድርስ ምን ተሰራ? ሪፖርት’, 1978.

43 CETUA, Letter to the PMAC from Temesgen Madebo ‘ስለ ጓድ ዓለማየሁ’, 9 Mar. 1977.

44 For an example of such a reduction, see D. and M. Ottaway, Ethiopia: Empire in Revolution (New York, 1978), 185–86Google Scholar.

45 Though see an exceptional recently published case study of the Red Terror in Addis Ababa's Keftegna 15, written from the perspective of the EPRP: Nesibu Sebhat, ፍፁም ነው አምነቴ። ቀይ ሽብር፣ የከፍተኛ 15 እውነተኛ ታሪክ። [‘My conviction is complete: the history of the red terror in Keftegna 15’] (Gaithersburg, 2015).

46 Ofcansky, T. and Berry, L. (eds.), Ethiopia: A Country Study (Washington, 1991), 230Google Scholar.

47 Abera Yemane Ab, The Defeat of the Ethiopian Revolution, 92; Clapham, Transformation and Continuity, 51; Interview with Abera Yemane Ab, 13 Dec. 2012.

48 Clapham, Transformation and Continuity, 55; Lefort, An Heretical Revolution, 171–2. See Dereje Workayehu, ‘A history of police and policing in Addis Ababa under the Derg regime, 1974–1991’ (unpublished MA Thesis in History, Addis Ababa University, 2009), 80.

49 Ethiopian Herald, 2 Oct. 1976, ‘Fikre Merid killed here by anarchists’.

50 Wudu Tafete, ‘Meison’, 24. First author's interview with Abera Yemane Ab, 13 Dec. 2012.

51 Bahru Zewde, ‘The history’, 27.

52 The use of depersonalising language derived from agriculture and chemistry was common. For Derg-authorised English-language examples, see for example these headlines in the Ethiopian Herald: ‘Revolutionary justice awaits plotters: government warns anarchist elements’, 22 Sept. 1976; ‘To root out internal reactionary elements: second round search campaign begins here’, 8 May 1977.

53 First author's interview with Kebere Assefa, 24 Aug. 2012.

54 Lefort, An Heretical Revolution, 241–2.

55 First author's interview with Ermias Wolde Amlak, 7 Mar. 2012.

56 First author's interview with Dawit Terefe, 27 Dec. 2011. Hiwot Teferra, Tower in the Sky, 361ffs.

57 Abebe-Jira vs Negew, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit, no.93–9133.

58 First author's interviews with Dawit Terefe, 27 Dec. 2011, and with Ermias Wolde Amlak, 23 Mar. 2012.

59 A. Rice, ‘The long interrogation’, The New York Times, 4 June 2006.

60 First author's interview with Aklilu Kebede, 20 Aug. 2012.

61 First author's interview with Kahssay Tekeste, 19 Mar. 2012; Ermias Wolde Amlak recalls a parallel case in his own Kebele in the Sidist Kilo neighbourhood, in which a general was killed by an Abyot Tebaki who then confiscated and drove his ‘desirable’ car: first author's interview, 29 Mar. 2012.

62 For a striking example, see the account of her Keftegna detention in Hiwot Teferra, Tower in the Sky.

63 Di Nunzio, M., The Act of Living: Street Life, Marginality, and Development in Urban Ethiopia (Ithaca, 2019), 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 Polis Enna Ermeja, year 16, no.18, 6 Aug. 1976. First author's interview with Gedion Wolde Amanuel, Addis Ababa, 19 Mar. 2012.

65 Di Nunzio, The Act of Living, 107.

66 First author's interview with Yibkaw Wolde Tsadik, Addis Ababa, 10 Mar. 2012.

67 Yiman, Mohamed, Wore Negari (Bloomington, 2013), 146–7Google Scholar.

68 Compare e.g. Branch, Defeating Mau Mau, 216–7.

69 Yordanov, R., The Soviet Union and the Horn of Africa during the Cold War: Between Ideology and Pragmatism (Lanham, 2016)Google Scholar.

70 Unfried, B., ‘Friendship and education, coffee and weapons: exchanges between socialist Ethiopia and the German Democratic Republic’, Northeast African Studies, 16:1 (2016), 15–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a recent history of these diplomatic ties, see Yordanov, The Soviet Union.

71 Archives of the East German Ministry of State Security (MfS) Abt. X91, 180, 259; MfS Zaig 5115, 91. See also the pioneering, albeit tentative, study by Toni Weis, which remains the only work to date to highlight the connection between the Stasi and the Ethiopian Red Terror: T. Weis, ‘Handcuffs for “Operation Friendship”: The Red Terror seen from the archives of the East German secret service’, in ERTDRC: Documenting the Red Terror: Bearing Witness to Ethiopia's Lost Generation (Ottawa, 2012).

72 MfS Abt.X91, 274.

73 MfS HVA 74.

74 MfS Zaig 5115, 74.

75 MfS Zaig 5115, 74. See also Y. Gidron, Israel in Africa (London, forthcoming).

76 MfS Zaig 5115, 80.

77 MfS Abt.X91, 305. All translations from the original German are by the first author.

78 MfS HA I Nr.13548.

79 MfS Abt. X91, 27f.

80 Kiflu Tadesse, The Generation Part II, 228, 324.

81 MfS HVA 74, 176–9.

82 Ibid.

83 Wolde Giorgis, Red Tears, 26; see the first author's interviews with Girma Bashe, 14 Mar. 2012, and Gedion Wolde Amanuel, 19 Mar. 2012.

84 Kiflu Tadesse, The Generation Part II, 157–8.

85 This shift is widely noted in oral interviews and in memoirs of former activists. See e.g. Mohamed Yiman, Wore Negari; Hiwot Teferra, Tower in the Sky; Mekonnen Getu, The Undreamt.

86 Mohamed Yiman, Wore Negari, 148.

87 MfS HA Nr. 69, 272–7; MfS HVA 74, 183.

88 Contra Bahru Zewde, who regards the Netsa Ermeja [‘Independent Measure’, i.e. the encouragement of autonomous extrajudicial violence in the wake of the May Day 1977 massacres by the Derg] as the final phase of the Red Terror: ‘The history’, 28.

89 Andargachew Assegid, በአጭር የተቀጨ ረጅም ጉዞ, 425-6; Wudu Tafete, ‘Meison’, 33; MfS HVA 74, 176–9.

90 As argued most recently by Clapham, C.: The Horn of Africa: State Formation and Decay (London, 2017)Google Scholar.