Word: bujumbura
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...before dawn when a band of mutinous gendarmes crept into the capital of Bujumbura (pop. 47,000). While some surprised Prime Minister Leopold Biha in his home and pumped bullets into his head, others attacked the palace of the King, Mwami Mwambutsa IV. The Mwami proved luckier than Biha, managed to conceal himself in an upstairs room until loyal troops recaptured the palace later...
Dawn was breaking as a trio of trucks and Jeeps rolled into the grounds of the Red Chinese embassy in Burundi's lakeside capital of Bujumbura. Steel-helmeted Burundi troops stood by, watching rows of Chinese stagger out of the low, grey stucco building carrying luggage and huge bundles of documents. Then Peking's Ambassador Liu Yu-feng and his wife glumly entered a black Mercedes for the trip to the airport, where an Ethiopian Airways DC-6 stood waiting. The airport porters were most emphatically ordered not to touch so much as a suitcase handle...
...diplomats in the tiny African mountain kingdom breathed a sigh of relief. So did Burundi's ruler, Mwami Mwambutsa IV, 53, who four days earlier had ordered the Chinese Communists to leave. The Mwami had ample reason to be angry. No sooner had Peking established a mission in Bujumbura, in January 1964, than Chinese money began to flow into the pockets of Burundi ministers and politicians. The Reds quickly allied themselves with discontented Watutsi refugees from neighboring Rwanda, inflaming their irredentist cause with propaganda and even arms. Chinese sympathizers were soon so numerous in the 64-member National Assembly...
...evidence that the Mwami was next on the assassination list. With that, Mwambutsa IV decided that discretion was the better part of diplomacy: he gave Ambassador Liu the boot. Though the Chinese expulsion was defined as "momentary," and Peking may very well return to the sunny shores of Bujumbura, the Mwami clearly had learned a lesson of sorts...
...tiny African nation had been the biggest base for Red Chinese subversion on the continent. Fortnight ago, when moderate Premier Pierre Ngendandumwe was installed to check Peking's rising influence, nobody doubted that the Chinese would respond. Then the Premier was gunned down on the steps of a Bujumbura hospital. But the man who was arrested was a local African employed as a stenotypist in the U.S. embassy. Immediately, the noisy cry echoed through Africa: "Imperialist plot...