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In the late 1970s Ethiopia's Marxist military rulers tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands in brutal repressions. Now, one survivor is trying to create a permanent online archive of the so-called Red Terror using the documents the Communist regime, known as the Derg, left behind, reports the BBC's Elizabeth Blunt.Hirut Abebe-Jiri was in her early teens when Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown.She had had a happy and privileged childhood, part of a well-off and well-connected family.But the revolution made people like them liable to be viewed as suspicious.The revolutionary guards took her uncle first, then her father, then they came for her and her younger sister."I was shaking and my sister was holding my hand," she says."They took us into a kind of office room, with two desks, and Kelbessa [a senior official] was there."They were greeted by a horrifying sight. An 11-year-old boy from their neighbourhood was trussed up on a broomstick and suspended between the desks.He had been badly beaten and was bleeding and vomiting."When we saw him, we just froze. And they asked him a question, when he was like that, in that position, they asked him: 'Which one?' And he said, 'Hirut'."With that, Ms Hirut's sister was taken away, Ms Hirut was trussed up between the tables and the beating started."They were asking me about this gun which the boy said he had given me, and until this day I didn't know anything about the gun, so honestly I couldn't tell them," she says."Finally they started putting water on me. Then after that when they hit you, your skin starts cracking, and the blood starts coming out. That was the painful time, and I was in and out of consciousness."The beating went on all night. It was daylight by the time they dragged her out of the torture room, and round to a cellar under the building where the women prisoners were kept.She had been beaten so badly it was several days before she could even walk as far as the toilet.
Hotel discovery
Nowadays thick weeds grow round the back of the building - still used as the local government headquarters - and the door to the cellar where the women were kept is locked.
A faint slogan scrawled over the door is still visible: "Ka hullum belay, Abiotu!" It means: "And above everything, the Revolution!"At the far end, there is a small store room where they put Ms Hirut's friend Elizabeth and her younger sister.Ms Elizabeth's sister, just 15 years old, was to die there, but the two other girls both survived.On their release they left the country. Ms Hirut went to Canada and Ms Elizabeth to the US, where they tried to forget the horrors they had suffered and build new lives.And that might have been the end of it. But one day Ms Hirut got a phone call from an Ethiopian friend who said she was sure she had seen Kelbessa Negewo, their torturer, in a hotel in Atlanta.Ms Hirut and Ms Elizabeth travelled to Atlanta and sure enough, it was him.A faint slogan scrawled over the door is still visible: "Ka hullum belay, Abiotu!" It means: "And above everything, the Revolution!"At the far end, t
here is a small store room where they put Ms Hirut's friend Elizabeth and her younger sister.Ms Elizabeth's sister, just 15 years old, was to die there, but the two other girls both survived.On their release they left the country. Ms Hirut went to Canada and Ms Elizabeth to the US, where they tried to forget the horrors they had suffered and build new lives.And that might have been the end of it. But one day Ms Hirut got a phone call from an Ethiopian friend who said she was sure she had seen Kelbessa Negewo, their torturer, in a hotel in Atlanta.Ms Hirut and Ms Elizabeth travelled to Atlanta and sure enough, it was him...more..http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8187427.stm
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