Word: bahutu
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...King of Burundi, Mwami Mwambutsa IV, does not take kindly to rebels. Fortnight ago, after crushing attempts to overthrow the Watutsi monarchy and kill him and his Prime Minister, the Mwami had 34 of the conspirators-all members of the Bahutu tribe-marched into the sport stadium and executed by a firing squad (TIME, Oct. 29). Another batch of Bahutu politicians was hustled off to jail on charges of complicity in the plot. Last week ten of them, including Emile Bucumi, President of the country's National Assembly, and Gervais Nyangoma, former ambassador to the U.N., were also taken...
...neighboring Rwanda after overthrowing a Watutsi king in 1959. But Burundi's Watutsis are as determined as ever to continue in the ascendancy they now enjoy. Not surprisingly, the Mwami's men dealt harshly with last week's rebels. After a hurried court-martial, 34 Bahutu gendarmes were executed by a firing squad in the Bujumbura stadium. A bleak future probably also lay ahead for several leading Bahutu politicians, including the former president of Burundi's Parliament, who were clapped in jail and charged with complicity...
...Bahutu-Watutsi quarrel reached its peak late in 1963, when Watutsi warriors raided Rwanda in bands called inyenzi (cockroaches). The irate Bahutu responded by chopping off the legs of thousands of Watutsis and floating the remains down the Ruzizi River...
Actually, the crime may have been rooted in a blood feud between two warring tribes. In the hands of Burundi police was Gonsalve Muyenzi, 24, a Watutsi tribesman, a refugee from neighboring Rwanda, and thus a sworn enemy of Ngendandumwe, who happened to be a member of the Bahutu tribe. For centuries the Bahutu had served the towering Watutsi aristocrats (some measure 7 ft. or more) as cattle-tending serfs on the alpine slopes of the former Belgian colony Ruanda-Urundi. Independence, in 1962, established a tribal equality of sorts, but both Bahutu and Watutsi quickly sought more than that...
Assassin Muyenzi may well have aimed to reverse matters and cut a Bahutu down to size. As Acting Premier Pie Masumbuko said: "No one in his right mind would think for a minute that the U.S. embassy was involved in the assassination. Some say the Chinese killed the Premier. I say no." With that the government arrested as accomplices former Premier Albin Nyamoya, a vehement Watutsi irredentist, and 23 other Watutsi tribesmen...