Word: tutsi
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Hutu tribesmen, who account for 85% of the country's 4,000,000 people, continues. In a sense, it is double genocide: the approximately 2,000 Hutu rebels who briefly proclaimed an independent republic a month ago had set out to murder their overlords of the Tutsi tribe. The Tutsi-dominated army quickly put down the revolt (TIME, May 22). Ever since, it has been attempting to destroy the Hutu to such an extent that they may never rise again. "The Tutsi fear has always been the same-to smash the Hutu or die," explains a foreign missionary...
Though the government of President Michel Micombero claims that the majority of the country's victims have been Tutsi, most foreign observers in Bujumbura believe the Tutsi dead number no more than 5,000 out of a total now estimated at perhaps 80,000. With their devastating pogrom, the Tutsi overlords have unquestionably bought themselves a few more years in power, but at a terrible price...
Such are the scenes of genocide in Burundi, where the Hutu tribal majority revolted last month against their traditional overlords, the Tutsi tribesmen,* and the Tutsi-controlled government of President Michel Micombero (TIME, May 22). The revolt was put down after two weeks of fighting, but not before tens of thousands of Tutsis had been slain. In the town of Nyanza-Lac alone, a single Catholic priest presided over the mass burial of 15,000 Tutsis...
...first Micombero insisted that the uprising was a plot by Tutsi royalists who were trying to free the King. Soon, though, it became clear that the rebels were Hutu revolutionaries whose real aim was to overthrow the Micombero government...
Savage fighting spread throughout the country. In the south, armed bands of Hutus seized control of the towns of Bururi and Rumonge and killed hundreds of Tutsi. On the shore of Lake Tanganyika, a force of 600 rebels occupied the town of Nyanza-Lac and drove off low-flying military planes with cascades of fire. "Everywhere," reported one pilot, "you see dead bodies...