Mengistu Haile Mariam: Difference between revisions

|hobby = N/A}}{{Quote|In this country some aristocratic families automatically categorize people with dark skin, thick lips and kinky hair as 'Barias'... Let it be clear to everybody that I shall make these ignoramuses stoop and grind corn!|Mengistu Haile Mariam}}'''Mengistu Haile Mariam''' (May 21st, 1937 - ) is an Ethiopian politician who was the most prominent officer of the [[Derg]], the Communist military junta that governed Ethiopia from 1974 to 1987, and President of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia from 1987 to 1991. Effectively a dictator, he oversaw the Ethiopian Red Terror of 1977–1978, a campaign of repression against the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party and other anti-Derg factions. Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe in 1991 at the conclusion of the Ethiopian Civil War, and remains there despite an Ethiopian court verdict finding him guilty in absentia of [[genocide]]. Some estimates for the number of deaths his regime was responsible for are as high as 1.285 million.