By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-
We saw that the fascists in Addis Ababa responded to an attempt on
the life of the Italian Viceroy, Graziani, on 19 February 1937, by
unleashing a three-day massacre, which was to have a major impact on the
Ethiopian Patriotic movement. The massacre was so important that its
documentation requires further elaboration..
“Burning Houses Illuminated the African Night”
One of several graphic eye-witness accounts is provided by the
Hungarian, Dr Ladislav Sava, or Shaska. He recalls that immediately
after the attempt, the fascist party leader, Guido Cortese, “convoked
the blackshirts to the seat of the Fascio, the chiefs to a consultation,
and the others to wait for orders. Very soon they sped from the Fascio
in every direction, fully armed. Everyone in the town was a prey to
anticipation, but what really happened was worse than anyone had feared.
I am bound to say, for it is true, that blood was literally streaming
down the streets. The corpses of men, women and children, over which
vultures hovered, were lying in all directions. Great flames from the
burning houses illuminated the African night. . .
“The greatest slaughter began after 6 o’clock in the evening… During
that awful night, Ethiopians were thrust into lorries, heavily guarded
by armed blackshirts. Revolvers, truncheons, rifles and daggers were
used to murder completely unarmed black people, of both sexes and all
ages. Every black person seen was arrested and bundled into a lorry and
killed, either in the lorry or near the Little Ghebi [the present Addis
Ababa University building], sometimes at the moment when he met the
blackshirts. Ethiopian houses and huts were searched and then burnt with
their inhabitants. To quicken the flames, benzine and oil were used in
great quantities. The shooting never ceased all night, but most of the
murders were committed with daggers and blows with a truncheon at the
head of the victim. Whole streets were burned down, and if any of the
occupants of the houses ran out from the flames they were machine-gunned
or stabbed with cries of ‘Duce! Duce! Duce!’ From the lorries in which
groups of prisoners were brought up to be murdered near the Ghebi, the
blood flowed on to the streets and again from the lorries we heard the
cry, `Duce! Duce! Duce!’”.
“I shall never forget,” Sava concludes, “that I saw that night
Italian officers passing in their luxurious cars through the
blood-drenched streets, stopping at some point whence they could have a
better panorama of the murdering and the burning, accompanied by their
wives whom I am very reluctant to call women.
The Ethiopian Embassy in London
Another eye-witness report, released by the Ethiopian Legation in London, declared that:
“the streets were strewn with dead bodies… No one dared venture out.
From that time began a method which was followed thoroughly during the
three long days… The method consisted of setting fire to the houses,
waiting for the inhabitants to be driven out by the fire and massacring
them without distinction, with daggers, bayonets, hand grenades,
cudgels, stones and, at times, with guns. One could see groups of
Fascists chaining the lorries and amusing themselves by dragging along
poor men from one part of the town to the other until their bodies fell
to pieces… In certain quarters the corpses entirely covered the streets
and the squares. In St. George’s Square already robbed of the equestrian
statue of Menelik II, the dead bodies formed a veritable pile. Now the
appearance of the city is like a field of battle after the fighting is
over.”
A Missionary Account
The above picture was later corroborated by the American
missionaries, Herbert and Della Hanson. They report that on visiting the
city shortly after the massacre they ” found large areas burned that
had formerly been covered with inhabited huts. Even around the hospital
walls, where there had been many huts, all was blackened ruins. It made
us heart sick to see the devastation, especially where we learned that
many of the huts had been burned with their owners in them.”
French and British Reports
Shortly after the massacre a special correspondent of the “Manchester
Guardian” reported that the French Minister in Addis Ababa had stated
that 6,000 Ethiopians had been “murdered in three days,” and that the
British Consulate “knew over 2,000 names of the killed.”
Subsequent Statements On Oath
Other observers, speaking later on oath, also confirm the above
accounts. Thus an Armenian merchant, Edouard Garabedian, related that on
the first day of the massacre he heard Italians “saying they were
waiting orders for reprisals”, and that “at about five o’clock, I saw
them with my own eyes, beating every Ethiopian they could find. These
Italians were civilians. They were using what they could find, as
cudgels, etc… I learnt from some of the Italians that they had received
orders to burn different Ethiopian quarters. They were burning houses
during the whole night… Next morning I heard that many Ethiopians had
been killed during the night when the Italians were burning their
houses. The following day I started to go to my work at 9 o’clock but
there was a great panic and Ethiopians were running from everywhere
without self-control. The Italian blackshirts were pursuing them and
beating them… That day I did not go out from my house; but from there I
heard much shooting and I saw burning houses all around.
“On the third day I went to my shop. This time there were no
Ethiopians to be seen in the streets, but many Italians were
circulating. I heard many of them saying that they had burnt such and
such places and that they had murdered so many Ethiopians.”
Not an Accidental Fire
Captain Toka Binegid, an Ethiopian in the Addis Ababa municipal
fire-brigade, likewise later testified that when the first signs of fire
were seen his commanding officer [an Italian] ordered them to the
Sidist Kilo area of the town to put out an assumed accidental
conflagration, but “when we arrived there we saw the Italians burning
the houses intentionally, so our officer ordered us not to put out the
fire, saying he understood what it was all about. While still standing
there we saw many people being killed by Italians while trying to escape
from burning houses.
“The Italians,” Toka adds, “divided themselves into different
formations: while some of them were murdering, some collected the
corpses and threw them on the trucks. They were gathering the corpses
from the roads with iron rakes. Among the persons who were pulled by the
iron rakes many were alive… I saw Italian soldiers being photographed
while standing on the dead bodies of their victims. The burning of
houses and killing of people which started on Friday… continued up to
Monday morning.”
Another observer of these events, Blatta Dawit Ogbazgi, who was
arrested on the Friday and detained with “about a thousand people” in a
police station near Ras Makonnen Bridge, later testified that “the same
day people were brought in lorries; they were taken without distinction
and most of them were bleeding from hits. The fascists used to throw
them down from the lorries. Some of them rolled down to the river
because they were thrown from the lorries, and these the Italians shot
in front of us. All the houses and tukuls which were in front of us were
burning.”
The Death Toll Among the Foreign Educated
During the massacre the fascists murdered a number of
foreign-educated Ethiopians, above all those who had studied in Britain
or the United States. The death toll thus included Tsege Marqos Wolde
Tekle, Gabre Medhen Awoqe, Ayenna Birru, Yohannes Boru, and Yosuf and
Benjamin Martin, sons of the Ethiopian Minister in London, all six of
whom had been students in England; Besha Worrid Hapte Wold and Makonnen
Haile, who had both studied in the United States; and Kifle Nassibu who
was French-educated.
Consequences for the Patriotic Movement
This terrible massacre, it is generally agreed, had a profound
influence on Ethiopian thinking, and gave new strength to the resistance
movement. The “New Times and Ethiopia News” correspondent in Djibouti
reported shortly afterwards, on 11 March, that Addis Ababa was “almost
empty of Abyssinians,” and added that as a result of the incident “the
Abyssinians know there is nothing left for them but to fight, and the
world will presently hear that they are everywhere attacking anew. Those
who fled from Addis well know what to expect from Italy and they will
fight again.”
This forecast proved true. Blatta Dawit, giving his evidence a decade
later, stated that one of the most important results of the massacre
was that Ras Abebe Aregai, the principal Patriot leader in Shoa, “had
his forces increased immensely, at least by 10,000; also other patriot
forces received reinforcements, because when people heard of what had
taken place… they left their homes and went away from the neighborhood
of Addis Ababa.”
Salome Gabre Egzaiabher, studying the question three decades later
likewise attached considerable significance to this development. She
declares that “many of the people of Addis Ababa who escaped from the
shootings went to join the Patriots who were living in the forests
around the capital”.
Source: http://www.linkethiopia.org
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