Routinely, the state-run TV network in Ethiopia puts on a prime-time horror show intendedquite literallyto terrify the nation's 28 million inhabitants. Shots of racked bodies of political prisoners tortured to death, corpses of dissidents shot down by mobs of armed vigilantesthey all flicker across the screen as evidence of the ruthless determination of what may be one of the most brutal and arbitrary regimes in power today.
It is led by a slim lieutenant colonel with a sharklike grin named Mengistu Haile Mariam. An avowed Marxist, he was one of a coterie of officers who finally deposed Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie...