her office in downtown Addis Ababa when members of the war-torn country's Special Branch came for her.

They told her they only wanted to take her in for ten minutes of questioning.

But Mrs. Kumsa knew she was never coming back.

"I knew what happened to others who had been taken away by them. Nobody ever comes back,'' the 37-year-old mother of three said.

Before the questioning even started she was tied to a pole, turned upside down and repeatedly beaten with a whip made of hippopotamus tail.

And when she had been whipped so much she was numb to the pain, they poured a salt solution on her open wounds and continued beating her, she said.

Mrs. Kumsa, who was the women's column editor for the Barisa Weekly newspaper from 1977-1980, was falsely accused of being part of the Oromo Liberation Front.

After the policemen tired of beating her she was thrown into a four-by-four yard cell with no window and more than 60 other women.

For nine months before being transferred to an Addis Ababa prison, she was forced to stand side by side in the filthy cell, taking turns with her cell mates to lie down.

"People would die from the beatings or go crazy watching bodies being dragged out of the cell like animals,'' she said. "It was a living hell and I don't know how I survived. But there was always something to keep me going.'' Mrs. Kumsa said she was never charged with any crime and never brought to trial, but spent ten years of her life in prison enduring random beatings.

While incarcerated she taught biology, geography and French, was public relations officer of a sports club, wrote the club's newsletter and was on a number of committees including the entertainment and health committees.

Seven years passed before she was allowed to see her children, aged four, three and one at the time she was arrested.

"But it was very painful,'' she said. "They hardly knew me.'' Because Mrs.

Kumsa's husband "disappeared during the Red Terror'' her children stayed with her sister-in-law while she was locked up.

She arrived in Bermuda on Sunday as a guest of the local chapter of Amnesty International. At four different venues this week she was telling her horrifying experiences as being one of an estimated 5,000 prisoners of conscience in Ethiopia, where civil war has raged for some 30 years.

"I could have perished in prison had it not been for Amnesty,'' Mrs. Kumsa said. "I am a living testimony for their work.'' Mrs. Kumsa recalled how letters from Amnesty started flooding in while she was at prison, with copies sent to the Ethiopian government.

She said she at first thought it was a trick by the Government so it could have her killed.

In between sharing her tales of mental and physical torture at the hands of her country's communist government -- and how she and her children eventually fled to Canada with the help of Amnesty International -- Mrs. Kumsa hopes to learn to swim.

Although she was jailed in 1980, Mrs. Kumsa feels her imprisonment began in 1977 when she began working for the Barisa Weekly .

"About 90 percent of the population could not read or write,'' she said.

"The only way you could get through to the people was by radio. Writing was meaningless.'' She had been working as a broadcaster for Radio Voice of the Gospel when the communist government took over the station and "confiscated'' its staff.

She was ordered to go to the Barisa Weekly , which saw its circulation drop to 200 from 20,000 when it was taken over by the communist government.

"It was a fake newspaper. Everything was censored and many of my stories were banned,'' she said. "The journalist in me died.'' Despite the heavy censorship, Mrs. Kumsa said she managed to slip in bits of information aimed at encouraging pride in Oromo women.

"The system wanted the Oromo women to be ashamed of themselves and their traditions,'' she said. "I think in general I helped raise their consciousness by writing about their traditions and culture and telling them they were precious.'' Through the efforts of Amnesty International and PEN International letter writers, Mrs. Kumsa was finally released from prison in September 1991.

She went back to university and studied architecture while her children attended boarding school paid for by Amnesty International.

Mrs. Kumsa said she realised she had to get out of Ethiopia or be killed when she was conscripted to fight for her country.

"I decided to run for my life,'' she said. With the help of fellow Oromo people she and her three children, disguised as Somalians, hitched rides, walked by night and hid in the bushes by day for two weeks until they reached Kenya.

"It was like running away from a terrible monster,'' she said. From Kenya Amnesty arranged and paid for her and her children to fly to Toronto in 1991.

Mrs. Kumsa, who for the last eight months has been job hunting, keeps busy doing volunteer work for Amnesty International in Toronto.

"I am so grateful to be free. But I can not really be free until everyone in my country is free,'' she said.

Today at 7.30 p.m. she will be guest speaker at the Somers Lioness Club dinner at the Belmont Hotel. And on Sunday there will be an open house at 108, Middle Road, Warwick, for invited guests.

MRS. Martha Kumsa.