E/CN.4/1503
Annex II page 10
of tl theil
29.
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Under the influence of left-wing intellectuals returning from abroad, the Provisional Military Administrative Council - PMAC, popularly known as the Dergue in December 1974 declared Ethiopia a socialist state,
state, nationalized or took over partial control of over a hundred companies and shortly afterwards nationalized all rural land. It took the decision to despatch tens of thousands of students to rural areas where they were charged with carrying out health and literacy education and to help organize the land reform measures, including the estab- lishment of peasant associations intended ultimately to organize themselves into co-operatives and communal farms. Their counter- part in the towns were urban dwellers' associations or kebeles, which shortly took on the tasks of local government under the Dergue.
30. Those dedicated to revolution in Ethiopia were by no all attuned to the same ideological line, nor was the Dergue free from internal rivalries. Of two prominent parties, Me-ei Sone (or Meison), which was communist/soviet oriented, favoured the continuation of military rule for the time being, with the support of Lt-Col. Mengistu, while the other, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP), which had published its programme first and argued for the establishment of a people's civilian government as well as independence for Eritrea, fell into disfavour.
From September 1976 onwards, the Dergue and Me-ei Sone carried out a campaign against their opponents which was the more intense for acts of urban terrorism the EPRP was promoting. Widespread killings amd mass arrests marked the period from November 1977 to mid-1978, when chiefs of kebeles were publicly asked by Mengistu to sow "red terror' against opponents of the government, particularly the EPRP. If that party was the first casualty, Me-ei Sone, increasingly critical of the Dergue, found its own leaders having to go underground. Large numbers of young Amharas fled the country. Meanwhile, the Head of State and several other top members of the Dergue were eliminated and Lt.-Col. Mengistu emerged as new Chairman of the PMAC and Head of State. A few months later, Lt.-Col. Atnafu, the Vice-Chairman, was removed.
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The Dergue and its politburo, the Provisional Office of Mass Organizational Affairs (POMOA) had to address themselves to the question of what measures
measures of autonomy could be granted to the country's main ethnic groupings, about a dozen of which could be called major nationalities.
The question lay at the crux of the country's future.
Traditionally, the Amharas, a Christian people of the central highland provinces of Shoa, Gojam, Begemder and Wollo, had wielded power, after Emperor Menilik II had undertaken military campaigns to conquer or re-conquer territories which now made up some of Ethiopia's 14 regions, lands were increasingly bestowed upon Amhara peple as marks of favour.
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