Original subtitles

One of my aunts, Princess Ruth,

just recently passed away.

This suitcase was sent to me by one of her good friends.

Oh, God.

I didn't want to open it, because...

I thought it would just be bad memories.

"Time: Man of the Year."

It says, "The King of Kings."

So, this is at the old palace, and that's Granny.

Was this the palace? - Yep.

Oh, what?

That's Mama Ruthie and Mommy.

This is Grandpa on a state visit to England.

This is the last picture taken

before my family was scattered everywhere

and our lives went straight to hell.

There's me. There's Jote.

There's Mommy.

I was born in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, in Africa.

All of us were.

This is a royal family tree,

and it's from a particular Amhara royal line.

I know somewhere in here that I exist.

Here's Grandpa, His Majesty.

We call him "Grandpa" because we were taught to

when we were little, but, really, the emperor

is my great-grandfather.

This is my mother and all her sisters.

This whole group were imprisoned by the Derg.

In the next part of the circle

is my siblings and my cousins.

They narrowly escaped.

We lost so many relatives,

but I was really young,

and I don't know the whole story.

I don't know what my mother went through.

I don't know what they did to my dad.

There was a public demonstration in Addis Ababa tonight.

Opposition to the military government is growing.

Students against the police, police against their leaders.

Direct and secret military rule is now in force here.

Mengistu was prepared

to declare war on anyone who opposed him.

Political assassins are slaughtered with impunity.

We did not come by violence.

It was a very popular revolution.

Mengistu was absolutely ruthless.

Reports continue that the new military regime

plans to execute members of deposed emperor Haile Selassie's family.

My uncle... passed away.

He's probably the tenth senior elder in our family

to die in the last couple of years.

And now I feel like our side of the story

is just going to disappear.

It's just going to go into the ether.

I'm scared to do this,

but now is the time.

I have to find out what really happened.

Goodbye.

You're welcome.

We'll see you soon.

I know it's hard to believe,

but even after all these years,

my family had never really talked about what had happened.

There's one thing I can say about our family

is we're terrible talkers, all of us.

They just don't talk about it.

- It's like you're being weak. - Yeah.

So, we were talking, and Jote said,

for us, with all the things that have happened,

was it worth it being born who we are?

Absolutely not.

Not for me. Why do you say that?

But we wouldn't have been who we are

if we weren't born the way we are.

But we'd be somebody else.

But we wouldn't have all this trauma.

It's very tough.

I don't know what the answer is, myself.

I really don't.

This is an emperor.

According to legend, a direct descendant

of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon.

The ruler is Haile Selassie, King of Kings,

Defender of the Christian Faith,

the Elect of God, the Conquering Lion of Judah.

When he became emperor in 1930,

he began to lift Black Africa's oldest country,

ancient Abyssinia, out of the Middle Ages.

He kept Ethiopia independent, freed its slaves,

gave it its first written constitution.

Emperor Haile Selassie

was a man who introduced Ethiopia to the modern world.

His legacy internationally, for instance,

making Ethiopia a member of the League of Nations,

the United Nations.

The stature of the emperor,

on a global scale, was incredible.

Your Majesty, you're most welcome.

His role in Pan-Africanism in the liberation struggle

and the choice of Ethiopia

as the seat of the African Union,

all these are legacies of the emperor.

So, this is from the suitcase.

Have you ever seen this, Nana?

This one? No, I haven't.

Oh, look.

Who are you dancing with?

That's the British ambassador.

Mm-hmm, and that was his wife.

Beautiful.

If there was a state visit,

one of us would be assigned to whoever,

who came on the women's side, and one on the men's side.

Those pictures of the queen

when she's seeing the horses and stuff in Ethiopia,

she looks so relaxed, big smile.

- She looked happy. - Yeah, she did, she got on very well.

Both of us had a movie camera.

Although I didn't take that well,

but the one of Queen Elizabeth

in the Blue Nile Falls, that came out beautifully.

But I remember His Majesty saying to me,

"I don't think you're in a position to be taking films.

You're supposed to be in the picture."

So, I said, "No."

My mommy, I don't think she wanted to be a princess.

She would happily have given up

the pomp and the circumstance.

She's very shy.

I think it was duty more than choice.

New York Harbor is bedecked to welcome

Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia

as he arrives aboard the liner United States.

The emperor is accompanied by his granddaughter, Seble Desta,

and his youngest son, Prince Sahle.

There was this huge tour.

It was just overwhelming.

We were thinking we'd just go off shopping,

but, no, no shopping at all for us.

Everywhere in New York, they gave him such a welcome.

They were amazing.

Then he's whisked off to Harlem

where a cheering crowd welcomes the African ruler

on behalf of 700,000 New Yorkers of Afro-American descent.

Haile Selassie was a very remarkable individual.

He was, in many ways, astonishingly far-sighted.

However, he was also a feudal emperor.

You know, Holy of Holies, Son of Solomon and Sheba.

During the emperor's period,

feudalism was still

the dominant economic system in the country.

So, that fundamentally unequal system

would eventually lead to a crisis.

Per capita income in Ethiopia

is about $75 a year,

one of the lowest in the world.

Life expectancy, it's something like 38 years for men,

was also the lowest in the world.

Ethiopia was perhaps

the most backward economy on Earth.

The economic problems will be solved,

first, through things like land reform,

and, second, through political parties

have got to be permitted--

things like freedom of speech, press, assembly.

If you were a young student,

you did not speak your mind without running the risk

of being beaten up.

Dissent was not tolerated.

People were imprisoned and detained if they caused offense.

So, he was this curious mixture

between very grand figure with a great vision

for his country, and a despotic emperor.

We were so little,

and we didn't think of my great-grandfather

as the emperor.

To us, he was just Grandpa.

We used to go every year for our holidays.

I can't think of anywhere else

where Grandpa would be that casual.

So, we'd spend time on the beach,

and then we would get to bury him on the beach.

Like, you know, you-- the way you do all the way up to the neck,

That, I remember.

That's me...

with my dad.

I'm going to my mommy.

I was really close to my dad.

Maybe because there weren't boys and I was a tomboy.

A lot of people will say,

"We love your father, but we don't love your mother

or your mother's family."

And that upset me.

But I never heard a negative thing about my dad.

Kassa's marriage to the emperor's family,

it was by order of the emperor.

It was political.

He is the son of Askale Jote.

Jote was the enemy of Haile Selassie,

so what was the best way to incorporate the country?

Marry, so the intermarriage was Haile Selassie's political strategy.

It worked.

Haile Selassie was a genius at that.

Grandpa appointed my father president of the university.

It was a very difficult time

to be president of the university.

From 1965 onwards, you know, every year,

there were demonstrations, pickets,

you know, rallies, marches.

As the years progressed,

the student opposition also escalated.

I joined the university as an undergraduate in 1965.

At that time, the president was Dejazmach Kassa Wolde-mariam.

So, I knew him.

And of course we gave him a hard time.

I met your father in 1966.

And at that time,

I was the president of the student union,

and I had a lot of interaction with your father.

What was most amazing about him

was that he really took us serious,

as if we were equal, his equals, really.

He was the president, we were students,

and he gave us all the respect

that we really didn't even expect, really.

And one thing very unique about his reign was

no police ever stepped in that campus.

When we look back at it, of course,

the way he handled the students was really quite extraordinary.

Many of us say in retrospect that he was probably

the best president that the university ever had.

After our National Congress,

we passed several resolutions.

And we asked President Kassa

to take us to the palace

to present this to the emperor.

And President Kassa

took us in his own car, actually.

So the emperor dismissed us as--

you know, "We have been doing this all the time,

you are not telling us anything new, go and study," he said.

It's a painful paradox.

The emperor knew the importance of education.

He encouraged students

to go to the United States and elsewhere,

and they became radicalized in that process.

He didn't know what he was heaping up for himself.

At that time, I was also a student.

I was only 11,

but I was sent far, far away from home.

This is starting to look familiar now.

Unbelievable.

See? The hockey field.

I never remember seeing this scene.

That I remember.

My sister Jote and I were in boarding school in the UK.

We went to the same school that my mother and my aunts

had also gone to.

- It looks smaller, Jote. - I know.

It's exactly the same.

- There's the cattle bridge. - There's the cattle bridge.

- You're here. - Oh, my goodness.

Wow.

For us, Clarendon basically marked

the end of our old lives.

Clarendon is a dramatic building,

but this was not a fancy school.

They hadn't moved on too much from the war.

Yeah, this is our classroom.

This was a school where you had to eat everything

that was put on your plate,

and we still had, you know, powdered eggs.

It's a very utilitarian, missionary school.

I can't believe we're grown up,

and we're going through the front door.

We never were allowed here,

just like we weren't allowed on the staircase.

- Yeah, I remember the staircase. - Yeah.

Are we allowed up there?

Jote. No, no, no.

Jote, I'm going to kill you.

Come down.

Oh, my goodness.

Clarendon, it was so far away.

You were in Wales.

Look at the marble, Jote.

We were very sheltered.

You know, and it was a huge shock,

because I went from having my mom and my dad and my aunts

and my whole family around me to nothing.

Clarendon School, 1948 till 1975.

- Look at that. - Look at this.

Who is that?

- Miss Haughton! - Oh, my God.

Headmistress, 1960s. That was her.

- Yeah. - Till 1978.

So the former headmistress,

Miss Swain, had retired and was living upstairs.

And she's the one who remembered Mommy.

Miss Swain would have us up,

'cause she wanted to know what was going on in Ethiopia.

And she would call Jote up.

Because I was the eldest,

she'd want to hear from me

what was happening in Ethiopia.

So, we'd look at the papers, and she'd say,

"What's happened today?" you know.

And I had to explain Ethiopian politics to her,

which I had no clue.

During that fall,

there was more and more news in the paper.

"...committee, all indications were

that the army was about to seize full power."

I just find just all of it, just very overwhelming.

- Yeah. - We didn't understand.

I know.

And it was just like this perfect storm that...

didn't get-- they just didn't see

how hard it was coming, I don't think.

No, I don't think they did.

Ethiopia's problems

are partly the result of a terrible drought,

which has also afflicted six other African countries.

Tens of thousands of people have died.

After being the university president

and a governor,

Grandpa appointed my father

to be the minister of agriculture.

So he was right in the middle of things.

My father became minister of agriculture as the famine was underway.

Very quickly, he realized

the government wasn't able to respond

in a way that--

that really addressed the scope of the crisis.

As minister of agriculture,

it was partly his responsibility...

to make food available.

Kassa was going around the world to get the support.

We know about the irrigation scheme, what would've happened

before the irrigation scheme's put into practice?

Before the irrigation scheme, you see,

we'd get a lot of rain in June, July and August.

And then all the water would run away, and we'd have no means

of keeping any of it for the dry season.

What we plan to do through the irrigation scheme is to retain

a little bit of the water, so that we can use it during the dry season.

We're delighted you've been able to come to visit us onBlue Peter today.

Thank you very much for having me on the show.

- Ah, that's nice. - Nice, yeah.

- Was that how you remember his voice? - No.

At all, I didn't remember his voice, Ami.

I-- in my head, I thought it would be like Mommy's.

In your opinion, did His Majesty understand

the level of the famine,

or was he being kept...

separate from it?

You are opening a Pandora's box.

It was kept undercover.

It took a BBC reporter

who exploded this thing to the world.

And everybody woke up.

I had a friend who was at university with me,

and said, "We've got some Ethiopian students here

who say that their voices are being suppressed,

and there's a terrible situation of famine in the country."

And no one knew anything about this.

This is the summer of 1973, late summer of 1973.

And we went out, and I found myself

in the midst of a complete nightmare.

It's the most horrific thing

I've ever experienced in my life.

Those people who are in this shed here

are getting weaker every day.

Many of them can no longer take food or drink.

All of them are bound to die.

In Ethiopia as a whole,

nearly two million people are suffering.

The feudal government of Emperor Haile Selassie did little to stop the dying.

Each week since November,

the government's Emergency Committee

has met to coordinate the relief operation.

The ministries represented here must take much of the blame

for the deaths from starvation last year.

They had been warned.

The Ministry of Agriculture

reported six months in advance

that the spring of 1973 would bring famine to Ethiopia.

The government suppressed the report.

The political tension began to mount,

and a copy of our film was then very cleverly manipulated

by what became the Derg.

They edited my film

to suggest that the emperor knew what was going on.

They called it The Hidden Hunger.

And it was an extremely crude edit

with pictures of Haile Selassie having a great time

driving around in his Rolls Royce

intercut with images of starving children.

I mean, nothing could be more crass.

They ran that film on the television

on a loop 24 hours at a time.

And I was appalled, but there was nothing you could do.

It's hard for me to be objective about it.

I feel like any criticism of Grandpa

would be a betrayal

to my mom and to my family.

What do you think was happening with His Majesty?

Do you think he was listening to your dad?

Or do you think he--

what is your opinion on his position?

I really-- I don't want to talk about--

I don't know enough

to talk about what Grandpa knew.

I know Kassilu was allowed out.

I don't know.

I really don't know what Grandpa knew.

May I take a break?

- Is this too much? - It's a bit much.

But it's good to do it.

Can I take the furry thing off?

It's just been a long-- it's just been months and months of like--

and it's like, "This is your frigging punishment,

Yeshi Kassa, for ignoring it for decades.

And decades, and decades."

- Hello. - Hi, sweetie.

I wanted to talk to you about the fact

that, you know--

- I hit a wall? - Yeah.

You've unearthed stuff

that you have not wanted to look at your entire life.

Yeah.

I know.

What's the worst thing that you think could happen?

That I would go to a dark place and never come back.

When I went to therapy...

I was having massive panic attacks.

I couldn't get on the train and go to work.

Or I would get on the train and I couldn't get off.

No, I'm not liking my hand being held.

- Do you have trouble sleeping at night? - All the time.

I sleep with the light and the TV on.

I don't like-- I don't like the dark.

There's monsters in there.

- Don't you want to like ever stare them down? - No.

- To get rid of them? - No, they'll take me over, Connie.

They will take me over.

They will. They will.

I don't believe that you, you know,

confront them, and you're fine.

I believe you shut the door on them.

So you're stuck with them.

No, they live in another place.

With the door closed.

But the monsters, they're still there.

- I feel like we covered this. - All right.

'Cause we're not supposed to do it twice.

It was so cold out there,

and we volunteered to do the homeless count.

Do you have a place you're going to tonight?

So, you're going to be hanging out right out here?

- What's your name? - Howard, they call me Howard.

Ethiopians want to help, you know.

If there's anybody ever in distress, they want to help.

...says peace.

So, that thing is rich and poor,

that's what shows you're an Ethiopian.

I'm just an office manager,

but I definitely learnt,

you know, to whom much is given, much is expected.

That, I learned from my parents and my grandmas and Grandpa.

I don't know.

Mommy, do you think this is important to do?

Do you think it's worthwhile?

Yeah, I think it's--

you know, time will pass,

and we'll forget all the details,

and how it happened, why it came about.

At least they'll have something...

to remember, because it's very easily forgotten

that the Communist government

were out to get the family.

The frustration of the students was huge.

The farmers needed land, and they didn't own land.

Even the strikes in Addis,

all of those were clear indicators

there was a problem within that society.

I think the whole family, and not just Grandpa,

were not able to hear that.

September is when it happened.

There was a military revolt.

There was an emerging chaos

that led quite rapidly after that

to the Derg taking over.

The Derg is a committee.

Representatives, junior officers in most cases,

and Mengistu Haile Mariam, he was a junior officer,

and he was chosen to represent the army.

He rose quite swiftly through the ranks.

He was intelligent, he was young,

quite good-looking when I met him, handsome man.

And he, at first, appeared to be someone

who just wanted to make radical change.

He adopted a sort of crude form of Marxism-Leninism.

It's hard to imagine that somebody like Mengistu

would change Ethiopia forever.

Mommy, would you mind telling me

what you remember about September 12th?

There was definitely a--

That morning, there was definitely

some kind of plan going on.

The palace was surrounded by... by the army.

We were upstairs,

and I remember His Majesty saying,

when he looked out the window, he said,

"At least I've given a lot to the country."

Then what comes, it comes.

Then the soldiers came in.

They went to His Majesty's office,

and the person read this paper.

"We think the country needs quite a new leader."

He was the emperor.

And he was the ruler of Ethiopia

and it was his head

that the military wanted on a plate.

They took His Majesty.

They brought, deliberately,

a little Volkswagen.

The small Volkswagen came.

They put him in the back of the car

and took him.

So, were you there when they took Grandpa away?

Yes, we-- he was just passing by

and the-- there were so many people.

There was a lot of shouting

and they were trying to get near him.

At first, the Derg, they said sensible things.

They talked about land reform

and they talked about giving the peasants a better life.

And I thought, "Yeah, but this has got to be given a chance."

Ethiopia's revolution brought an end to 3,000 years of feudalism

and ushered in an era of military socialism.

Out of the political chaos has emerged this obscure

38-year-old American-trained army officer,

Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam.

Mengistu fought his way to the top

and plans to use his new army

to maintain political control of the cities.

We just didn't get it.

We did not get it.

We were in Clarendon, and we wanted to go home.

We were headed back to Ethiopia.

My dad called and said,

"Don't come home because there were troubles."

I thought my dad had overreacted.

And I couldn't contact him.

There was no radio, there was no TV.

You couldn't call.

I was cut off not only from my family,

I was cut off from my country.

I-- I didn't know how to deal with it

and I-- I just shut down.

The whole world was just gray and black.

I remember going down to London.

This Ethiopian guy called Tak, he knew I was upset.

He said to me, "I'm gonna take you to a concert."

I'd never heard reggae music before.

Never heard of Bob Marley's name before, ever.

The first thing you see is a huge backdrop.

And I'm like, "It's Grandpa."

I had no idea what was going on.

# Lively up yourself And don't be no drag #

He has this whole chant and response thing.

And the crowd know.

If he says, "Jah," they know to scream "Rastafari."

And it's thousands of people.

So it was like, "Oh, okay, Rastafari."

That was Grandpa's title

before he became emperor.

After the concert,

the guy who took me said,

"You know, we're gonna go over,"

they've invited us to their house.

And I was like, "Sure, why not?"

We went in.

The whole place is full of pot smoke.

They had massive dreads.

Oh, my goodness, they were like, "His Majesty's granddaughter.

Come and tell us about your grandfather.

Did your grandfather eat?

Did you see him eat?

Do you know your grandfather is God?"

And I was like, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no."

I thought, they're wrong.

My grandfather is not God.

But Bob was the one who showed me in the Bible

that there would be a second coming

and that there would be a Black Messiah.

Marcus Garvey said,

"The crowning of a king in Africa

would mark the day of deliverance

for Black people."

So, when Grandpa was crowned,

they worshipped him as the Messiah.

Bob talked about when Grandpa came to Jamaica.

I'd never known about that.

And they told me it was a miracle.

They said that it was the first time that

Rastas had even been able to show their face.

And they made me understand

that it was religion for the disenfranchised.

It symbolized independence for Black people.

Ethiopia is the only African nation

that's never been conquered.

I mean, Wakanda is fictitious,

but the real Wakanda is Ethiopia.

Bob was the first one who even taught me

about Grandpa's speech at the League of Nations

and how that predicted World War II.

His Majesty, Haile Selassie.

Italy had already invaded Ethiopia

before World War II.

And Grandpa wanted the League of Nations,

which Ethiopia was a member of,

to honor their pledge of collective security.

So, his speech was prophetic,

because he said, "It's us today,

and it will be you tomorrow."

And that's what happened.

You know, Mommy wouldn't tell me,

or my grandmother wouldn't tell me.

That was the first time that I'd heard

all these amazing things that my grandpa had done.

Bob Marley took Yeshi home.

As a young girl,

Yeshi just found a champion...

of her homeland.

Ain't nobody was really talking about Ethiopia

and carrying that banner at that time.

Bob was actually given a ring

by the Crown Prince Asfaw Wossen.

Yeshi and her friends, they came and brought the ring.

And, well, that blew Bob's mind.

That's all the endorsement Bob Marley needed.

By the Crown Prince,

acknowledging him carrying the Ethiopian banner.

No, I'm not just a little Rasta man, now.

He is now endorsed!

I don't know what I meant to Bob,

but I know what he meant to me.

And, um...

to me, you know, he was the first love of my life.

He was a good person and he took care of me.

He would always make sure that he saw me...

Oh, my goodness, he used to call me every day and make sure that I was okay.

And, you know, I think I was probably

looking for a father figure

and, um, it was terrible.

When he died was probably one of the worst...

days of my life.

He was, um--

he was there for me when I needed someone.

And, uh...

I was thankful that he remembered good things

that-- that Grandpa had done

at a time when...

Ethiopians were busy telling us that he was very bad.

Haile Selassie, the deposed emperor,

is believed to be alive under guard

in one of the many houses

in the sprawling palace compound.

Just before sunset, an armed convoy

took about a dozen women members of the royal family

from their palatial mansion

to a grim-looking army camp a mile away.

I don't know why my mother and the women were arrested.

I don't understand why they ever thought that they would be a threat.

I don't know why my sisters had to go through what they went through.

The most difficult part for me

in that whole experience

in Ethiopia was when Mommy left.

We were sleeping, early in the morning.

And I remember her coming in and out,

and it was the morning they'd come to take her.

And I think she wanted to say something, but she couldn't.

So I woke up, and she was gone.

And what was I supposed to say to her?

I-- I tried to be a little bit on the positive side.

I thought, you know, I'll be back.

I-- I really did think that I would be back.

Eventually, when you got to, uh,

to the prison, we...

we were just so shocked, we just could not believe it.

So, first, they arrested Grandpa,

and then they arrested everybody else?

- Yeah. - That must have been terrifying.

I also wanted to ask you about the room

you were all in, because Mommy,

she doesn't want to talk about it.

Life in that room, that famous room...

about 11 by 14 feet.

- How many were we? - We were 12 people.

We do everything in that room.

For 24 hours, you eat,

you drink there, you sleep there.

The light was on.

This constant neon light,

all the time on you.

Day and night.

We couldn't even take a shower.

We just washed with, you know--

There was no running water.

- No running water. - At all.

There's a big barrel of water, that's all.

The other thing is that there was not enough windows.

Just one small grill on one side.

So, during the hot weather we had problem.

If it isn't the fleas, it's the rats.

- Huge rats. - How big?

Whoo, oh, even the thought of it--

I'm the only one that could deal with it.

- She's the only one-- - I became the rat catcher.

They were about this huge.

- Literally, big. - Big black ones.

Nothing frightens them there.

I think the whole idea is to psychologically subjugate us, somehow.

I did try to commit suicide.

She broke the door down.

I took rat poison and I drank it.

And I had locked the door, so that nobody could come in.

After my suicide attempt,

they told me, "This wasn't reality,

you know, that where-- it's the situation

that is making all of us act that way."

My mother and my aunts and my grandmother

had gone to school in England.

And they had really good friends.

So there was this group that realized what was going on.

- Hello. - Well, we found your friends, Nana.

Oh, you found them? - We did.

Well done.

So I'm off like a prom dress, Nana.

It's very exciting.

- Last year, you gave me a big... - Did I?

...packet of papers, yes, you did.

Yes, I do remember that.

All my sort of correspondence--

Yes, because this is

an entire history of what happened.

- Yep. - For many, many years.

Yep.

I remember the first time

that I heard the awful news

that my friends had been put into prison.

And you never knew quite how you could help.

Gradually, we got it into the press

and-- and really getting as many people as can

to write letters.

We have had a lovely Dutch lady.

She was called Miss Van De Loo

and she was a missionary in Addis.

And we were able to send money to her

and she would buy food, because no food in prison.

Ethiopian prisons,

they're not like American prisons.

Every single thing, you have to provide.

You have to take food for those prisoners every day.

When you go in, the searches are brutal.

You have to taste test the food,

because they don't want you to take in poison

that the prisoner might want.

And then, when you got inside,

you're not allowed to talk to the prisoners.

Hello, I'm Yeshi.

Yes, of course you are.

Somehow they-- they really knew

that there was this support that was coming from England.

Oh, here we are, letters from prison.

'Cause I remember the little letters and saying,

"Please say 'thank you' to so and so," and we received--

And the packages that-- that used to go.

I remember one year, making them an Easter cake.

And, um, I found a tin that fitted it exactly.

And I sent a card, and I knew that they looked at things

as they went into the prison, so I stuck it

between the greaseproof paper.

I put two greaseproof papers on the bottom.

So you had to cut the cake to find it.

And-- and it all arrived with the card.

And-- oh, that-- that's--

that's the first letter, I think, out.

Oh, that came out of the prison.

Oh, Mary, that's amazing.

"Jemma Swain, just a short note

from all eight Clarendonians.

- Made in our retreat." - "In our retreat."

They hadn't lost their sense of humor, then.

"We know that you are praying for us.

Please continue, as we have gained much strength

through the prayers of many old Clarendonians.

Love, Sybil."

Did you know what happened to my father...

- No. - ...at the time?

'Cause I see Mommy-- I saw Mommy writing,

saying, "Please pray for my husband,

'cause they don't know where he is."

Yes, that's right.

Ladies and gentlemen, we do hope that you have

a great, successful time here in Ethiopia.

Here we go.

While the crisis was brewing,

my father was out of the country

getting aid for the famine.

I'm really interested in the decision that my father made to go back.

You know, and I think it's a decision that haunts all of us, right?

But that decision defines who he was.

We tried to persuade him not to come, but he insisted.

As he was minister of agriculture,

he went to the World Bank

to get money to respond to the famine.

I think this is my dad's.

Yeah, it is.

I think he worked so hard for it.

He thought he could put all this together and do something positive.

He returned about April or May.

He handed over all his missions to a new prime minister.

And then he was offered to stay.

- In the new government. - Absolutely.

- I see. - Yes.

And then he resigned. He said, no.

- He declined the same position. - I never knew that.

- Okay, dear. - I didn't... Yaicob.

And then, by July,

all ministers and generals

were taken into prison.

- Mm-hmm. - He was also called.

The last person.

When you say they were called,

he was the last person to be called,

does that mean on the radio--

Yes, television and radio.

- Television and radio. - Yes.

- So they would say-- - Announce.

"We want so and so--"

To come to this place for questioning.

So, I took him to the prison

and then he gave himself up to the Derg.

You know, I told him, "Where are you going?

All your colleagues are in prison,

and more-- more importantly,

nobody knows your fate."

He said he did not want to leave his family alone.

This is one of the gates.

I-- I parked the car inside the compound.

They came in and took him away.

That's the time when I left.

I should not have taken him to prison.

That's where I admit fault.

Yaicob, nobody could imagine

what the Derg would do next.

In a weekend of bloodshed,

60 people representing the top echelon

of Ethiopian leadership were executed.

This is where the executions took place.

The men had been told that they were being moved

to more comfortable quarters.

They went willingly.

Then, they were executed without trial.

With no trial, in the middle of the night,

they killed almost every single person

that had anything at all to do with that government.

We were having a meeting of the members of the Derg.

I was sitting in the back.

Mengistu said, "If we don't kill today,

they are going to kill us, so we have to take action."

You know what happened?

The entire-- the entire Derg applauded.

The applaud, the claps.

This is-- Derg is born today.

Derg is born today. They just got mad.

This is how it started.

When he saw the mood-- the mood, Mengistu,

he said, "The procedure is simply to raise your hands,

to count the name, after 50%, for killing-- to kill."

Then, people were, you know, sleepy and so on.

Atnafu, oh, gentlemen, please,

your hand, your hand, please.

He wake up. It was completely madness.

I mean, they were laughing,

they were joking with each other.

They are sending people to gallows, to-- to be killed.

So, everything was crazy.

"Following a meeting of its full membership,

the Derg has unanimously decided

that revolutionary action should be taken."

This, I've never seen.

Uncle, uncle, uncle, uncle.

My mother's best friend's husband.

Great-uncle. Uncle.

The person who's not on this list is my dad.

Around the anniversary of the coup,

the next blow came.

Haile Selassie of Ethiopia,

the last absolute monarch in the world

until he was deposed a year ago,

died today in Addis Ababa,

a prisoner in one of his own palaces.

He was 83 years old.

He died alone.

It kind of gets to you. It really does.

Later on, we discovered that he was murdered.

Yeah, he was murdered.

The guy, they used ether, and suffocated him.

And then they just dumped him in a toilet,

you know, in a drainage system.

It's just-- it's unbelievable.

And he used to be an emperor, you know?

And...

I mean, an old man.

You don't kill somebody like that, you know?

I'm reading about the Russian imperial family.

What happened to their family,

I think, has a lot of similarities

to what happened with my family.

The way that they were killed and--

similar because they were isolated.

And I think they didn't know what was going on.

I think, then, you don't see the avalanche

when it's-- you know, headed your way.

About Haile Selassie,

no doubt that he did something good for this country.

There is no doubt about that.

He did not deserve to be killed the way he was killed.

And don't misunderstand me,

I am not condoning the Derg,

but how many other people...

- Yes. - ...could say

that Haile Selassie's regime destroyed my family.

- Destroyed my... life. - I understand.

I understand.

I understand, and I'm getting to that place,

but, you know, it's-- it's blood.

There are so many pro-Derg books.

A lot of people think it was better

during Mengistu's time than during Grandpa's time.

100%.

This little girl was born right when Derg went down,

so she-- and she said, "We don't know anything."

She kept saying, "We didn't know about your mother.

We don't know about the Sixty. We don't know anything."

Today it seems that they willfully ignore what Derg did.

Back then, it was shrouded in secrecy.

We knew my dad was in prison.

We knew that he hadn't been killed with the big group.

We just didn't know where he was.

I think Kassilu would have felt terrible

that all the others were killed and that he'd been spared.

He would have felt guilty and sad and just horrified.

So, do you remember the day

that they came to take Kassilu away?

That was for the first group?

Yes.

How were they killed?

- Shot-- machine gun. - Machine guns.

And they dug a mass grave and they put their bodies in.

And that is how they finished.

My father, was he part of the group?

He was part of the second group.

That is five years after.

It was the Saturday.

Kassa was called,

and he went to the patriarch,

asking for his blessings and then...

he went out.

So, that is the last time that I saw him.

As they were coming through the corridor...

from behind and then strangled them like this,

and killed them.

Hi, come in.

That was a lot to take in.

You okay?

I just felt like they couldn't even dig a...

burial place for them.

Like, really, it was like, you know,

there you go, like a chicken scratching the thing.

That was the extent of their effort with people.

So-- even if they tried to bury you.

And there really were mass graves.

I totally forgot that.

Oh, my goodness.

This is a mass grave.

There was this kind of mass grave, 725.

Most of them were dug out.

But we put some of them here, human bones.

Look.

Some of them have been identified

by investigation of dental, the rest not identified.

- So, these we don't know who... - No.

Like this.

You know, when we go to where the Sixty are,

that's bad enough, but there's only 60 of them

and there's, like, hundreds here.

Never ever again, never forget.

We have to teach the generations.

Repetition. Repetition. Again and again.

- Yeah, because memory forgets bad things, right? - Yes, yeah.

Oh, my God, they're so young.

Do you-- do you forgive everything that happened?

I don't like it.

- Yeah, why-- in what way-- - It's hard to forgive.

Simply the people said, "It's good, it's good."

Why?

And to Mengistu, the revolution in Ethiopia,

now four years old, has been haphazard and violent.

I was in England, but my brother and my sisters,

they were stuck in Ethiopia where Mengistu

was just slaughtering everybody who opposed him.

I remember Bob asking me at the time what was going on.

He wanted to help.

When the revolution first happened

we were living in Mommy and Kassilu's house.

There was really no family at the house at that point.

Thankfully, my aunt,

my father's sister, came to live with us.

So it was Kokeb, Amaha,

our cousin Menen, and myself.

It was dangerous for us to be there

and dangerous to stay.

And my aunt realized she had to protect us.

She knew it was getting bad,

so, she-- she got us a-- a nice family,

they were American family

and then we started living with them in Addis.

Jodie and Denton Collins were American missionaries

until the Derg closed their mission.

They were teaching at the school that my sisters were going to.

The principal came up to me and said,

"The royal family, the women have been put in prison,

and there's four children who are with an aunt.

But she was afraid for their safety.

So, she's looking for someone to take care of the children

and I thought of you.

Would you be able to take care of them?"

You know, I was a little taken back,

because I hadn't met anybody in the royal family.

But I said, "Sure, we'll take care of them."

But the Derg itself became very brutal and bloody.

Because of the ideological divisions there were in the leadership,

the zealots amongst them helped Mengistu and his henchmen

and the result was horrific killings, murder,

in order to cement the power of what was called "Red Terror."

One day the army got out of trucks

and machine-gunned students in front of me.

Mrs. Collins,

when she would drive us to school,

she would have us lay down in the back seat and she'd put a blanket over us.

The parents had to pay $250

for the bullet that killed their kid

in order to take their kid home and bury them.

It was terrible.

It was a really hard time.

Guilt...

innocence, were completely irrelevant.

What mattered is who you were with,

who you were against in the perverted,

tormented mind of that regime.

It's alleged that you killed 12,000 people

to gain power and retain power.

Is that true?

Of course, this is absurd.

I mean, in the first place, it is not in my nature to kill

even an insect or a small living thing,

let alone human beings.

Every day, we wondered,

you know, if we'd come home alive.

Then I started thinking,

we got to get these kids out of here.

There's no way they're going to arrest these kids.

I just had one phone number in England,

and that was Menen's brother, Michael.

I told him, "I have the kids.

They're gonna put them in prison.

They might be killed.

I need to do something right away."

The main thing they needed was money.

They needed to pay for a plane and for pilots

who would risk it to fly into Ethiopian airspace

and go pick them up.

Now, I introduced Bob to my family.

They're the ones who asked him to help.

And Bob was excited.

He told me that he could do this part.

And-- and he was just so happy to do it.

We heard about that the Collins

were planning our escape

the day before we left.

And I remember we danced around the bedroom,

thinking, "It's really going to be over."

And we knew that it was a life-or-death thing

if people heard.

Mr. Collins told us we can't pack anything.

And we can't say goodbye to anyone, he told us.

At the last minute, they ended up taking my cousins.

So, there were a total of ten of them.

Mr. Collins got scared at first,

to take, you know, ten kids.

But Mrs. Collins, she said there was no other way.

I had no idea we were escaping at this time.

Nobody had told me anything.

Well, Denton had to rent a car to get out of the city.

So, he rents a Volkswagen Kombi bus

painted like a zebra.

I didn't think that was low profile, but it worked.

Off he goes to the outskirts of the city.

And we drove a three-hour drive

to the place where the plane was meeting us.

We knew something was wrong

because the planes didn't land where they were supposed to.

But apparently we were on the wrong side of the field.

We had to cross the marsh area to the other field.

We ran through the swamps to the planes.

Mud up to our-- our knees,

and I had to pull my cousin, Menen, along,

because she was falling back.

Menen's shoes got stuck and I said,

"Don't worry about that. Let's keep moving.

Let's go, let's go."

We were trying to run as fast as we could.

I remember at that point being scared.

Most of them got on one plane...

and then Mr. Collins, Ami and I were in a different plane.

They swooped in at that time

at great risk to themselves and got us out.

It was very, very scary because...

we knew we were leaving...

our family behind.

And how do we know we're going to see them again?

Marietta Van De Loo

somehow managed to get into the prison.

I-- I don't know how she did it.

All we heard is sort of shouting and screaming,

and then the door banged open

and that was Marietta.

And she was running with the--

the two soldiers rushing after her.

And then she just managed to say, "They've escaped."

That they got out of the country.

I think we were all crying and laughing at the same time.

It was really one of the good news that

we'd had in a very long time in prison.

So then we made it safely to California,

and we were living with the Collins family.

But Ethiopia became part of everyday news

because there was another horrific famine happening.

There was famine when Haile Selassie was overthrown.

Now famine's returned.

Nine million are starving.

Come '84, '85, celebrate the, by the Derg,

by Mengistu, ten years of the revolution.

Invite everyone in from abroad,

put on a lavish feast, big march-past,

everything to demonstrate that the Derg was the way ahead.

There was absolutely no excuse whatsoever

for the mass dying that occurred.

It became a worse famine than the 1973 famine.

The irony of the whole situation is that the Derg,

which used the 1973 famine

to discredit the emperor and topple him,

actually committed even greater crime in 1984

by ignoring the famine.

My Aunt Oniya was in London

while Jote and I were in school.

And she really was the person

who coordinated the London ladies.

By 1984,

my mom, my aunts, my grandmother,

had been in jail for ten years.

I remember every year the Derg would announce

that they would kill the imperial women

on the anniversary of the revolution.

It was terrifying.

The Clarendonian women continued to help.

How are you, my dear? Good to see you.

And then some politicians got involved.

At that time, the famine, you know,

was very, very bad and we had to go and--

if we stopped the money, it would have been horrendous.

We wanted to make sure the money was going to the poor people,

and sometimes Mengistu was just directing it to his mates.

So, we asked the parliament not to pay any more money

to Ethiopia until the family were released.

Now, clearly, that didn't happen immediately,

but it was a big stick.

The state council of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

had, on Saturday, granted amnesty

to seven members of the former royal family.

These 11 members of Haile Selassie's royal dynasty

have served a total of 152 years

in Mengistu's jails.

You spent 14 years in prison.

Were you ever brought before a court?

No.

- No, during-- - Uh, no.

No, during that time we were never brought before a court.

And Mommy was always saying, "Don't despair,"

because she was so brave, so...

then I think we were able to, you know,

to face all the things that we had together.

The day that you were released,

what did they tell you in the morning?

They came in morning and said, "Oh--"

She said, "You're always saying, 'I'm going to tell you bad news.'

I'm not telling you bad news today.

Get dressed and we're taking you."

You know, when we went out, the prisoners must have realized this is happening

and they were all clapping and saying,

"Oh, these are going out. Isn't it sweet of them?"

And they said, "How are you going to go home?"

I said, "Mama, listen, we're going to take a taxi."

"What?" she said.

I left when I was so young.

I came out of Ethiopia in '73, so I was 11.

And then the next time I saw her was 15 years later.

So, I was what, 26?

We were sorry that we'd missed the-- the important years.

It's sad that they'd had to go through that.

That they couldn't have this normal childhood.

This is the so-called "old girls network"

whose influence helped secure the release of the princesses.

The flowers, a polite thank-you to the Ethiopians.

It was Amnesty International.

We got people to write letters,

and I do believe that they helped enormously.

The world was watching what this regime was doing.

Meeting up together with Mommy and all her friends

that had been separated for so long,

but we always knew we had that support from--

from the Clarendonians, from our friends.

President Mengistu of Ethiopia

has resigned and fled the country.

We didn't kill Haile Selassie. That's not true.

I've heard that

I myself have killed him personally.

I've heard that I have killed him

and I buried him in my office...

...which is entirely untrue.

Today the Mengistu regime stands accused

of crimes against humanity.

For a moment, it really looked like

the Ethiopian people were going to hold Mengistu and Derg

accountable for everything they did.

How many people were brought to trial?

Six thousand something.

Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam.

Did any of them say, "We're guilty?"

I feel sorry, but no one says guilty.

Even, even the-- after they leave, they write a book.

They still deny it.

- Hello? - Hi, my friend.

- It's Yesh. - Hi.

I realized after talking to people

that I needed to talk

to some Derg people.

Who should I talk to?

- From the books you've read. - Yeah.

Because they're crazy,

so I just want to be careful who I talk to.

Okay.

It's like I Googled "how to interview a hostile witness."

So, Mr. Dawit is the most senior Ethiopian official to defect.

I'm keen to talk to you because

you were there for so much of the time

- from the beginning. - Yes.

You knew Mengistu a long time.

We were part of that government, I was part of that government.

I feel bad, though, I never felt that I was

responsible for anything.

But we feel bad that, collectively, we feel really--

very-- we regret what happened.

When you were talking about the Sixty in your book,

I never understood why they killed Kassilu,

so I look for any kind of reason.

I think it was a personal decision by--

by Mengistu and nobody knows.

Even Derg members, they don't know.

It could be nobody knows except Mengistu,

but it would-- it would help

to be able to answer some question.

I wish he were there

and you go there and ask him these hard questions.

So many millions of people want closure,

and most of the answers are with him.

And it is sad that he will be buried--

he will be buried with all this truth.

In Africa yesterday, the Ethiopian Supreme Court

convicted former Marxist ruler, Mengistu Haile Mariam,

to death for committing genocide against his own people.

If anyone is a war criminal

and is a monstrous example of what happens

when dictatorships take over

and acquire virtually absolute powers with the barrel of a gun,

he is that figure.

What was weird with the Derg

was they got life imprisonment.

But then after that, they got clemency.

And then they-- they started releasing them.

So, now they're free and, you know,

there's been instances where

people bump into them at weddings.

The former prime minister

was in Zimbabwe for some other meeting,

and I think it just was a coincidence

that Mengistu happened to be there, and Haile Mariam thought

it would be a good idea to have a photo op with him.

I just feel like they're all trying to come home,

and I think that what's given them the courage

to do that kind of stuff is all the freed ones.

With Mengistu, what I wanted to do was,

I don't want to speak to them, I want to confront them.

What will the confrontation do for you?

- What do you feel like it will do for you? - Closure.

He said to her, "You're the only person who's ever interviewed Mengistu."

And she said, "Yes, I am."

She asked him if she could take a photo of him, and he said, "No."

And then she asked him if she could take a video of him, and he said, "No."

And she must have secretly

taken this picture of him,

looking just, like, so beat.

You know, many people were telling me that,

"How come you went to see Mengistu?"

And it's like, "But he's part of history, you know."

He's the one, he was there.

And Mengistu, you know, he knows so many things.

But does he tell the truth?

That's another question.

That's another question.

Do you think you're going to get to see him again?

- Yeah. - Can I come with you?

Yeah, I mean, it depends on him,

because if he say yes, then it could be arranged.

So, that's what I really want, I want to--

I want to go and I want to be able to ask him.

- Let's call him. - I can ask him.

- Can you call him? Call. - I can.

- Let's do it. - Let me call him.

- Call him. - Okay.

Hello.

No. He said no.

He said no.

He said that, you know, you can talk to me.

He has told me what he knows and-- but not on the record.

He said-- he declined.

Sorry, Yeshi.

Is he trying to come home?

I asked him and he said, "Yeah, I would like to come back."

Does he think he's guiltless,

he should be allowed home and not--

All-- what he's saying is that, all he's done

was for the revolution, so, why do you think

he will think that he should be punished?

I'm-- I'm not asking you to send him messages or whatever,

but I promise you, Guenet, we won't hurt him,

but I promise you, I would be determined

to make every single day of his life a living hell

if he comes to Ethiopia.

We are still living a legacy of violence.

We are not able to heal the wound

because there is no attempt

to amend for the atrocities of the period.

Not many, I think probably one or two,

but the rest who also are complicit in the genocide,

who are not willing to accept responsibility.

- Mm-hmm. - Yeah.

You know, they've set up that Truth and Reconciliation Committee,

and I'm like, "How can there be reconciliation without truth?"

They don't tell the truth.

How can we get to that point?

- How can we be reconciled? - Yeah.

Now at least there's some attempt

to acknowledge what Grandpa did.

Of course, the irony is the ceremony is held

in the same place that the Sixty were found buried

and where Mommy, my grandmother and my aunts

were held for so many years.

And as part of the AU Summit, a statue has been unveiled

which seems to be getting a lot of attention online,

more so even than the summit itself, Andrew.

That's because this statue commemorates

a former Ethiopian ruler who sparked a lot of controversy,

both during his leadership and after his death.

To see Grandpa's statue unveiled was--

it was the end of a long road

that started for me in 1973, 1974.

But you would have to be entirely naive

if you didn't sit there and think,

"Okay, a large percentage of these people

hated my grandfather before."

Is the pendulum going to swing back

and then they're going to tell us, you know,

"You should have all been killed?"

The monsters are always outside the door.

My grandfather's contributions were too many to name.

His shortcomings-- I do believe,

Grandpa got the ultimate power,

so he had the ultimate responsibility.

The current generation,

they don't know what Mengistu and what Derg did.

And if I can, in any way,

spotlight that,

I feel for sure

that I would have done

what my father would have wanted me to do.

What I would like for my country

is for her to have a government that people aren't afraid of.

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# Addis Ababa #

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# Addis Ababa #

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