The Secret Massacre of Engecha – Hundreds of Bodies Denied Proper Burial for Sixty-One Years
By Richard Pankhurst
Ethiopian Review, Sep-Oct 1998
Ian Campbell’s Gruesome Discoveries
One of worst crimes committed by Italian fascism during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia was the massacre of the monks of Debra Libanos, on 20 May 1937. It was after that infamous act that Graziani, the fascist Viceroy, telegraphed from Addis Abeba to Rome, in a secret telegram, that 297 monks had been shot, and that “of the monastery nothing remains.”
A recent student of the event is Mr Ian Campbell, a British development expert in Addis Abeba, working on the history of Debra Libanos monastery. He is coauthor, with Ato Degife Gabre-Tsadik, of an important article on the massacre, which appeared in the Italian journal “Studi Piacentini” (number 21). Ian Campbell has now made startling new revelations in a lecture delivered to the Interest Group, in the Hilton Hotel, Addis Abeba, on 8 May. He has discovered that the Debra Libanos massacre, which was carried out at a place called Laga Wolde, near Fitche, was followed by a second, secret, mass killing, at Engecha, just off the then Debra Berhan-Ankober road. This second massacre has up to now never been reported.
To understand Ian Campbell’s revelations it should be recalled that the monks of Debra Libanos were seized when they gathered to celebrate the feast of the monastery’s patron saint, Tekla Haymanot on the twelfth of the Ethiopian month of Genbot, and were massacred because it was alleged that the monastery had been involved in the attempt on Graziani’s life, on 19 February 1937. This involvement has, however, never been established, and, if true, would on no showing justify the killing of the entire body of monks, without trial.
The new information discovered by Ian Campbell reveals that on St Tekla Haymanot’s day the fascists arrested not only the monks, but virtually everyone who had gathered for the celebration. The prisoners, a thousand or probably many more, were then taken to the village of Chagel. There the monks were separated from the other prisoners, and were taken for the execution later reported in Graziani’s secret telegram. Several hundred other prisoners, i.e., those who had come to participate in the celebrations without being in any way associated with the monastery, let alone with the attempt on Graziani’s life, likewise received no trial. They were tied together with ropes, and transported, in some seven trucks, for secret execution at Engecha. Between four and five hundred in number, according to Ian Campbell’s estimate, they were then machine-gunned, and their bodies made to fall into two large trenches, each ten meters long, three and a half meters wide, and one and a half meters deep, which had been dug for the purpose five days earlier.
Ian Campbell has interviewed two eye-witnesses to this secret massacre, and has full confidence in the integrity of their evidence. Having been present throughout their interview, I fully share his confidence in the veracity of their statements. Through their help, and that of the local peasants, the exact location of this gruesome massacre has been established.
What is the most remarkable about the Engecha massacre is that these hundreds of innocent Ethiopian Christians, who went to Debra Libanos to attend the feast of Tekla Haymanot sixty-one years ago, and became unknowing victims of Graziani’s ruthless paranoia, have never received burial in accordance with the rites of their faith. The time has surely come for a full inquiry.
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Prof. Richard Pankhurst is a distinguished historian and Chairman of Friends of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at AAU.