Ethiopia’s Little Tienanmen
Another U.S. “ally” does a mini-Tienanmen–this time, in Ethiopia, with 24 gunned down and many more injured. The White House has issued a statement, but is it prepared to build a united, multi-ethnic opposition that can win an election, take power, and maintain law and order? Recent elections appear to have been a sham.
The current Ethiopian regime is one of several rival tribal militias–all nominally adherent to some loony form of Marxism. The current rulers are Tigrayan, and drove the Amhara-dominated army of Stalinist thug Mengistu Haile Maryam out of power in the 1990s. Mengistu was famous for several fairly unoriginal forms of state sociopathy: killing Emperor Haile Selassie and burying him under Mengistu’s desk; a Red Terror in which friends of mine described shootings and strangulations with electrical wire on the streets; and of course, the engineered famine of the 1980s–remember?–that killed millions while most of the food was diverted to the military.
In nations as in families, tyranny has heredity. I wouldn’t be surprised if ethnicity and vengeance played a role here.