Glossary: Red Terror
DEFINITION:
The campaign of terror unleashed by the Derg (q.v.) in response to the urban guerrilla warfare--the so-called White Terror--of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party and later of other leftist civilian opponents of the Derg, such as the All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement. Beginning in February 1977, untold thousands of mostly young people were jailed, tortured, and killed before the Red Terror had run its course by early 1978.