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Throughout Eritrea’s war for independence, one of the main motivators for people to join the independence movement was the oppression enacted by the Ethiopian occupier. From the Hazemo Massacre committed in the late 1960s during the final years of the Ethiopian monarchy, to the killings in Asmara during early 1975 under the derg.
However, why was the Ethiopian authority so violent to the civilian populations of Eritrea? Initially, under the Imperial Ethiopian government, the Ethiopian government specifically had issues with Arab-Muslim Eritreans. The Orthodox Church had went out of its way to support unification with Ethiopia (which is why a separate Eritrean Orthodox Church was established post independence), and when you factor in the long standing feud that the Ethiopian monarchy held against Islam then the cruel violence that the Ethiopian government held towards Islam and Muslims in Eritrea aligns with the time.
However, After the deposition of the Ethiopian monarchy, the Derg regime under Mengistu Haile Mariam grew larger, and was no longer focused on one singular religious, linguistic or ethnic group. The Derg had more heightened violence, with 3000 dead during the Massacres in early 1975, leaving behind a much higher kill count than the massacre in Hazemo during the late 1960s. The reason they were enacting much more violence was due to how the Derg in general treated resistance, a lot of resistant areas of Ethiopia faced way more violence then the rest of the country due to this.
The Derg’s violent policy originated from a sort of “kill or be killed” viewpoint built by paranoia, which even lead to the structure of government to be based around this, which hindered the function of government but guaranteed Derg power. Eventually the EPLF and TPLF would work together to take down the Derg, and the current state of Eritrea today came to be.
Sources: https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=xL0yAAAAIBAJ&sjid=oO0FAAAAIBAJ&pg=2565,5013069&dq=ethiopia+massacres+eritrea&hl=en, https://web.archive.org/web/20070930015508/http://www.shabait.com/staging/publish/article_006961.html, http://ethiopianreview.com/content/350#:~:text=By%201942%20every%20%5BOrthodox%20Christian,delivered%20in%20unequivocal%20political%20language…
Note: A second article of this same topic might be posted, with more context and specific details. If anyone wants to send any sources or has any ideas feel free to contact us! And a few more sources backing up this article will most likely be added on as well due to link problems as of now, and thank you for reading.
