Word: hutu
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While Rwandans set about hacking one another to pieces in the frenzy of killing that followed the April assassinations, Burundi's Hutu and Tutsi parties struggled to agree on a new President. They might have succeeded if the Rwandan capital of Kigali had not fallen to the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan | Patriotic Front on July 4. The victory emboldened Burundi's Tutsi opposition to make more demands, creating a dangerous stalemate. "There is a government, but the whole structure is weak and barely functioning," says a Western diplomat in Bujumbura. "There are 27 ministers, 11 of whom are from the opposition...
...opposition leader jailed for inciting riots, Tutsi youths in Bujumbura organized a general strike and set up barricades of burning tires to prevent people from going to work. Quiet returned to the city a few days later but was quickly broken when grenades were lobbed into crowds. Hutu extremist groups, newly armed with Rwandan weapons coming into Burundi from Zaire, have reorganized to mount counterattacks...
Last week the U.N. offered peacekeeping troops to prevent further fighting. Burundi's ruling Hutu party and the Tutsi-dominated army both refused. Meanwhile, the economy is sinking fast. All international aid to Burundi has been suspended until a new President is named. As a result, industrial production has dropped 20%; by the end of November, the government may not even be able to meet its payroll...
...Tutsi-dominated Rwandan government arrived in the town of Cyangugu in the French-protected safety zone last Friday afternoon, several thousand people flocked to the local stadium to hear their words. Amid the commotion, few remarked on the site from which the ministers hoped to persuade 100,000 Hutu refugees that if they return to their homes, they will not suffer reprisals for the massacres of up to 500,000 Tutsi. Barely four months ago, this same stadium was crammed with tens of thousands of Tutsi men, women and children waiting to be slaughtered by Hutu soldiers and militia...
...measure of the evil that has swept through Rwanda that the symbolic guilt represented by Cyangugu's stadium was more potent than any reassurances the ministers could offer. Before the speeches had concluded, 2,000 more Hutu, convinced that they would be killed by the new government if they stayed in Rwanda, were already trudging across the border to the Zairean town of Bukavu...