Word: watutsi
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...situation seems to have developed in Rwanda," a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross declared in Geneva last week. Indeed it had. In the onetime Belgian colony, a tribal massacre little short of genocide was under way. By conservative estimate, 6,000 Watutsi men, women and children have already been slaughtered or tortured to death by hordes of Bahutu warriors...
...centuries the giant (average height: 6 ft. 6 in.), Watutsi ruled the more primitive native Bahutu as their slaves. The tables were turned in 1960 when the Belgians staged an election in which the 1,500,000 Bahutu wrenched control from their longtime feudal masters, who numbered only about 250,000. The Bahutu wreaked a savage reprisal; after Rwanda won its independence in July 1962, some 86,000 Watutsi streamed into neighboring Tanganyika, Uganda, Burundi and the Congo's Kivu Province...
...Watutsi tribesmen vowed revenge. Bands of night-time raiders called inyenzi ("cockroaches") began attacking Bahutu villages. The week before Christmas, thousands of Watutsi refugees suddenly invaded Rwanda from three countries. Although they advanced to within a few miles of the Rwanda capital, Kigala, the Watutsi were finally repulsed in a bloody battle...
Edsel & Friend. Two years ago, Belgium decided to set the territory free, and drew up a timetable for independence. Belgium hoped that the two territories would tie together in a single economic and political entity, but the hope was futile. Burundi's Watutsi ruler, Mwami (King) Mwambutsa IV, had made such a concentrated effort to dilute the caste system that in free elections the Bahutu majority overwhelmingly voted for a separate constitutional monarchy under his leadership. Genuinely popular with both the Watutsi and the Bahutu, Mwambutsa is an accomplished amateur magician who nightly performs his feats of prestidigitation...
...Rwanda, meanwhile, Belgium successfully threw its support behind the long suppressed Bahutu, who immediately rose up in bloody revolt against their Watutsi overlords. Although for centuries they had practiced a sort of subfeudal oppression, the Watutsi were openly backed by Russia, in and out of U.N., simply because they were vehemently anti-Belgian. But Bahutu numbers told. The Bahutu burned scores of Watutsi villages to the ground, cut scores of willowy Watutsi warriors literally down to size by slicing their legs off at the knees. Rwanda's Mwami Kigeri V fled into exile along with 142,000 supporters...