page_title: Haile Selassie
section_title: 1970s
hierarchical_section_title: Haile Selassie / Biography / 1970s
caption_attribution_description: English: Haile Selassie I in Toledo (Spain) en April 1971. Picture by Eduardo Butragueño.
context_page_description: Haile Selassie I was the Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974, and he had been Regent Plenipotentiary of Ethiopia from 1916. He is a defining figure in modern Ethiopian history. He was a member of the Solomonic dynasty who traced his lineage to Emperor Menelik I.
  Selassie attempted to modernize the country through a series of political and social reforms, including the introduction of Ethiopia's first written constitution and the abolition of slavery. He led the failed efforts to defend Ethiopia during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and spent the period of Italian occupation in exile in England. He returned to lead Ethiopia in 1941 after the British Empire defeated the Italian occupiers in the East African campaign. He dissolved the Federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea, which was established by the UN General Assembly in 1950, and integrated Eritrea as a province of Ethiopia while fighting to prevent their independence.
  His internationalist views led to Ethiopia becoming a charter member of the United Nations. In 1963, he presided over the formation of the Organisation of African Unity, the precursor of the African Union, and served as its first chairman.
context_section_description: Outside of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie continued to enjoy enormous prestige and respect. As the longest-serving head of state in power, he was often given precedence over other leaders at state events, such as the state funerals of John F. Kennedy and Charles de Gaulle, the summits of the Non-Aligned Movement, and the 1971 celebration of the 2,500 years of the Persian Empire. In 1970 he visited Italy as a guest of President Giuseppe Saragat, and in Milan he met Giordano Dell'Amore, President of Italian Savings Banks Association.  He visited China in October 1971, and was the first foreign head of state to meet Mao Zedong following the death of Mao's designated successor Lin Biao in a plane crash in Mongolia.
  Human rights in Ethiopia under Selassie's regime were poor. Civil liberties and political rights were low with Freedom House giving Ethiopia a "Not Free" score for both civil liberties and political rights in the last years of Selassie's rule. Common human right abuses included imprisonment and torture of political prisoners and very poor prison conditions. The Imperial Ethiopian Army also carried out a number of these atrocities while fighting the Eritrean separatists. This was due to a policy of destroying Eritrean villages that supported the rebels. There were a number of mass killings of hundreds of civilians during the war in the late 1960s and early '70s.
caption: Haile Selassie I in Toledo (Spain) in April 1971. Picture by Eduardo Butragueño.
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