Word: zaireans
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Mobutu has to be as surprised as everyone else. He was out of the country for cancer treatment last fall when thousands of Zairean Tutsi living in the southeast rebelled in the face of a tribal pogrom supported by Mobutu's army. Led by Kabila, who has been involved in uprisings in Zaire for 30 years, well-armed fighters not only halted the pogrom but swiftly overwhelmed the government forces in the region. Kabila's Tutsi-led forces kept right on winning, and are now poised to take over the whole country...
...special envoy was also trying to persuade Kabila that he should accept a cease-fire, commit himself to early elections and open the way for aid agencies to help feed and evacuate tens of thousands of Rwandan Hutu refugees who fled the fighting only to starve in the Zairean jungle. Both men disliked the terms and played coy over formal negotiations...
Last month Zairean villagers attacked the refugee camps with machetes and stole all the supplies they could find. They were backed up by rebels who reportedly fired into the throngs with automatic rifles. Last week, to refute the charges of atrocities, Kabila's soldiers began delivering a few thousand refugees, many sick and mangled, from the jungle camps to Kisangani, where they could be airlifted home...
...epic influx of refugees was made up mostly of Hutu civilians who fled Rwanda in 1994, fearing reprisal for the genocide deaths of 800,000 Tutsi at the hands of the Hutu-led government. For two years the Hutu had huddled in Zairean camps, prevented from returning by Hutu militia who controlled them through savage intimidation. When Tutsi-led Zairean rebels routed the Hutu tormentors two weeks ago, the refugees fled home. In their midst, however, were thousands--perhaps even tens of thousands--of the extremists who had organized and taken part in the butchery of 1994. Some of those...
Mobutu Sese Seko is accustomed to using a strong arm. When the Zairean President flew to France two weeks ago from Switzerland, where he had been convalescing after cancer surgery since August, his arrival naturally attracted photographers eager to film the elusive leader as he entered his villa at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. Minutes later, bodyguards surrounded the journalists, snatched their film and threatened to start breaking limbs...