Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Looking for articles on state violence and terror in Ethiopia 1974-1991

Like most of the territory of the Russian Empire Ethiopia was a multi-ethnic state that came under control of a ruthless communist regime. In 1974 a communist coup overthrew Emperor Halie Selassie and sought to radically transform Ethiopian society along socialist lines through the use of violent state force. In 1976-1978 the regime conducted a "Red Terror" aimed at destroying all political opposition to the new regime through a campaign of arrests and killings claiming at the very least tens of thousands of victims. This was not the only incident of mass violence by the state. From 1984 to 1986, the regime forcibly resettled nearly 600,000 people according to its own records of which over 30,000 perished due to hunger and disease in their new places of settlement. Ethiopia thus seems like a very good African case study for the use of state violence and terror by a socialist state. Yet, I am having trouble finding studies on this topic in English. If anybody has any sources on the topic especially journal articles I can access through JSTOR or other electronic means please let me know.

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