I want you to imagine for just a second walking
into a building. Okay. And when you usually walk
into a historical museum, you probably have this,
you know, set expectation in your head. Right.
Like softly lit display cases. Yeah, exactly.
You expect the neat little informational plaques
and the sort of quiet, distant reflection on
a pass. Very sanitized. Very. But imagine walking
through those doors and being immediately confronted,
not with polished summaries, but with the raw,
visceral, physical evidence of survival and absolute
tragedy. It is completely jarred. Oh, it shatters
that expected distance between the observer and
the history. You are no longer just a spectator
reading a timeline. You're actually standing
in the room with the physical remnants of the
events. Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today we are
focusing our lens on the Red Terror Martyrs Memorial
Museum, which is located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
And we have a massive, complex web of history
to untangle today. We really do. Our source material
is this incredibly concentrated Wikipedia entry,
complete with all its deeply layered historical
link data. It's like an iceberg, where the museum
itself is just the tip, and underneath is this
sprawling, decades -long civil conflict that
reshaped the entire Horn of Africa. So our mission
today is to explore how a nation actually goes
about memorializing a devastating internal conflict
and to help you understand the sheer scale of
what this museum represents. Though, before we
jump into the timeline, we really do need to
set a vital ground rule for this deep dive. Good
point. Because the history we are unpacking covers
the Ethiopian Civil War, the actions of the Derg
government, various rebel factions, and even
the sweeping geopolitical impacts of the Cold
War. Right. We want to make it explicitly clear
to you, the listener, that we're not taking any
political sides here. Not at all. We are acting
entirely as impartial guides. Our goal is just
to convey the factual viewpoints and historical
events exactly as they are documented in the
source material. We're just looking at the architecture
of this history to understand how these events
unfolded. OK, let's unpack this. The Red Terror
Martyrs Memorial Museum was established relatively
recently in 2010. And what is actually inside
this museum is staggering. It really is. We aren't
just talking about abstract art installations.
The museum houses displays of actual torture
instruments used during the era. Yeah. There
are skulls and bones. There are wooden coffins.
And perhaps most confronting, they have the actual
bloody clothes of the victims displayed. right
alongside their photographs. What's fascinating
here is the psychological impact of that specific
curation strategy. Yeah, talk about that. Well,
when a museum chooses to display the tactile,
bloody artifacts of a conflict rather than just
relying on text plaques, it fundamentally changes
your relationship to the information. It really
does. It's one thing to read about historical
violence, but it's completely jarring to realize
they bypassed those sanitized glass display cases
of documents and just hung up the clothes people
died in. That is a heavy, deliberate choice that
completely refuses to let the visitor intellectualize
the violence. It forces you to physically confront
the reality of the Red Terror. By presenting
the tactile remains of the victims, the museum
grounds the historical data in undeniable human
suffering. You can't treat it as just a chapter
in a textbook. No, you really can't. And what's
really interesting is how the museum chooses
to guide visitors through this heavy reality.
They offer free tours, and the guides on these
tours don't actually start the story with the
violence of the Red Terror itself. They make
a highly specific choice about where to begin
their historical narrative. They start it with
a birthday party. A birthday party. Out of all
the places to start a narrative about a devastating
civil conflict, a lavish royal birthday seems
almost counterintuitive. Emperor Hail Selassie's
80th birthday celebration, to be exact. And if
we connect this to the bigger picture, that starting
line makes perfect, albeit tragic. How so? You
have to look at the contextual background of
Ethiopia in the early 1970s to understand the
friction of that moment. You have this incredibly
lavish, highly publicized royal birthday celebration
happening for the emperor. But look at what is
going on in the background. During that exact
same period, the country is in the grips of the
Wallow Famine, which lasted from 1972 to 1975.
Hundreds of thousands of people are starving
in the northern provinces. Widespread, devastating
famine. And compounding that, you have the global
1973 oil crisis severely impacting an already
fragile agrarian economy. Wow. So everything
is just piling up. Exactly. And simultaneously,
there is rising vocal opposition from groups
like the Ethiopian student movement who are out
there protesting the feudal land system and the
severe inequality. Right. So starting the museum
tour with the 80th birthday isn't some random
chronological choice. It establishes the stark,
massive inequality that acted as the catalyst
for everything that followed. It's the ultimate
boiling point. You have a monarchy completely
insulated from the desperate reality of the general
population and the tension just snaps. The timeline
of events shows a rapid monumental escalation.
Those boiling tensions culminate in the 1974
creeping coup d 'etat. And then you have this
incredibly brutal pivot point known as the massacre
of the 60. That event is absolutely crucial.
for understanding the transition of power. Let's
get into that. The 60 refers to 60 top officials
of the emperor's government. We're talking to
aristocrats, military commanders, cabinet ministers,
and even members of the royal family. In November
1974, they were executed without trial. Wait,
so they just executed the entire upper echelon
of the previous government in one fell swoop?
Yes. just completely wiped out the leadership
structure. It was the clear, violent signal that
the old world was dead and the Ethiopian empire
collapsed. And what happened to the emperor?
The emperor, Hel Selassie, was deposed and died
under highly suspicious circumstances shortly
after. So out of this absolute chaotic collapse,
a new power structure takes ultimate control.
The Derg. For those who might not be familiar
with that term, what exactly was the Derg? Derg
simply means committee or council in Amharic.
Officially, it was the Provisional Military Administrative
Council. Okay. It was a military agenda that
initially formed to investigate corruption in
the military, but it quickly absorbed all state
power. They officially embraced Marxism -Leninism,
abolished the monarchy, and began radically restructuring
Ethiopian society. And it is the Derg government
that initiates the period the museum actually
memorializes. the Red Terror. Right. So once
the Derg actually takes power, how does the state
transition from a military coup into this era
of the Red Terror? It was a brutal consolidation
of power. The Red Terror or Kishabir was a violent
political campaign primarily taking place between
1976 and 1978. It was defined by extreme systematic
state violence aimed at eliminating any and all
political opposition. This wasn't just about
fighting rival armed groups. Urban guerrilla
warfare had broken out in the streets of Addis
Ababa, and the state's response was absolute
suppression. The museum displays detail the harsh
treatment of prisoners from this specific era.
We are talking about arbitrary arrests, where
suspected opponents, often students and young
intellectuals, were pulled directly from their
homes. And then the torture, which is why those
specific instruments are on display. The state
utilized terror as its primary mechanism for
maintaining control. And the scale of the executions
was horrific. Families were often forbidden from
mourning their dead. In some documented cases,
they were even forced to pay for the bullets
used to execute their loved ones before they
could recover the bodies. Here's where it gets
really interesting, though. Because within that
absolute darkness, the museum tours make sure
to highlight a detail from the source material
that I just find incredible. The guides don't
just focus on the victimization and the brutality.
They specifically explain to visitors how the
prisoners manage to secretly communicate among
each other. Ah, the whisper of resistance. It
is astounding to think about. I mean, even in
the absolute worst conditions imaginable, surrounded
by the very torture instruments we were talking
about, human beings still found a way to connect.
They really did. They were tapping codes on Rawls,
passing hidden messages, maintaining some kind
of secret network. It is this undeniable spark
of human resilience that the museum ensures is
remembered alongside the tragedy. I want you
to really imagine the immense courage that required.
You are a prisoner in a DERG facility. You know
the exact capabilities of the state holding you.
Yeah. You know the severe fatal consequences
if you are caught communicating. And yet you
still take the risk to whisper or to tap a code.
To maintain those secret networks under the direct
looming threat of the torture instruments displayed
in that museum elevates the victims. They aren't
just mere statistics of the Red Terror. They
were active, courageous participants in their
own survival. So what does this all mean for
the rest of the country? Because to fully grasp
the weight of this museum, we have to pull back
and look at the broader timeline. The Red Terror
was a specific, horrific period in the late 70s,
but it was situated within a much larger, agonizing
conflict, the Ethiopian Civil War, which spans
from 1974 all the way to 1991. We are moving
from the confines of the museum walls. to a conflict
that consumed an entire nation for 17 years.
It is a massive expansion in scale. And to understand
this without getting lost in the weeds, we have
to categorize the chaos. Okay, let's break it
down. This wasn't simply a two -sided war of
the government versus one rebel army. It was
a deeply fractured landscape. On one side, you
have the government forces versus the Derg, and
later the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
arrayed against them is an incredible variety
of rebel groups. It's a literal alphabet soup
of factions. You have the EPRDF, the Ethiopian
People's Revolutionary Democratic Front. You
have the Tigray People's Liberation Front, or
TPLF. You have the Oroma Liberation Front. You
have Eritrean rebels, including the Eritrean
Liberation Front and the Eritrean People's Liberation
Front. With so many splintered groups, how did
this landscape become so fractured? This raises
an important question, and it requires looking
at the deep -seated historical roots of the region.
This fracturing didn't happen in a vacuum. You
have to look at systemic ethnic discrimination.
Right. Going way back. For a long time under
the Ethiopian empire, political and cultural
power was heavily centralized and dominated by
specific groups. Marginalized ethnic groups like
the Oromo people formed liberation fronts to
push back against that historical suppression.
And then there's the incredibly complex issue
of Eritrea. Exactly. You cannot look at this
civil war without looking at the legacy of Italian
colonialism. Eritrea was an Italian colony from
the late 19th century until World War II. After
a period of British administration, the UN federated
Eritrea with Ethiopia in 1952. But Emperor Haile
Selassie eventually dissolved that federation
and annexed Eritrea entirely. So that just lit
the match. That historical loss of autonomy sparked
an independence movement that raged alongside
and intertwined with the broader Ethiopian civil
war. And hanging over all of these localized
conflicts, fueling the fire, is the overarching
shadow of the Cold War. Oh, absolutely. The Horn
of Africa was a major geopolitical chessboard.
Because the Derg embraced Marxism -Leninism,
they eventually received massive backing from
the Soviet Union and Cuba. The scale of that
backing is wild. We're talking about billions
of dollars in military hardware and thousands
of Cuban troops actively supporting the Ethiopian
government. Meanwhile, various rebel groups receive
support from different regional and global players,
depending on the shifting alliances of the Cold
War. So internal civil wars were turned into
brutal proxy battlegrounds. Precisely. Which
brings us to the civilian toll of this 17 -year
war. It is a relentless list of suffering. Let's
break down some of the major events that occurred
during this time because terms like villagization
get thrown around, but the reality of what that
means on the ground is terrifying. Villagization
was a massive forced relocation program engineered
by the Derg. The government forced millions of
rural farmers to abandon their traditional scattered
homesteads and move into clustered planned villages.
Was this to modernize farming or was it entirely
about control? It was ostensibly framed as a
way to provide modern services, but practically
it was a mechanism of state control. It allowed
the government to extract grain quotas, implement
agricultural collectivization, and isolate the
rural population from royal insurgents. But it
completely disrupted traditional agricultural
cycles. Completely. Which directly contributed
to the next catastrophic event in the sources,
the 1983 to 1985 famine. This is the famine that
sparked global outrage and the Live Aid concerts.
Right. While there were severe droughts, the
famine was massively compounded by the government's
military strategies, the disruption from villagization,
and policies that restricted the movement of
food. Hundreds of thousands of people died. It
was a multidimensional crisis. You had military
conflict, political terror, engineered social
restructuring, and catastrophic environmental
failure all happening simultaneously. And the
military tactics used against civilians were
brutal. We see atrocities like the Hazen Massacre
in 1988. The Hazen Massacre is a grim example
of the war's escalation. Hazen was a market town
in the Tigray region. On a market day, when the
town was packed with civilians, government forces
unleashed a brutal aerial bombardment using helicopter
gunships and fighter jets. That's horrifying.
The goal was to root out the TPLF rebels, but
the result was the slaughter of thousands of
civilians. It was a turning point that actually
drove massive popular support toward the rebel
forces. It feels like the entire country was
enduring layer upon layer of trauma for decades.
But this incredibly long and complex civil war.
does finally grind to a halt. It does. In 1991,
a coalition of rebel forces led primarily by
the EPRDF actually advances on Addis Ababa. The
Derg regime collapses. But just to hail a Mariam,
the leader of the Derg flees the country. And
this marks a total transformation of the region's
political landscape. Following the fall of the
Derg, we see two major historical shifts detailed
in the sources. First, we see the eventual Ethiopian
Red Terror trials. Which was an attempt to hold
the Derg members accountable for the atrocities
committed during their rule. It's actually a
rare instance of a domestic court trying its
own former leaders for human rights abuses. And
second, we see Eritrea finally achieving its
independence, literally changing the map of Africa.
I want to bring this back to you, the listener.
With all these dates, factions, geopolitical
proxy wars, and shifting borders, why does understanding
a place like the Red Terra Martyrs Memorial Museum
matter today? Yeah. What's the core takeaway
here? It matters because this museum is a profound
physical example of how a society attempts to
process a complex, multilayered trauma. How they
grieve on a national level. Exactly. The victims
of the Red Terror are often referred to as Ethiopia's
lost generation. They were students, teachers,
intellectuals, the people who would have built
the country's future. The museum is a mechanism
for honoring that lost generation. It ensures
that the specific human cost. The individuals
who were pulled from their homes, who communicated
in secret codes, who died in those clothes, is
not erased or overshadowed by the broader, sweeping
political histories of the Cold War. It anchors
the history in truth and memory. It demands that
we don't look away from the human element. And
that actually leaves me with a thought that I
really want you to mull over. Right now, as we've
discussed, the museum offers these incredible
free tours. And those tours are guided by people
who can verbally explain the history. They can
personally tell you about the stark contrast
of Hale Selassie's birthday or explain exactly
how the prisoners tapped out their secret communications.
They bring a living, breathing voice to the tragedy.
They do. But what happens decades from now? When
the survivors, the people who actually lived
through the Red Terror and remember the sounds
of the prisons, are no longer around to give
those tours, will the silent artifacts, the display
cases of skulls, the wooden coffins, the bloody
clothes be enough to carry the full heavy weight
of the truth on their own? It's something to
think about as we consider how history survives
us. It really is a vital question about the future
of memory. Thank you for joining us on this deep
dive. Stay curious and we will catch you on the
next one.