"Let's See the War, Dammit!"

As it pressed its drive in the Ogaden, Ethiopia's regime launched another campaign on an entirely new front: world opinion. Having virtually closed the country to foreign newsmen for months, Mengistu's government suddenly invited reporters from Western and East bloc news organizations to come for a ten-day visit. More than 90 correspondents turned up last week for what was billed as a guided look at the war and the Marxist government's revolution at home.

Just how guided the tour would be became clear soon after the visitors arrived in Addis Ababa. "The boom came down hard on the first day," reported TIME'S David Wood. A slight, wiry official showed up at the Ghion Hotel and told the reporters: "We will insist that you stay at this hotel and that you stick to the official program." He was not kidding. His instructions were enforced by pistol-toting guards stationed outside the hotel. Anyone trying to make the normal round of journalistic contacts with diplomats and other sources--or even to go to a restaurant--was stopped cold. Taxi drivers were forbidden to pick up the reporters. "They can't tell you that," Wood said to one cabby. "Oh, they can tell us anything," whispered the driver, as a guard hovered a few feet away.

Instead of being taken for a promised firsthand look at the war, the correspondents were carted off for sightseeing at former Emperor Haile Selassie's palace and repeatedly mustered for "press conferences" that turned into lengthy Marxist lectures. That was not surprising. The tour was being guided by two outfits that run the Marxist indoctrination program inside the country, the Ethiopian Revolutionary Information Committee (ERIC) and the Provisional Office for Mass Organizational Affairs (POMOA). Explained one official: "Ninety-five percent of Ethiopia is illiterate, and this jargon stuff is designed to try to communicate some very complex ideas to them. I'm sorry it's being used on you as well." The argument did not go down well with a disgruntled Soviet correspondent, who might have been expected to be more tolerant of the relentless ideologizing. "This is all silly schoolboy rhetoric," he said. "Let's get out and see the war, dammit!"

By the second day, a full-scale revolt was on. David Lamb of the Los Angeles Times excused himself during lunch and never rejoined the tour. Randy Daniels of CBS-TV staged a loud argument with an official and the guards in the hotel lobby, while his film crew slipped out the back way to shoot pictures of their own choice. Others left the hotel before the guards were awake. By midweek about half of the Western reporters had disengaged themselves from the official program and were scurrying around interviewing or taking pictures of bodies sprawled on the sidewalks--victims of the regime's "red terror" campaign of nightly assassination of Ethiopians whom it deems counterrevolutionaries.

At a cocktail party, an Ethiopian official smilingly told the reporters that "we may be forced to take a revolutionary step against those deviating from the program." Since "revolutionary step" is the government euphemism for an execution, the bad joke drew some ragged laughter--but not from those who had heard the staccato of automatic-rifle fire near the hotel before the party began.

By week's end relations between the press and the government had deteriorated beyond repair. Several Western reporters were accused of being CIA agents because they tried to take pictures of a burned-out Somali tank near the front, and two photographers were detained for three hours for taking pictures of bodies on the streets. A group of American journalists was even denied permission to attend a U.S. embassy reception, prompting an official American protest to the Ethiopian foreign ministry. The tour ended with a canned press conference at which Mengistu answered questions which had been submitted by the correspondents earlier in the week. Most of the reporters promptly packed their bags and set off for Somalia, where despite nine years of Marxist rule, journalists are now free to roam about at will.

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