Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

ETHIOPIA, GENOCIDE IN
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plans public knowledge, thus undermining the subterfuge surrounding the killing at Sobibor.
That is, they feared that people might henceforth know what was happening there, and
thus resist when the trains arrived at the ramp.
The screenplay of Escape from Sobibor was adapted from a closely researched study of
the same name written by a non-Jewish author from the United States, Richard Rashke
(b. 1934), in 1982. Much of Rashke’s work, in turn, was assisted by survivors of the camp
and the uprising. Three of them—Thomas “Toivi” Blatt (b. 1927), Stanislaw “Shlomo”
Szmajzner (1927–1989) and Ester Terner Raab (b. 1922)—worked as technical consultants
on the film. Escape from Sobibor, which was filmed on the outskirts of Belgrade,
Yugoslavia, garnered two Golden Globe Awards in the United States for Best Made-for-
Television Motion Picture and Best Supporting Actor (Rutger Hauer, in the role of
Alexander Pechersky). Alan Arkin received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor
for his portrayal of Leon Feldhandler.
Ethiopia, Genocide in. On September 12, 1974, a military coup took place in Ethiopia,
bringing to power a group of military officers calling themselves the Provisional Military
Administrative Council, or PMAC. The constitution was suspended, parliament was dissolved,
and a socialist course for Ethiopia’s future was declared. In 1977, Lieutenant-
Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam (b. 1937) became head of the PMAC, and began to
divert the socialist objective into one of stronger military rule. Thousands of political
opponents were murdered in a countrywide purge, while private property was confiscated
by the state, and military spending was greatly increased at the expense of social programs
of all kinds. From 1984 onward, the Mengistu regime conducted a policy of forced relocation
of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian peasant families from barren or near-barren
areas to parts of the country with greater fertility. By the end of 1984, about seven hundred
thousand people had been forcibly relocated. Although the idea might have been a
worthy one (particularly in a country prone to periodic famines), the means employed to
effect the population transfers were brutal. At least one hundred thousand people, according
to most estimates, perished. Ironically, starvation was a major cause of the deaths; little
in the way of resettlement assistance was provided, and those moved were often simply
dumped down in regions where no preparatory work had been undertaken. For those
“resettled” in temporary camps, conditions were possibly even worse. These camps were
run like prisons, and when camp populations complained, they were often attacked by
government troops. Underlying the period of the political “red terror” of the late 1970s,
and then of the resettlement campaigns of the mid-1980s, was also an ethnic struggle
between the ruling regime and separatists in the provinces of Tigray and Eritrea. Movements
in these provinces engaged in bitter fighting with the government, resulting in
many more deaths caused on grounds of ethnic identity. In 1991, Mengistu was overthrown
by a group called the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, a coalition
of rebel organizations led by Tigrayans. Since 1994, a series of trials involving
Mengistu-era military and political leaders have taken place, some of the latter of whom
have faced charges of genocide under Article 281 (Genocide) of the Ethiopian Penal
Code of 1957. Mengistu himself, in exile in Zimbabwe, has escaped justice, though he has
been tried in absentia and sentenced to death.
New allegations of genocide against a minority people in Ethiopia, the Anuak, surfaced
in late 2003, indicating that ethnic strife is far from over despite the change in government
in the 1990s and its avowed commitment to a democratic future for all Ethiopians.