Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP)

Origins and left-wing rivalry

The EPRP grew out of the radical Ethiopian student movement. It was founded in April 1972 in West Berlin as the Ethiopian People's Liberation Organization (EPLO), with Berhane Meskel Reda chosen as its first secretary-general, and later renamed the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party. In the 1974 revolution that toppled Emperor Haile Selassie, the EPRP and the All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement (MEISON) competed to be the Derg's vanguard. As the Derg, whose only slogan was 'Ethiopia First', turned to the leftist student movement for ideological guidance, MEISON came to support the Derg and Mengistu, while the EPRP claimed the Derg had betrayed the revolution and blocked a genuine 'people's democracy'.

Armed struggle and the 'White Terror'

Between 1974 and 1977 strategic disagreements intensified within the party over urban guerrilla warfare, with Berhane Meskel Reda and central committee member Getachew Maru opposing its escalation. The conflict escalated into violence, peaking in 1976: the EPRP attacked public buildings and assassinated high-ranking Derg officials, and a report of May 1977 described the EPRP as the main opposition group in and around the capital, having assassinated more than twenty government officials, raided Derg headquarters and wounded Mengistu. Mengistu condemned the EPRP for a campaign of supposed 'White Terror' and launched the systematic campaign to exterminate EPRP supporters known as the 'Red Terror', initially with MEISON's assistance and that of local kebele officials.

Repression

The exact chronology and death toll of the Red Terror differ between sources. In September 1976 EPRP militants were arrested and executed, and an unsuccessful attempt to kill Mengistu on 23 September was attributed to the EPRP. Mengistu opened the campaign with a speech at Revolution Square in Addis Ababa including the words 'Death to counterrevolutionaries! Death to the EPRP!', and the Derg armed kebele militias. The height of the campaign in the capital is dated to a house-to-house search that began on 22 March 1977, and the mass arrests and executions around 1 May are estimated to have killed possibly up to one thousand people. Total estimates of the dead range from 10,000 to 980,000, with Amnesty International putting the figure at up to 500,000. In 2006 Mengistu was convicted in absentia of genocide. EPRP founding secretary-general Berhane Meskel Reda was detained during the Red Terror and executed on 12 July 1979.

Rural retreat and division

Surviving members were forced to leave the cities by August 1977, many withdrawing to the party's rural stronghold on Mount Asimba in Agame with some support from the Eritrean Liberation Front. On 23 February 1978 EPRP units attacked Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) units in Agame, but after a five-day battle the TPLF captured Mount Asimba and most of the defeated fled to the ELF. A faction later formed the Ethiopian People's Democratic Movement in November 1980, which evolved into the Amhara National Democratic Movement. Many members made their way to Gondar and continued the struggle against both the Derg and the TPLF until 1991. Accounts are disputed on the 1978 defeat: some sources treat it as the party's decisive collapse, while others date the TPLF-EPRP split and the party's eclipse later.

Distinction

The dictionary's 'Red Terror' entry covers the Soviet campaign of the Russian Civil War (1917-1922). The Ethiopian Red Terror (Qey Shibir) of 1976-1978 was a separate campaign waged by the Derg against rival Marxist-Leninist organizations, explicitly based on the Red Terror of the Russian Civil War, and the EPRP was its principal civilian-left target.