Word: coupes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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With the CIA's help, Mobutu stepped into the power vacuum that followed the Belgian Congo's chaotic independence in 1960. Staging a bloodless coup, he took power, only to hand it back to a civilian President. The next year, ousted Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, who had turned increasingly to the Soviet Union for support, was assassinated in an operation that benefited both Mobutu and the CIA. "I received instructions to see that Lumumba was removed from the world," recalls Devlin. "I received poison toothpaste, among other devices, but never used them." Mobutu seized control for good in a second...
...home. For the first time since last February, diplomats are finding signs of life in the talks the U.N. and the Organization of American States are sponsoring in an effort to restore democracy and reinstate Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the democratically elected President who was ousted in a September 1991 coup...
...agreed to accept up to 400 international observers who are supposed to deter human rights violations and create a climate for free political activity. The first batch is slated to arrive in Port-au-Prince early next week. Negotiators hope this will eventually lead to a pardon of the coup plotters, a new Prime Minister agreed upon by Cedras and Aristide, and an end to the trade embargo that has crippled an already weak economy. At this point the sanctions are punishing the poor while sustaining the rich monopolists who conspired with the army to get rid of the populist...
...envoy Dante Caputo is far from completion, and Aristide's return is months away -- if ever. Many suspect the military is only playing along to get the international community off its back. Hard-liners within the army, furious at the prospect of international monitors, tried to mount a coup two weeks ago, and a group of young soldiers at the Freres army camp outside Port-au-Prince mutinied on Jan. 20. The 8,400- man army is dangerously riven: its rank and file fear that its leaders will cut and run into comfortable exile, leaving subordinates to face the people...
Aristide supporter Pierre Fequiere, 29, was one of the lucky ones who won the right to seek asylum in the U.S. Arrested after the 1991 coup, he was bound with a cord around his neck and marched off to jail. He lost two teeth when an officer hit him with the butt of a gun. Released provisionally, he fled into the wilderness like the slaves of old. When he returned home, the police tried to gun him down. Days before he got his exit visa to the U.S., soldiers stopped him and kicked him. "If Aristide comes back," he says...