Talk:Michel Micombero
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[edit] Conflicting Accounts
Compare and contrast:
- "On October 18, 1965, Hutu leader Gervais Nyangoma launched a coup, ousting the king. Soon afterward the largely Hutu police force, under the control of Antoine Serkwavu, began to massacre Tutsis in some parts of the country.
- Michel Micombero was a young Tutsi army captain who had been born in Rutovu. In 1965 he had only recently returned from school in Belgium and had quickly risen to become Secretary of Defence. He rallied the army, and its largely Tutsi officers, against the coup and overthrew them."
- Wikipedia
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- "1965 - King Mwambutsa refuses to appoint a Hutu prime minister even though Hutus win a majority in parliamentary elections; attempted coup by Hutu police led by Michel Micombero brutally suppressed."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/country_profiles/1068991.stm
In one version, Micombero is an army officer who defeats a coup by the police. In the other version, he leads the police coup. Have the BBC got this completely wrong, then?
- They have. The King fled, as stated, in 1965. At some point, Micombero declared Burundi a republic, and himself President, ending the monarchy summarily. Micombero "defeated" a reported coup by the gendarmerie in 1972, which the government attempted to blame on Marc Ndayiziga, the sole Hutu cabinet member (Minister of Public Works) who was in Belgium at the time, asking for infrastructure money. This "abortive coup" was used as a justification for the Burundian genocide that followed. A lot of the politics of Burundi in the mid to late 20th century, from which Bahutu were routinely excluded, were marked by internal conflicts between Tutsi leaders, outsting and assassinating each other. --Christian Edward Gruber 01:16, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
