Word: bahutu
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...Committee of the Red Cross declared in Geneva last week. Indeed it had. In the onetime Belgian colony, a tribal massacre little short of genocide was under way. By conservative estimate, 6,000 Watutsi men, women and children have already been slaughtered or tortured to death by hordes of Bahutu warriors...
Political parties: Rwanda, 4; Burundi, 3. Voters: Rwanda, 75%; Burundi, 52%. Belgians restrained political awareness before granting independence last July, when territory split into two states. Rwanda's main political issue is bitter conflict between giant Watusi and Bahutu majority, who were their serfs. Tribalism not acute in Burundi, but people unready for self-rule...
...timetable for independence. Belgium hoped that the two territories would tie together in a single economic and political entity, but the hope was futile. Burundi's Watutsi ruler, Mwami (King) Mwambutsa IV, had made such a concentrated effort to dilute the caste system that in free elections the Bahutu majority overwhelmingly voted for a separate constitutional monarchy under his leadership. Genuinely popular with both the Watutsi and the Bahutu, Mwambutsa is an accomplished amateur magician who nightly performs his feats of prestidigitation as he tools around the hot spots of his capital city. Usumbura, in a white Edsel convertible...
Although the Watutsi comprised only 14% of the population of 5,000,000, they kept the Bahutu majority and the Batwa Pygmies in a state of virtual serfdom. Cattle feudalism was the basis of the system. The hapless Bahutu were forbidden to own or kill cattle; they could get beef only when cattle died of natural causes. Each Watutsi's wealth, prestige, and political position were measured by the size of his herd, and every cow was regarded as a sister in his family...
...Rwanda, meanwhile, Belgium successfully threw its support behind the long suppressed Bahutu, who immediately rose up in bloody revolt against their Watutsi overlords. Although for centuries they had practiced a sort of subfeudal oppression, the Watutsi were openly backed by Russia, in and out of U.N., simply because they were vehemently anti-Belgian. But Bahutu numbers told. The Bahutu burned scores of Watutsi villages to the ground, cut scores of willowy Watutsi warriors literally down to size by slicing their legs off at the knees. Rwanda's Mwami Kigeri V fled into exile along with 142,000 supporters...