1993 ethnic violence in Burundi

Burundians fleeing during the 1993 violence

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Mass killings of Tutsis were conducted by the majority-Hutu populace in Burundi from 21 October to December 1993, under an eruption of ethnic animosity and riots following the assassination of Burundian President Melchior Ndadaye in an attempted coup d'état. The massacres took place in all provinces apart from Makamba and Bururi, and were primarily undertaken by Hutu peasants. At many points throughout, Tutsis took vengeance and initiated massacres in response.

The United Nations Population Fund and the Government of Burund conducted study which in 2002 which concluded that a total of 116,059 died during the events. The question of whether the killings of Tutsis arose from a planned genocide or from spontaneous violence remains heavily disputed among academics and Burundians who lived through the events.

Background[]

The demographics of Burundi through the 1960s and 1970s were roughly 86 percent Hutu, 13 percent Tutsi, and 1 percent Twa.^[1] For most of this period, the Tutsi maintained a near monopoly on senior government and military positions. Burundi gained its independence from Belgium in 1962, and in May 1965 the first post-independence elections were held. The Hutu candidates scored a landslide victory, capturing 23 seats out of a total 33. But, instead of appointing a Hutu prime minister, the king Mwambutsa IV appointed a Tutsi prince, Léopold Biha, as Prime Minister. On October 18, 1965, Hutus, angry with the king's decision, attempted a coup. The king fled the country, but the coup ultimately failed.^[2]

In 1972 another Hutu coup attempt was crushed by the Tutsi-dominated government and armed forces, resulting in a genocide in which between 100,000 and 150,000, mostly Hutus, were killed.^[3]

Prelude[]

Ethnic polarization escalates in Burundi during the 1990s[]

In June 1993 in Burundi, the Hutu Party, Front pour la Démocratie au Burundi, FRODEBU, and its presidential candidate, Melchior Ndadaye, won the election and formed a government.

Massacres[]

Tensions finally reaching the boiling point on 21 October 1993 when President Ndadaye was assassinated during a coup attempt, and the country descended into a period of civil strife.^[4] The Rwanda-based Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) reported that a coup had taken place and that Ndadaye had been captured on 21 October. This led young FRODEBU members to arm themselves and take Tutsis and Hutu UPRONA members hostage. Once RTLM announced later that day that Ndadaye was dead, the hostages were executed.^[5]

By 22 October, Hutus were attacking Tutsis in the provinces of Kirundo, Ngozi, Gitega, Muyinga, Ruyigi, and Karuzi, and in parts of Kayanza, Muramvya, Rutana, and Bujumbura Rural. Violence was less intensive in the Cibitoke and Bubanza Provinces in the northwest and Cankuzo Province in the east. Only the provinces of Makamba and Bururi completely avoided the violence. Hutu peasants were primarily involved, though in some instances FRODEBU members in provincial and communal governments engaged in anti-Tutsi violence. In Butzei, one FRODEBU administrator was reported to have arranged for over three dozen Tutsi civil servants to be burnt.^[6]

In several instances Tutsis engaged in reprisals.^[7] The retaliatory violence was particularly acute in the provinces of Karuzi, Gitega, and Ruyigi.^[8] On 24 October in Ruyigi town, Tutsis murdered 78 Hutu civil servants who were seeking refuge at a bishop's compound. The Tutsi-dominated army also engaged in reprisal killings. One of the few exceptions to this was in Karuzi Province, where the local commander, Major Martin Nkurikiye, went unarmed with two FRODEBU parliamentarians into villages to try to convince armed Hutus to stand down.^[6] The army protected Tutsis by resettling them in fortified villages.^[7] In November the Permanent Francophone Council condemned the killings.^[9]

Initial estimates of the death toll from the ethnic violence ranged from 25,000 to 500,000. A joint study conducted by the United Nations Population Fund and the Government of Burundi in 2002 estimated the number of people killed from 21 October to 31 December 1993 to be 116,059, with at least 100,000 deaths occurring in late October. It remains unclear what proportion of these victims were Tutsi and what proportion were Hutu.^[5]

Aftermath[]

In 1997, the Burundian government passed a law which penalised genocide and crimes against humanity. Later that year, the government charged hundreds of persons accused of responsibility in the killings of Tutsis, with 44 being sentenced to death.^[10]

Assessment of the violence as genocide[]

In May 1994, a UN preliminary fact-finding commission determined that the massacres of Tutsis were not part of "any premeditated plan for the extermination of the Tutsi ethnic group by the Hutu".^[11] Conversely, the following year the International Commission of Inquiry for Burundi concluded that the killings constituted "an effort to completely destroy the Tutsi ethnic group. Tutsis were not simply killed in a spurt of violence, but systematically hunted...evidence is sufficient to establish that acts of genocide against the Tutsi minority took place in Burundi on 21 October 1993, and the days following".^[11] The commission noted that "the evidence is insufficient to determine whether or not these acts of genocide were planned or ordered by leaders at a higher level".^[12] FRODEBU accused the commission of bias and capitulating to demands of Tutsi politicians, church figures, and journalists to have their ethnic group's losses labeled genocide.^[12]

The question of whether the killings of Tutsis arose from a planned genocide or from spontaneous violence remains heavily disputed among academics and Burundians who lived through the events.^[13] Burundian Tutsi authors maintain that the killings were premeditated.^[14] Political scientist Filip Reyntjens wrote in 1995 that "there is no evidence that a genocidal plan ever existed, and the allegations that it did were part of a strategy to exonerate the army and to implicate FRODEBU."^[15] Academic Nigel Watt considered the violence to be a "double genocide", with the first one being perpetrated by Hutus against Tutsis, and the second being by the army against Hutus.^[16] He also wrote that there was no evidence that plans to kill Tutsis were formulated on a national scale but that "the speed of the mobilisation suggests that some people feared [a coup] might happen and made preparations."^[7]

Legacy[]

The killings have received little coverage in international media or academia.^[17] Burundian Tutsis attach more significance to the 1993 massacres relative to the 1972 Ikiza, which Hutus emphasise.^[18] Some Burundians perceive both events as genocides worthy of remembrance, but generally factions have formed to claim the precedence of one event over the other and commemorate them accordingly.^[19] Radical Tutsi ideologues, while stressing that the 1993 events were a genocide targeting Tutsis, often neglect to mention the thousands of Hutus killed by the army during the same period and the flight of thousands more as refugees to Rwanda.^[20] Tutsi academics tend to give Ndadaye's assassination only cursory attention in their histories of the violence. In contrast, Hutu writers usually emphasise the killing of Ndadaye and the massacres of Hutus inflicted by the army and ignore the killings of Tutsis.^[14] The Tutsi extremist group AC Genocide-Crimoso later established several monuments to commemorate Tutsis killed in 1993.^[12] The Burundian government erected a monument in 2010 to commemorate victims of all post-colonial violence in the country.^[19]

References[]

Works cited[]

• Amnesty International Report 1994. London: Amnesty International Publications. 1994. ISBN 978-0-86210-230-2.
• Bentrovato, Denise (2019). "Burundi". The Palgrave Handbook of Conflict and History Education in the Post-Cold War Era. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9783030057213.
• Bundervoet, Tom (May 2009). "Livestock, Land and Political Power: The 1993 Killings in Burundi". Journal of Peace Research. 46 (3): 357–376. doi:10.1177/0022343309102657.
• Daley, Patricia O. (2008). Gender & Genocide in Burundi : The Search for Spaces of Peace in the Great Lakes Region. African Issues. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-35171-5.
• International Commission of Inquiry for Burundi: Final Report by the United States Institute of Peace, United Nations S/1996/682; received from Ambassador Thomas Ndikumana, Burundi Ambassador to the United States, 7 June 2002
• Lemarchand, René (1996). Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-56623-1
• Lemarchand, René (2009). The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 9780812241204.
• Manirakiza, Désiré (2011). "Les intellectuels burundais face au piège de l'ethnisme". African Sociological Review / Revue Africaine de Sociologie (in French). 15 (1): 20–47. JSTOR 24487939.
• Schweiger, Romana (July 2006). "Late Justice For Burundi". The International and Comparative Law Quarterly. 55 (3): 653–670. JSTOR 4092644.
• Turner, Simon (2012). Politics of Innocence: Hutu Identity, Conflict and Camp Life. Berghahn Books. ISBN 9780857456090.
• Uvin, Peter (2013). Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi. Zed Books. ISBN 9781848137240.
• Watt, Nigel (2008). Burundi: Biography of a Small African Country. Hurst & Company. ISBN 9781850659174.

Further reading[]

• United Nations Committee on the elimination of racial discrimination, Fifty-first session, Summary record of the 1239th meeting. Held at the Palais des Nations, Geneva, 20 August 1997, Seventh to tenth periodic reports of Burundi (continued) (CERD/C/295/Add.1)
  • Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination : Burundi. 18 September 1997.
• René Lemarchand. "The Burundi Genocide". Century of Genocide. Ed. Samuel Totten et al. New York: Routledge, 2004. 321-337.
• "Burundi Genocide", News about Burundi crimes since 1962, by Agnews (2000)