Ethiopian Revolution

The Ethiopian Civil War had begun with a military coup d’état against Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 and lasted until 1991 when the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) overthrew the government.This uprising of the people wasn’t unexpected as one would think since another coup attempt had occurred in 1960, which Emperor Haile suppressed by claiming to step up with the reform policies. Those promises failed, and the people started to revolt against the emperor, and after a wave of demonstrations, mutinies, and uprisings they succeeded in overthrowing him. There were many reasons which made the people of Ethiopia want to revolt against their Emperor such as his lack of attempts to modernize the country, address deep social

Soldiers protested about the poor food and water conditions, and therefore rebelled and took their commanding officer hostage requesting the redress of the Emperor. In this period of unrest and chaos, the Provisional Military Administrative Council (Derg) was established as a false ally towards the emperor. After becoming a high figure, they immediately began to arrest members of the aristocracy, military, and government who were closely associated with the emperor and the old order. By late August, the emperor had been directly accused of covering up the Welo and Tigray famine of the early 1970s that allegedly had killed 200,000 people which caused him to be imprisoned on September 12. The Derg’s concepts embodies slogans such as “self-reliance”, and “the supremacy of the common good” in order to make peace with the citizens and show that the Derg was fighting for them. Their actions started to become radical as by mid-November of 1974 the Derg had confronted a citizen named Aman, who opposed the Derg, and killed him when he resisted arrest. The same evening the event known as Bloody/Black Saturday occurred in which fifty-nine political prisoners were executed. Among them were prominent civilians such as Aklilu and Endalkatchew, military officers such as Colonel Alem Zewd and General Abiye Abebe (the emperor's son-in-law and defense minister), and two Derg members who had supported Aman. They had also been in charge of the "Red Terror" in 1977 where thousands of students, teachers, workers and ordinary Ethiopians, who were suspected of supporting opposition groups, were imprisoned without charge, tortured and executed. The gruesome behavior doesn’t stop there as these executions happened randomly across the country and bodies were left for up to three days on the streets, in front of public building, schools, universities in order to