Word: hutu
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...verdant, mountainous beauty, the tiny African nation of Burundi (pop. 4,000,000) has a bloodied and tragic history. Untold thousands have been killed in both Burundi and its neighboring sister-state of Rwanda during periodic tribal wars involving the Hutu majority and the tall, legendary Tutsi overlords. Last week Burundi was recovering from a brief but violent civil war that left an estimated 10,000 dead -including the country's last Tutsi King-and at least 500,000 homeless...
...that he would be free to live in Burundi "as an ordinary citizen." But as soon as Ntare reached the Burundi capital of Bujumbura, he was whisked off by helicopter to the old royal capital of Kitega and placed under house arrest in his former palace. When thousands of Hutu tribesmen revolted a month later, they stormed the palace and killed the trapped Tutsi King...
Genocide, then, is not an inappropriate description of what is happening in Rwanda. Violence between Tutsi and Hutu has long been imminent. For centuries, the Tutsi held the Hutu in a type of feudal boundage. The Belgians allowed Tutsi domination to continue when they took over Ruanda-Urundi (now divided into Rwanda and the Kingdom of Burundi) after World War I. Only in 1959 did the Hutu overthrow the Tutsi's jealously guarded hegemony...
After this revolution, about 75,000 Tutsi fled to neighboring Burundi, Uganda, and Tanganyika. The victory of the Parmehutu (Parti d'Emancipation des Hutu) in elections of October, 1961, further weakened the Tutsi's position. The Tutsi king, or Mwami, went into exile. The number of Tutsi refugees in surrounding territories doubled by July, 1962, when Rwanda and Burundi gained independence...
...Hutu have reason to hate the Tutsi. For years the Tutsi refused to share any power or to intermarry with the Hutu in Rwanda, while their fellow tribesmen in Burundi followed a more flexible policy. And last December, Tutsi refugees launched a futile attack on Rwanda, breaking an uneasy tribal peace. Thousands of Tutsi have been murdered in retaliation since Christmas, and thousands more have had to flee Rwanda...