All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement (MEISON)

Founding and early activity

In August 1968, at the eighth congress of the Ethiopian Students Union in Europe (ESUE), radical Ethiopian students in exile founded it as a clandestine organization. Founders included Worku Ferede, elected chair at the meeting, along with Kebede Mengesha, Negede Gobeze, Andargachew Assegid, Fikre Merid, Hagos Gebreyesus and Haile Fida; Andreas Eshete, Haile Menkerios, Alem Habtu and Dessalegn Rahmato were also early leading members. It dominated ESUE in the diaspora, created UPESUNA in the United States and published New Ethiopia in Europe. Its mass organizations included ISEANE, the Ethiopian Women's Revolutionary Movement and a youth organization.

The 1974 revolution and cooperation with the Derg

After the 1974 revolution MEISON and the EPRP grew into the two major Marxist parties, and leaders and members returned home from Europe, North America and the Middle East. MEISON tolerated, at least for a time, the Derg's authority to reorganize Ethiopian society along Marxist–Leninist lines and preferred "controlled democracy"; this won it the Derg's favour and leading posts in the new government. The EPRP, by contrast, opposed the Derg, advocated "people's democracy" and later denounced Mengistu as a fascist.

MEISON took over POMOA (the Provisional Office for Mass Organizational Affairs, created in December 1975 and made public on 21 April 1976) and its fifteen-member committee, the "Political Bureau"; MEISON leader Haile Fida chaired POMOA. POMOA turned the kebeles into vigilante bodies with militias under its supervision. The Derg, wary of MEISON's hold on POMOA, set factions against one another.

Red Terror and mutual confrontation

The rivalry between the EPRP and MEISON dated from exile student politics and turned violent after their return. In 1976 the EPRP assassinated MEISON Political Bureau member Fikre Merid and others (26 September), and on 25 February 1977 Theodore Bekele, a MEISON member and former leader of the Confederation of Ethiopian Labour Unions, was killed. MEISON helped hunt down and suppress the EPRP through the kebeles, and as POMOA's kebele militias and the army attacked the EPRP, the Red Terror began. In its early phase MEISON was closely allied with the Derg in hunting suspected EPRP members, and defence squads under Political Bureau control sometimes pursued MEISON's interests rather than the Derg's. In February 1977 MEISON joined the Union of Marxist-Leninist Organizations (Imaledih).

The Derg turns on MEISON

In late 1977 the Derg attacked MEISON, fearing its members were more loyal to the party than to the Derg. On 14 July 1977 a declaration demanded stricter control of POMOA and the Political Bureau was cut from fifteen members to five. In August 1977 most of MEISON's domestic leadership went underground; on 19 August the leadership and some 500 cadres went into hiding, but on 26 August Haile Fida and some leaders were arrested on the outskirts of Addis Ababa and held at the old Gebi (Derg headquarters), while other leaders were killed on the spot or in later fighting. Haile Fida was held for a time and then executed; the circumstances of his death are unclear, but Andargachew Tiruneh dates his killing to 1979, two years after arrest. According to Bahru Zewde, "almost all" of the leadership was arrested or killed in August 1977 while trying to withdraw to the countryside, and only the surviving Negede Gobeze escaped to Yemen. Senior members were dismissed from government posts and bloody repression of rural MEISON supporters began; alongside the hunt for the EPRP, a second terror was directed at MEISON in late 1977.

Aftermath and disputed points

When EMALEDH (the Ethiopian Marxist-Leninist Organizations' Joint Front) was formed in 1977, MEISON soon withdrew, and by the 1979 transformation into COPWE (Commission to Organize the Party of the Working People of Ethiopia) every faction except Seded had been purged. In the early 1980s surviving MEISON leaders published self-criticisms of their 1970s practice, and MEISON still exists today.

Some accounts call the anti-MEISON stage "White Terror", but the Red Terror article applies White Terror to the EPRP's assassination campaign, so the labels conflict. Accounts also differ on the timing of repression, "from mid-1977" against "from mid-1977 through 1978", and on the organization's ideological lineage, with both greater Chinese and Maoist influence at its 1968 founding and a Haile Fida closer to Soviet-style Marxism described. The documents state only that leaders were "arrested and later executed", not that they were summarily executed without trial, so their deaths are not classified here as execution in custody.

Red Terror and Mengistu's responsibility

The Red Terror was a violent campaign of political repression waged by the Derg against rival Marxist–Leninist organizations, lasting from 1976 to 1978, which followed a guerrilla assassination campaign against the EPRP in which 50 Derg officials and supporters were killed. Mengistu became chairman of the Derg on 3 February 1977 and told demonstrators, "We are doing what Lenin did. You cannot build socialism without Red Terror." In 2006 he was convicted in absentia in Ethiopia of genocide over the Red Terror. Some accounts add that in early 1977 Mengistu removed moderates in the military and signed a treaty with the Soviet Union, and that from mid-1977 through 1978, at the request of Soviet advisers to eliminate "Chinese and Maoist" forces, he attacked MEISON and thousands more were killed.