Word: mwami
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...before dawn when a band of mutinous gendarmes crept into the capital of Bujumbura (pop. 47,000). While some surprised Prime Minister Leopold Biha in his home and pumped bullets into his head, others attacked the palace of the King, Mwami Mwambutsa IV. The Mwami proved luckier than Biha, managed to conceal himself in an upstairs room until loyal troops recaptured the palace later...
...virtual slaves. Fed up, the Bahutus now demand a republic-like the one their fellow tribesmen achieved in neighboring Rwanda after overthrowing a Watutsi king in 1959. But Burundi's Watutsis are as determined as ever to continue in the ascendancy they now enjoy. Not surprisingly, the Mwami's men dealt harshly with last week's rebels. After a hurried court-martial, 34 Bahutu gendarmes were executed by a firing squad in the Bujumbura stadium. A bleak future probably also lay ahead for several leading Bahutu politicians, including the former president of Burundi's Parliament...
...crackdown only enraged the Bahutus. From the countryside at week's end, came reports of machete-wielding Bahutus chopping down scores of Watutsis and burning villages. Mwami Mwambutsa clamped the entire country under martial...
...another occasion, the Chinese showed up at the local Catholic cathedral and settled into one of the front pews, chortling among themselves during Mass. When the worried Mwami ordered all embassy staffs cut to eight foreign nationals, Liu disdainfully ignored him, maintaining that most of his 16-man staff was made up of drivers, cooks and household personnel...
...Boot. The climax came when Premier Pierre Ngendandumwe, a moderate appointed by the Mwami to check Chinese influence, was assassinated only nine hours after naming his government (TIME, Jan. 22). Though the Chinese were not directly tied to the killing, most of the 25 persons later arrested were members of The Group and sympathetic to the Chinese line. Moreover, there was evidence that the Mwami was next on the assassination list. With that, Mwambutsa IV decided that discretion was the better part of diplomacy: he gave Ambassador Liu the boot. Though the Chinese expulsion was defined as "momentary," and Peking...