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Ethiopia Public Order and Internal Security
As a result of insurgencies affecting a large part of the
country in the 1970s and after, questions of internal
security and public order became inseparable from the
general problem of national security. Revisions made to the
penal code in 1976 helped blur the distinction between
political opposition to the government (defined as criminal
activity) and categories of crime against persons and
property. Army security services and counterinsurgency units
assumed many functions formerly assigned to the national
police's paramilitary and constabulary units, and local law
enforcement was delegated largely to the civilian
paramilitary People's Protection Brigades, drawn from
peasant association and kebele defense squads. Although
criminal investigation remained an important part of the
mission of the national police, units of its heavily armed
Mobile Emergency Police Force were employed in pursuing
insurgents and rooting out political dissidents. The gradual
isolation of the Mengistu regime during the 1980s meant that
these and other measures designed to suppress internal
dissent remained in force until the military government
collapsed.
Data as of 1991
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