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Prefatory Part: The Red Terror Trials
Abstract
This chapter sets the context of the study by briefly introducing the events that led to the replacement of the aristocratic monarchy with the military junta-Derg and the atrocious crimes that followed. It also introduces the approach that Ethiopia charted to reckon with the crimes. Lastly, the chapter presents the objectives of the study and outlook of the book.
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This essay identifies a number of problematic issues concerning transitional justice restorative justice in particular and suggests that they can be fruitfully explored through thoughtful examination of the truth-seeking projects of this issue's case countries: South Africa, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. One debate is whether political transitions genuinely require a unique type of justice or whether transitional justice results from a mere political choice which compromises justice. A second issue concerns transitional justice's goals. Related to this issue is the lack of clarity concerning the criteria for a successful transitional judicial structure. A third debate is whether truth commissions do actually bring healing and reconciliation among former enemies. Finally, there is a set of very practical concerns that need attention: what are the ideal balances between trials and truth commissions, domestic and international initiatives, efficiency and effectiveness?
This article analyses the sentencing judgment issued on 11 January 2007 by the Ethiopian Federal High Court in the case of Mengistu Hailemariam and his co-accused who had been tried, among others, on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. This was the first African trial where an entire regime was brought to justice before a national court for atrocities committed while in power. Twenty-five of the 55 accused found guilty, including Mengistu, were tried in absentia (Mengistu remains in exile in Zimbabwe). The trial took 12 years, making it one of the longest ever trials for genocide. In December 2006, Mengistu was convicted by majority vote of genocide and crimes against humanity pursuant to Article 281 of the 1957 Ethiopian Penal Code, which includes political groups among the groups protected against genocide. A dissenting judge took the position that the accused should have been convicted of aggravated homicide because the relevant part of the provision had been repealed. A few weeks later, the Court, by majority, sentenced the top tier of the accused to life imprisonment, taking into account certain extenuating circumstances. If not for these, the death penalty would have been imposed. In addition to ensuring some accountability, the judgment is important for providing an official and detailed account of what happened in those years in Ethiopia under Mengistu's reign. Given that in Ethiopia there are no official gazettes where court judgments are published, it is unlikely that the public will be able to read the judgment and thus become aware of what had happened. In addition to analysing the reasoning of the court, this article also looks into the prevailing political circumstances in the country and reflects upon the trial and the reception that this important decision has had, and will receive, in the wider community.
This book, first published in 2000, deals with one of the most urgent problems of contemporary times: the political organisation of multi-ethnic states. Most major conflicts of our time are internal to the state and revolve around the claims of access to or the redesign of the state. Responses to ethnic conflicts have ranged from oppression and ethnic cleansing to accommodations of ethnic claims through affirmative policies, special forms of representation, power sharing, and the integration of minorities. One of the most sought after, and resisted, devices for conflict management is autonomy. Within an overarching framework that examines different understandings of ethnic consciousness and the variety of territorial autonomies, the authors examine the experiences of spatial distribution of power in Canada, India, China, South Africa, Ethiopia, PNG, Spain, the former Yugoslavia, Cyprus, Sri Lanka and Australia.
The thesis is concerned with the Ethiopian revolution between 1974, when an urban popular uprising broke out, and 1984, when the new regime established the Workers Party of Ethiopia. Chapter 1 discusses the background to the revolution and introduces the factors that became important in the causes and outcomes of the revolution. Part one (Chapters 2 and 3) is concerned with the the urban popular uprising of early 1974 which followed in the wake of the structural crisis. Chapter 3 deals with the capture of power by a group of junior officers and privates (the Derg) claiming to represent the security forces. 1974 to 1977 discusses under part two (chapters 4 6) can be taken as the formative years of the post-revolutionary order. Chapter 4 discusses the new regime's 1975 social and economic reforms; chapter 5 the emergence of the political organizations and the regime's 1976 conversion from "African socialism" to "scientific Socialism"; and, Chapter 6 the autocratization under Mengistu Haile-Mariam of what had until 1977 been a collective exercise of power by a group of junior officers, in the name of the Derg. Part three (Chapters 7 and 8) is concerned with the consolidation of power by the new autocracy. Chapter 7 describes its victories over urban dissension led by one of the leftist civilian organizations (EPRP) and over international and domestic counter-revolutionary forces as well as Ethiopia's shift of alliances from the west to the east. Chapter 8 deals with the elimination of all existing political organizations and with the establishment of the Workers Party of Ethiopia. Chapter 9 gives a summary of the whole work and attempts to examine the episode under consideration from the perspective of contemporary social science research.
The political context for human rights and the Mexican transition to democracy The legacy of a repressive regime The current government of Mexico, led by Vicente Fox, came to power thanks to the first truly democratic and competitive national election held in the past 90 years. The vote that resulted in his victory in the year 2000 ended the 71-year-old monopoly of state power held by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional – PRI) since 1929, when it was founded by a coalition of caudillos and revolutionary generals after two decades of revolution and civil war. The very fact that the Mexican electorate was able to produce such a result was the product of generations of struggle. It was also the first time in the history of the country that political change did not result from the use of violence and bloodshed, but was carried out by the peaceful exercise of political rights. This in itself is no small matter, but a fact which tends to be overlooked, given the stable nature of Mexico's protracted authoritarian regime. The election that brought Vicente Fox, a candidate of the center-right opposition party, National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional – PAN) to power, was the result of the consistent and peaceful mobilization of thousands of people for the effective exercise of civil and political rights, and especially for the basic right to participate in free, fair and authentic elections. This fact makes it an historic turning point of great significance.
The paperback edition of a book first published in hardback in 1988, and abstracted as 89V/01730. (ISBN 0 521 33441 1). A postscript outlines events in Ethiopia since 1987. -M.Amos
This article critically examines the historical genesis and distinctive features of the political violence known as the ‘red terror’ in Ethiopia in the late 1970s. The tragic process and outcome of the political violence of that period in 1977–1979 have differentia specifica features that need a closer and critical investigation. Despite the casual and general comparative references, as well as one-dimensional description with a catch-all universal concept as ‘genocide’, the political violence in Ethiopia has unique and distinguishable features. The Ethiopian ‘red terror’ is differentiable in many aspects from the Rwandan, Kampuchean, Argentinean, Chilean and Indonesian genocides. First, even though the ‘red terror’ was primarily an institutionalised violence wangled by the military derg regime, it was also a complex and intertwined process in which opposition forces had actively engaged in and contributed for; second, the antagonists and protagonists that were interlocked in power struggles were primarily Marxist-oriented forces, including the military derg regime, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party, and the All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement; third, the political violence was ideologically justified and legitimised by all parties involved in the struggle as a raison d'être for successful revolutionary transformation to socialism; fourth, the intense political struggle among the groups was uncompromising and puritan in advancing the ‘correct mass line’, in accordance with their respective sectarian political programmes; fifth, anarchic revolutionary justice had prevailed during that period as the judicial system was viewed irrelevant and extraneous in the revolutionary process; sixth, the dead, the injured and the imprisoned were not regarded as victims by their comrades, but as ‘martyrs’ who sacrificed for the revolutionary cause; seventh, the political violence was also complex due to the intra- and inter-party struggle, and as the ‘red terror’ was in some cases indistinguishable from the ‘white terror’; and finally, the formal ‘red terror’ or genocide trials of former high-ranking military derg members somehow brought the acrimonious memory of this period to a historical closure with the conviction, imprisonment, imposition of the death penalty and the controversial pardon for their release from prison in October 2011.
ABSTRACT For centuries Ethiopia's rulers have attempted to overcome local bases of power and establish a strong central government. To the extent that this was achieved, it produced many largely ethnically based rebellions which plagued the country until the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front's victory in 1991. The new government, which had its origins in an ethnically based revolt opposed to the hegemonic position of the Amhara in Ethiopia, appears committed to devolving power to regional ethnic governments and has even granted them the right to independence. This article examines the background to this process, critically discusses constitutional provisions regarding national self-determination, and provides an overview of the experience of the regional governments and the role and obstacles they face in moving long-authoritarian Ethiopia towards democracy. Ethiopia's experience is thus instructive to other states in Africa contemplating or undergoing programmes of decentralisation.
1. See, e.g., Theordore M. Vestal, "Deficits of Democracy in the Transitional Government of Ethiopia Since 1991," in Harold G. Marcus, ed., New Trends in Ethiopian Studies, Vol. 2 (Lawrenceville, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1994), 188-204.
2. See, e.g., George E. Moose, Testimony, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Africa of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 103rd Cong., 2d Sess., 27 July 1994.
3. "Ethiopians Vote on Constituent Assembly," News From Ethiopia, Embassy of Ethiopia, Washington, D.C, 23 June 1994, 1-2.
4. "Lively Debate on Draft Constitution," News from Ethiopia, Embassy of Ethiopia, Washington, D.C., 30 April 1994, 1-2.
5. InterAfrica Group, Proceedings of the Symposium on the Making of the New Ethiopian Constitution, 17-21 May 1993, Addis Ababa, 1994.
6. Transitional Government of Ethiopia, Constitutional Commission Newsletter, No. 1 (March 1994), 1; special discussion meetings of the CDC are listed in John M. Cohen, Transition Toward Democracy and Governance in Post Mengistu Ethiopia, Harvard Institute for International Development, Cambridge, MA, 1994, 7.
7. "Ethiopians Participate in Constitutional Discussion," News From Ethiopia, Embassy of Ethiopia, Washington, D.C., 26 January 1994, 1-2.
8. Ibid.
9. Mesfin Wolde-Mariam, "Constitution Proposed by the Council," (Amharic) in forthcoming issue of Ethiopian Register.
10. "EPRDF Wins Election," Ethiopian Review, August 1994, 10.
11. Norwegian Institute for Human Rights, The 1994 Elections and Democracy in Ethiopia: Report of the Norwegian Observer Group, Human Rights Report, Bergen, Norway, August 1994, p. 1. Foreign election observers critical of the 1992 elections were conspicuously absent in 1994.
12. See Carl J. Friedrich, Constitutional Government and Democracy: Theory and Practice in Europe and America (Boston: Little Brown, 1941), 127.
13. New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964).
14. Suzette Hemberger, "Constitution," in Joel Krieger, ed., The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 189. Great Britain, New Zealand, and Israel are major states that do not have written constitutions.
15. Herman Finer, Theory and Practice of Modern Government (New York: H. Holt, 1949), 116.
16. Stephen Holmes, "Precommitment and the Paradox of Democracy," in Jon Elster and Rune Slagstad, eds., Constitutionalism and Democracy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 235.
17. Hemberger, 189.
18. S.E. Finer, "Notes Towards a History of Constitutions," in Vernon Bogdanor, ed., Constitutions in Democratic Politics (Aldershot, UK: Gower, 1988), 18.
19. Giovanni Sartori, "Constitutionalism: A Preliminary Discussion," American Political Science Review 56 (1962): 853-64.
20. Vernon Bogdanor, "Introduction," in Vernon Bogdanor, ed., Constitutions in Democratic Politics (Aldershot, UK: Gower, 1988), 10.
21. Lord Bolingbroke, Historical Writings, ed. Isaac Kremnick, 4 vols. (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1972) 2: 88.
22. Friedrich, Constitutional Government and Democracy, 120.
23. Hailu Fulass, "Democracy in Ethiopian Polities," Ethiopian Register, March 1994, 21-23.
24. Ghita Ionescu, "The Theory of Liberal Constitutionalism," in Bogdanor, ed., Constitutions in Democratic Politics, 39-48.
25. Louis Henkin, "Introduction," in Henkin and Albert J. Rosenthal, eds., Constitutionalism and Rights: The Influence of the United States Constitution Abroad (NY: Columbia University Press, 1990), 9; George Kateb, "Remarks on the Procedures of Constitutional Democracy," in J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman, eds., Constitutionalism, NOMOS XX (New York: New York University Press, 1979), 216-19.
26. Adam Przeworski, "Democracy as a Contingent Outcome of Conflicts," in Elster and Slagstad, eds., Constitutionalism and Democracy, 59-61.
27. See Stephen Holmes, "Gag Rules or the Politics of Omission," in Elster and Slagstad, eds., Constitutionalism and Democracy, 27-31.
28. Bogdanor, "Britain: The Political Constitution," in Constitutionalism and Democratic Politics, 53-72.
29. International Human Rights Law Group, Ethiopia in Transition: A Report on the Judiciary and the Legal Profession, Washington, D.C., January 1994, 9-10.
30. See generally, Carl J. Friedrich, "Constitutions and Constitutionalism," International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1968).
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