1962: Georges Kageorgis, assassin
Add comment June 30th, 2009 Headsman
On this date in 1962, Georges Kageorgis* was shot at Usumbura (now Bujumbura) for assassinating the charismatic national figure seemingly destined to lead the country into its postcolonial age.
“It was a bit like what could have happened in South Africa if Nelson Mandela was murdered before assuming the presidency in 1994,” said one pol later.
A prince, a pro-independence nationalist, a Tutsi who had married a Hutu and spurned a tribal leadership position lest he cast too sectarian a profile, Louis Rwagasore became prime minister in the fall of 1961 on the strength of his party‘s comprehensive electoral victory.
Rwagasore admired Patrice Lumumba. He was destined to share Lumumba’s fate.
Two weeks after his election, “the one truly popular national figure” was gunned down by Kageorgis, a Greek mercenary drawing pay from Belgian settlers who reckoned a better situation (French link) for themselves with Hutu governance. A revolution of (Belgian- and Catholic-backed) Hutu in Rwanda had had a “neo-colonial” character, according to Rene Lemarchand … and it had heightened ethnic tensions in Burundi.
With the murdered prince went ethnic cohesion; the bloody Kamenge riots of January 1962 presaged worse to come as leadership in the Rwagasore-less party collapsed. Ethnic conflict sharpened through the 1960’s, with a Tutsi-dominated dictatorship ultimately gaining control of the country and setting the stage for intermittent massacres (two classed as genocides) that haunt Burundi to this day and form part of the context for the Rwandan genocide.
Rwagasore Day — October 13, the anniversary of the prince’s assassination — is still observed in Burundi. Kageorgis’s execution date is notable for other reasons: it was the last day before Belgian authority in Ruanda-Urundi officially ended.
* This Greek newspaper gives the killer’s name as Ioannis Karagiorgis.
On this day..
- 2004: David Harris, Errol Morris subject - 2020
- 1685: Archibald Campbell - 2019
- 1797: Richard Parker, for the Nore mutiny - 2018
- 1893: A day in the death penalty around the U.S. - 2017
- 1948: Meir Tobiansky, by summary judgment - 2016
- 1921: Richard and Abraham Pearson, the Coolacrease killings - 2015
- 1794: Rosalie Lubomirska, mother of Balzac's antagonist - 2014
- 1278: Pierre de La Brosse, "out of spite and envy" - 2013
- 1680: A Madrid auto de fe - 2012
- 1934: Night of the Long Knives - 2011
- 1704: John Quelch, pirate - 2010
- 1882: Charles Guiteau, James Garfield's colorful assassin - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Assassins,Belgium,Burundi,Capital Punishment,Cycle of Violence,Death Penalty,Execution,History,Milestones,Murder,Notable for their Victims,Occupation and Colonialism,Shot
Tags: 1960s, 1962, bujumbura, decolonization, georges kageorgis, june 30, louis rwagasore, usumbura
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