Who is the King of Ethiopians?

Answer 1

Ethiopia is not a monarchy any longer- the last 'King' to rule the country was Crown Prince Afsa Wossen, who took power in September 1974 following the deposing of his uncle, the Emperor Haile Selassie 1st. Haile Selassie came to power in 1916, but was deposed in September 1974 following popular discontent against his rule as a result of rampant inflation and rocketing fuel and food prices in the wake of the oil crisis the previous year. His Imperial Government fell to the Derg, a collection of low-ranking Marxist-Leninist army officers headed by Mengistu Haile Mariam who were backed and funded by the USSR, but Prince Wossen was allowed to remain as titular Head of State for a further two months until rebuking the Derg for the execution of a number of Selassie family members- his recognition as King of Ethiopia ( a title he had always rejected anyway) was then rescinded and the Ethiopian Royal House then came to an end. Haile Selassie died in August 1975 in an Addis Ababa hospital, aged 83- whilst it's not thought that he was assassinated, it isn't thought that he received proper medical help for his long-standing illnesses either and that he was left to die 'accidentally on-purpose'.

Mengistu Haile Mariam remained in power up until 1991, and was responsible for the 'Red Terror' that led to the deaths of half a million people, either through forced deportations or from the use of hunger as a weapon against areas of the country thought to harbour his opponents. This included the notorious famine of 1983-85, which gave rise to the Live Aid rock concerts in July '85 to raise money to help the victims. Curiously, the Derg did not prevent this aid from getting through, probably because they wanted the outside world to believe it to be a natural disaster beyond their control as oppose to deliberate Government policy. But following the Soviet reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, and the eventual refusal of the dying Soviet Union to prop up Communist Governments overseas, the Derg became more vulnerable to counter-revolutionary opposition, and the Communist Government was overthrown in May '91 by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front. This eventually led to the refounding of Ethiopia as a Democratic Republic with a Presidential model of Government, which it remains to this day. Mengistu Haile Mariam fled to exile in Zimbabwe, where he remains- in 2006 a ruling by the Ethiopian High Court found him guilty of genocide, but for as long as he remains protected by the Government of Robert Mugabe, he is beyond the reach of international justice.