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Witness History

Ethiopia's Red Terror

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.41.6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2017

⏱️ 14 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the 1970s up to half a million people were killed during the brutal campaign of repression launched by Ethiopia's military regime called the Derg. Hear from one survivor who was imprisoned and tortured.

Photo: Human remains. Copyright: BBC.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless

0:06.8

searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the

0:11.8

telly we share what we've been watching

0:14.0

Cladie Aide.

0:16.0

Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.

0:19.0

Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.

0:21.0

And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less searching

0:25.7

and a lot more watching. Listen on BBC Sounds.

0:29.7

Hello and welcome to the Witness Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Alex Last.

0:36.1

And today we go back to 1977 when Ethiopia's military regime was carrying out a brutal campaign of murder and repression.

0:46.1

It called the Red Terror.

0:48.6

I've been speaking to a woman who was imprisoned and tortured by the regime,

0:53.0

listeners may find parts of this program distressing. They killed so many young people. It could be anybody. Our friends were being taken. You were saying when would my turn be?

1:11.5

And it was escalating, it was devastating, it was mind-blowing,

1:16.2

it was unbelievable unless you're there to see it.

1:19.2

You were there to see it.

1:21.0

One night in 1997

1:25.0

in adi's adi's ababa came to arrest a young woman with an unusual first name.

1:32.0

She's called Original Worldergis and she was 24 years old.

1:37.6

And she would be one more victim of Ethiopia's military regime, the Derg, and its campaign of violence it called the Red Terror.

1:47.0

I was at home with very wicked headache.

1:51.0

When plain-clothes people, they came out to me and I just went out with a very, very tiny night

...

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