Revenge of the Tutsis

On the northern shores of Lake Tanganyika, in the tiny Central African republic of Burundi, hundreds of bodies lie in tangled clusters, rotting in the sun. To the south and west, the rolling countryside is half-blackened by fire. In one mountain village, Rotoru, only five people are still alive; an army patrol shot down the women and children and pushed the men over a cliff. In the northern part of the country, a white schoolteacher remarks that he is reluctant to turn his back on his classes to write on the blackboard "because I'm afraid that somebody will be dead when I turn around again."

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.

But even then the killing did not stop. Enraged Tutsis, who are outnumbered by about six to one throughout Burundi, proceeded to round up--and evidently murder--virtually every Hutu of wealth, education or power. Hutu schoolteachers disappeared, as did Hutu bank clerks, taxi drivers and farmers.

At the prison in Bujumbura, the national capital, Hutu prisoners were herded into the courtyard and mowed down by machine-gun fire from a helicopter.

After three weeks, the wrath of the Tutsis appeared to be waning. But the toll had been terrifyingly high. No fewer than 50,000 and perhaps more than 100,000 people had been slaughtered in the fighting and in the massacre that followed. The Hutu tribe, moreover, had been deprived of its leadership and left with a terrible lust for vengeance. In the words of a United Nations report, "Burundi has slipped back an entire generation in three terrible weeks."

* Better known outside Africa as the "Watutsi." the tall, legendary warriors of King Solomon's Mines. The Hutu (or Bahutu), a short-statured Bantu tribe, are the traditional peasants.

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