Word: burundi
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Local people call their country "the Burundi cocktail." Its volatile ethnic mixture seems ready to explode at any time. Rwanda's next-door neighbor to the south is virtually a mirror image of that devastated country, threatened by the same passionate hatreds. As in Rwanda, Burundi's dense population is divided between two tribes, 85% Hutu and 15% Tutsi. As in Rwanda, Belgian colonialization hoisted the status of the Tutsi, who after independence slowly lost power to the majority Hutu. And as in Rwanda, the potential for ethnic violence has risen to the surface in the political vacuum left...
...just propaganda from defeated extremists of the Rwandan army. A U.N. relief official claims large numbers of Hutu are still fleeing from Rwanda: "They are scared of something, and it's not other Hutu." Two weeks ago, he says, U.N. aid workers driving near the border with Burundi saw about 50 bodies lying beside the road. "They weren't able to stop," he says, "because there were so many R.P.F. soldiers around." Last week a new wave of Hutu refugees began crossing into Zaire from the southwest zone that has been secured by French troops. The French are pulling...
...hostility from the Tutsi families living in the area. "The Tutsi have the same problems we do," says Rurangirwa. "No work, no money." Munyanziza wonders, though, how they will get along with the Tutsi who are now returning to the capital from years of exile in Uganda and Burundi. "We don't know them," he says, "but they have food, money, and they have taken over empty houses...
Consequently neighboring central African countries including Zaire and Burundi have established camps to deal with the influx of refugees; however, conditions in these camps are nightmarish. Food and water are in high demand as the Goma (Zaire) camp consumes nearly 600 metric tons of food and 50,000 gallons of water daily. According to United Nations officials, the present supplies, imported over the 497 mile gauntlet of bandits and renegade militiamen form Entebbe, are grossly inadequate. Moreover, Entebbe seems the only viable airport, as relief operations to Kigali, Rwanda's capital, frequently draw fire from automatic weapons...
...officials say strife in Rwandan neighbor Burundi, also torn by Hutu-Tutsi tribal tensions, now threatens the main food supply to refugee camps in Rwanda and Zaire. Relief workers fear that starvation in some parts of Rwanda could spark a new exodus of 800,000 Hutus across the border. U.N. officials, equally worried, say such a mass movement of refugees might also be prompted by the planned Aug. 22 departure of French troops...