Word: langis
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...time known as the "Pearl of Africa," Uganda has been beset by tribal rivalries ever since it won its independence from Britain in 1962. The once powerful and privileged Baganda tribe in the south has chafed under a central government and army largely controlled by Langi and Acholi tribesmen from the north. The discontent has given rise to a ragtag insurgent movement that has tried to disrupt Obote's efforts to reassert control. The government has taken brutal countermeasures. Ugandan soldiers have destroyed villages and crops and herded civilians into detention camps in an effort, as Abrams...
More specifically, according to refugees, Amin was determined to annihilate two tribes, the Acholi and the Langi, both of which are predominantly Christian. These tribes formed the power base of President Apolo Milton Obote, whom Amin ousted in a military coup in 1971, and Amin regards them as his mortal enemies...
...three sites in Kampala to which Amin's troops had herded members of the opposing tribes. One refugee who arrived in Kenya last week reported that "hundreds of soldiers and civilians" were murdered in the prison while he was there. He saw truckloads of troops, presumably Acholi and Langi, being brought into the prison and being stuffed into cells. He said that he heard no shots, and speculates that strangulation or sledgehammering was used to depopulate the cells neighboring his own. "You would hear a short cry and then sudden silence," he said. "I think they were being strangled...
...rebellion and hence justify a purge. If true, the scheme worked because the Lugbaras decided to move. Brigadier General Charles Arube, a Christian member of Amin's Kakwa tribe, joined the conspiracy because he was worried by Big Daddy's purges of the Christian Lugbara, Acholi and Langi tribesmen. Arube was also irritated when he recently returned from a military course in the Soviet Union to find that a Sudanese mercenary had supplanted him as acting chief of staff...
...Uganda's economic situation deteriorates, Big Daddy is relying more and more on the backing of the army, which is riddled with religious and tribal jealousies. In an effort to strengthen his hand, Amin has been purging the officer corps of its Langi and Acholi tribesmen, who are mostly Christian. In their place, he has promoted hundreds of Moslem troops, including illiterates from his own tiny Kakwa tribe, and reportedly placed them in charge of newly recruited mercenaries from nearby Sudan and Zaïre. In consequence, two-thirds of the army's officers are now Moslem, even...