Free Republic

There’s a reason why “may you live in interesting times” is a curse. The eras we call a “Terror” — Stalin’s Russia, Robespierre‘s France, Pol Pot’s Cambodia — are pretty interesting. Ethiopia in the mid-1970’s was one of the most interesting places in the world. After the Derg, a shadowy committee of leftist officers, toppled the monarchy in 1974, factional violence between Ethiopia’s two main Marxist parties soon came to the fore. Long story short, All-Ethiopian Socialist Movement (MEISON) backed the Derg — while its rival the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP) denounced it as fascistic. And when Mengistu assumed...

President Trump, in an interview on “Hannity” on Tuesday, slammed the World Health Organization (WHO) for its “China-centric” views, adding the global health agency’s projections and pronouncements about the coronavirus pandemic have been routinely wrong. One of WHO’s earliest flawed pronouncements, the president told host Sean Hannity, was to strongly recommend against the U.S. restricting travel from China. Earlier Tuesday at a news briefing, Trump said he may put a “very powerful hold” on U.S. funding to the WHO. Sen. Lindsey Graham also said that the World Health Organization (WHO) should not receive funding from the United States under its...

srael tried to retrieve Avraham Mengistu, the Israeli who entered Gaza and is being held by Hamas. A report on Channel Two Monday said that IDF and security forces tried to bring Mengistu back to Israel a short time after he entered Gaza, but were tricked by Hamas into abandoning him. According to the report, talks on returning Mengistu to Israel took place a few weeks after he entered Gaza. According to Israeli officials, Mengistu crossed the fence into Gaza last September due to mental illness and that the move was not in any way a deliberate security risk. According...

<p>KAMPALA, Uganda— Iran's president is in Africa this week to build alliances to evade stronger U.N. sanctions for his country's nuclear program, ease its international isolation and strengthen its economy.</p> <p>Both Zimbabwe and Uganda, the two countries President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is visiting, have something to offer.</p>

Zimbabwe's MDC plan to extradite Mengistu Haile Mariam to Ethiopia Martin Fletcher in Harare For 17 years Mengistu Haile Mariam, the former Ethiopian dictator who slaughtered opponents on an industrial scale in the “Red Terror”, has lived in Zimbabwe as the honoured guest of Robert Mugabe, dividing his time between a heavily guarded villa in Harare, a farm near the capital and a retreat on glorious Lake Kariba. Last year an Ethiopian court sentenced the “Butcher of Addis” to death after convicting him of genocide in absentia but Mr Mugabe flatly refused to extradite the man who helped to arm...

The Ethiopian ex-dictator Mengistu condemned to the prison with life for genocide Addis Ababa - the ex-dictator Ethiopian Marxist Mengistu Hailé Mariam, found guilty of genocide during “red Terror”, was condemned to the prison with life by contumacy Thursday by the federal high court of Ethiopia, brought back a journalist of AFP. “The Court decided to condemn the culprit number one to the prison with life”, declared judge Nur Mohamed in connection with Mengistu Hailé Mariam. Colonel Mengistu, which lives in exile in Zimbabwe since its mode was reversed in 1991, had been recognized guilty on December 12 by...

The world witnessed Stalin's Purge, Hitler's Holocaust, Mao's Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot's Forced Exodus, and Saddam's brutal mass killings. Africa is no stranger to atrocities to the likes of Idi Amin and Mobutu Sese Sekos. Here is another act of genocide carried out by former Ethiopian leader Mengistu Haile Mariam, who is a Communist leader of the Workers Party. Mengistu was part of the Derg, which was the military junta that came to power by overthrowing Haile Selassie in 1974. He ruled from 1977 to 1991. His first act was "Red Terror", in which he attacked anti-Communist guerillas. He detained,...

Ethiopia’s brutal Marxist dictator, known as the African Pol Pot, became the first fallen leader to be found guilty yesterday of genocide in his own country after a 12-year trial.Mengistu Haile Mariam, the former President, who fled to Zimbabwe in 1991, was accused along with top members of his military Government of killing thousands during his 17-year rule. The period was marked by vicious crackdowns on opponents, disastrous wars with neighbouring countries and rebel groups and devastating famines in which starvation was used to force peasants into submission. “Members of the Derg [Government] who are present in court today and...

The millions donated to Ethiopia in 1985 thanks to Live Aid were supposed to go towards relieving a natural disaster. In reality, donors became participants in a civil war. Many lives were saved, but even more may have been lost in Live Aid's unwitting support of a Stalinist-style resettlement project Isn't it better to do something rather than give in to despair or cynicism and do nothing? This is the reproachful question familiar to anyone who has criticised organisations that view themselves as dedicated to doing good in the world. To those UN agencies, relief organisations and development groups working...

Former President Carter accused President Bush of squandering the international goodwill that flowed to the United States in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "After 9/11, America stood proud, wounded but determined and united," Carter said in a speech Monday night to the opening session of the Democratic National Convention. "But in just 34 months, we have watched with deep concern as all this goodwill has been squandered by a virtually unbroken series of mistakes and miscalculations." "Unilateral acts and demands have isolated the United States from the very nations we need to join us in...