Every so often someone I know suggests that Marxism and it’s associated ideologies haven't been decisively discredited. I always think that if they could have seen the handiwork of Mengistu’s regime first hand I’d get to stop having the argument.
"...Mr. Mengistu ruled Ethiopia from 1977 to 1991, which included some of the darkest days of the country’s history, when government soldiers rounded up tens of thousands of students and intellectuals and brutally killed them in a campaign called the “Red Terror.” Human Rights Watch has labeled it “one of the most systematic uses of mass murder by a state ever witnessed in Africa.”
Mr. Mengistu, 69, has been widely accused of killing many of the victims with his own hands, including Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie, who was strangled in bed, probably in 1975, and buried under a toilet.
Mr. Mengistu was also, in a way, responsible for the extended famine in 1984-85 that claimed 1 million lives and reinforced the image of Ethiopia as a poor and desperate country. He first denied the famine was even happening and flew in planeloads of whiskey while his people starved.
He was ousted by a guerrilla movement in 1991 and escaped to Zimbabwe, where he lives in a fancy — and heavily guarded — villa. The Zimbabwean government has indicated that it has no intention of extraditing him.According to Reuters, Ethiopia’s High Court decision said that Mr. Mengistu and his top officers “have conspired to destroy a political group and kill people with impunity.” The statement added “they set up a hit squad to decimate, torture and destroy groups opposing the Mengistu regime.” "
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