Abebe, Belay. "Mengistu's Red Terror." Personal interview. 11 Oct. 2016. The interview with Belay Abebe provided a firsthand experience of the Ethiopian Red Terror. Abebe provided insight on Mengistu’s coup of the Ethiopian government, cruel things that Derg did to citizens, and personal encounters with the party themselves. Abebe stated that the Red Terror originally occurred because Derg forcefully switched Ethiopia to a communist state, and in the process, took land and businesses away from the citizens. Because of this, many Ethiopian citizens peacefully protested the government, but in response to the protests, Derg killed and imprisoned protestors and issued laws to stop future protests. The Ethiopian citizens started the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party, which mainly consisted of highly educated students, teachers, and employees, to stop Derg. Abebe, then a 16 year old student, joined the Revolutionary Party demanding that Derg implement democracy and end military abuses. Derg responded …show more content…
Mengistu tried to validate his regime and break up the Dergue, however power in the nation was not distributed any differently. Accordingly, numerous ethnic groups declined to give their loyalty to the government. Mengistu utilized the starvation as an excuse to get rid of roughly 600,000 individuals from the north of Ethiopia to the south, where the starvation and dry season had not destroyed the countryside. By 1989, the TPLF took over the Tigray region and the EPLF controlled the Eritrea region. Attempts to locate a political plan to the disaster and in 1991, the revolutionaries encompassed the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. The government later fell and Mengistu escaped to Zimbabwe, where he was granted asylum. The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (ERDPF) and the EPLF took power in the province of