Derg

The Derg (ደርግ in Amharique) was a military Junte Ethiopia, arrived at the capacity in 1974 after the fall of the Emperor Haile Selassie and who was maintained with the head country until in 1987. The word derg indicates a committee or a council in the languages Guèze S.

Of 1975 with 1977, Derg carried out and imprisoned tens of thousands of its opponents, without lawsuit.

History

Derg was founded in June 1974 by officers of the Ethiopian army who were mutinés with the beginning of the year. The founding members were 120, number which decreased when members were eliminated or killed. No forever integrated novel member. Mengistu Haile Mariam and Atnafu Abate was respectively elected president and vice-president of Derg.

Derg gained more and more capacity in the months which followed its foundation. In July, it obtains concessions on behalf of the Selassie Emperor, of which that to stop not only military officers, but also of the members of the government on any level. Soon, the former Prime Ministers Tsehafi Taezaz Aklilu Habte-Wold and Endelkachew Makonnen, as well as the majority of the members of their cabinets and the regional governors, of many officers of the army and the members of the imperial court were imprisoned. In August, after a constitution project providing the foundations of a constitutional monarchy was presented to the Emperor, Derg started to dismantle the imperial government to prevent any evolution of this type. It reversed and imprisoned Selassie the September 12th. The 15, the committee took the name of administrative Military council provisional and taken the control of the government. The general Lieutenant Aman Andom was selected to be a president of Derg and Head of the State until the return of Prince Amha Selassie, then in medical care in Europe. Andom quarreled with the most radical elements of Derg in connection with a new military offensive in Érythrée and execution of the former members of the government of the Emperor. Aman was relieved and carried out with some of her partisans and 60 official of the imperial government the November 23rd 1974. Tafari Benti became the new president and Head of the State. Monarchy was formally abolished in May 1975 and the Marxisme-léninisme was proclaimed official ideology of the State. Haile Selassie died the August 22nd 1975, in circumstances which were still not elucidated.

Benti was eliminated in its turn in November 1977 with several from its partisans, followed by Abate. Mengistu Haile then became the uncontested chief of Derg. In 1987, the committee was officially dissolved, a new constitution came into effect and the country took the popular name of Democratic republic of Ethiopia . Many members of Derg preserved stations - keys at the government, as members of the Central committee and the Politburo of the Parti the workers of Ethiopia (PTE). Mengistu became about it the general secretary while exerting the loads of president of the popular Democratic republic of Ethiopia and commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

The period during which Derg was with the capacity was marked by the civil war, with the elimination of tens of thousands of opponents between 1975 and 1977, by the guerilla with the Eritrean freedom fighters, the rebels of the Tigré and with other groups, of right-hand side like the democratic Union of Ethiopia or extreme left as like the Liberation popular front of Érythrée. Derg also fought the forces Somalia which did not try an invasion of 1977. Ethiopia became nearest allied to the Soviet Union, and one of the countries best armed with the area. The majority of industries and all the real, rural and urban goods, were nationalized in 1975. Collective farms were founded and the food production fell, provocant a Famine in the middle of the Eighties, which made 7 million deaths. Many Ethiopian fled misery and political repression, towards the adjoining countries and in Occident, forming the first Ethiopian Diaspora.

Derg was reversed by a coalition of rebellious forces, the revolutionary democratic Front of the Ethiopian people, in 1991.

See too

History of Political Ethiopia
of Ethiopia

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