Black and White

Just before May Day last year the Ethiopian regime murdered 2,000 people to prevent a May I demonstration against its fascist rule. Many students were among their number. Attitudes to massacres like this have varied.

Here in New Zealand a motion was put at the FoL conference in May to oppose the murders—but the SUP sidetracked it and then later condemned the motion's mover in their organ the Tribune as having engaged in "anti-Sovietism".

About the same time Fidel Castro described this regime which settled even internal disputes with machine guns as the perpetrator of "Africa's first truly marxist revolution"! Clearly the Soviet Union and its mouthpieces were beginning to develop an interest in calling black white. The reason for the interest is clear if locate Ethiopia in the wider context of the Horn of Africa.