Haile Selassie was not an evil man, but his priorities were misplaced. He was so concerned with establishing a strong central government and modernizing the country that he failed to meet the challenge of natural disaster... It was his false pride, this lack of courage to admit mistakes, that brought about his downfall.
[Haile Selassie] wanted to avoid bloodshed, so he gave up power for the good of his people and without fighting.
Haile Selassie wanted to develop his country, but social justice was not a concept that made a great impression on him. Opinions differ over the degree to which Ethiopia's backwardness in the early 1970s was to be attributed to his policies. Unquestionably, however, the flaunting of the wealth of the aristocracy and the business class, many of them foreigners, made the poverty of the masses seem all the more terrible.
The Derg was largely a mystery to the Americans, as it was to others. The officers of the US military mission in the Ethiopian capital knew few of its members, and those that could be identified and approached shied away from contact with the Americans.
The killing of General Aman and of the old regime notables was the turning-point for the Ethiopian revolution. To that moment events in Ethiopia had unfolded without bloodshed; thereafter blood flowed freely.
No sooner had Mengistu seized power than he unleashed an orgy of killing. Arms were given out to the Kebelles ('Urban Dwellers Associations') and a 'people's militia' was formed. Mengistu publicly urged it and the army to 'dispense revolutionary justice' and 'liquidate counter revolutionaries'. Revolutionary justice meant summary killing, without trial, of suspected enemies of the regime.
1,000 children have been killed, and their bodies are left in the streets and are being eaten by wild hyenas . . . You can see the heaped-up bodies of murdered children, most of them aged eleven to thirteen, lying in the gutter, as you drive out of Addis Ababa.
Henceforth we will tackle our enemies that come face to face with us and we will not be stabbed in from behind by internal foes... To this end, we will arm the allies and comrades of the broad masses without giving respite to reactionaries, and avenge the blood of our comrades double - and triple - fold.
In this country, some aristocratic families automatically categorize persons with dark skin, thick lips, and kinky hair as "Barias" [Amharic for slave]... let it be clear to everybody that I shall soon make these ignoramuses stoop and grind corn!
I'm a military man, I did what I did only because my country had to be saved from tribalism and feudalism. If I failed, it was only because I was betrayed. The so-called genocide was nothing more than just a war in defence of the revolution and a system from which all have benefited.