Part II: Background

65. Burundi borders on the north with Rwanda, on the east and south with Tanzania and on the west with Zaire, across the Rusizi River in the north and Lake Tanganyika in the south. With an extension of 26,000 square kilometers it is one of the smallest countries in Africa. Access to the Indian Ocean, 1,200 kilometers distant, is effected by a combination of transportation by ship on Lake Tanganyika and railroad through Tanzania or by road transportation through Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya.

66. Burundi is composed of the following natural regions: in the west a plain on the western bank of the Rusizi River known as Imbo, and a narrow strip of varying breadth on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika, with an altitude of about 800 meters above sea level and limiting on the east with a chain of mountains which cross the country from north to south and divide the basins of the rivers Nile and Zaire. This chain is known as the Mugamba, while its western slopes are called the Mirwa. To the east of this chain lie the central highlands, in the general shape of a triangle with its apex to the south. The highlands have an altitude varying between 1,900 and 1,600 meters and consist entirely of hills, with steep sides, separated by marshy valleys. They cover about two thirds of the country and extend into Rwanda. They comprise the traditional regions of Bugesera, Bweru, Kirimino, Bututsi and Buyogoma. To the southeast the highlands end in an escarpment, followed by a strip of plain, the Kumoso, with an altitude of about 1,300 meters, extending into Tanzania.

67. The population of Burundi is estimated to be over six million inhabitants. The population density of around 250 people per square kilometer is the highest in Africa. In the central and northern parts of the central highlands the almost totally rural population averages over 400 inhabitants per square kilometer.

68. The annual rate of growth of the population is variously estimated between 2.5 and 3.5 percent. The population has almost tripled since independence in 1962, when it was estimated at 2,300,000.

69. The national language is Kirundi, spoken by all Burundians. French is also an official language, but only educated Burundians are proficient in it. The rural - as well as a large proportion of the urban - population speaks only Kirundi. Swahili is also spoken by many people in the cities.

70. Although there are no reliable data, it is estimated that about 85 percent of the population is Hutu, and 15 percent is Tutsi. A third group, the Twa, constitutes less than one percent. These groups are usually called "ethnic groups" although they share the same culture, history and language (a language of the Bantu family, Kirundi, almost identical to the one spoken in Rwanda), and cannot be distinguished with any accuracy, even by the Burundians themselves, through physical or other characteristics. A person belongs to the same ethnic group as his or her father. Intermarriage between Hutus and Tutsis has traditionally been common.

71. Nearly 95 percent of the population is rural. It is difficult to estimate the present population of the capital, Bujumbura. In 1993, it had around 250,000 inhabitants, about 80 percent of the total urban population of the country. The second largest town, Gitega, has around 15,000; the third, Ngozi, around 8,000. The other provincial capitals are hardly more than villages.

72. The rural population is dispersed, with each family living on its plot, so that, except for the lakeshore and the provincial capitals, there are practically no towns or villages.

73. Burundi is a parliamentary republic, with power shared by an elected President and a parliamentary Prime Minister. It is divided into 15 provinces, each under an appointed governor. Each province is divided into communes, under an "Administrateur communal", and each zone into "collines", under a "chef de colline". The administrative colline ("colline de recensement"), despite the name, does not necessarily correspond to a geographical hill. A colline may include two or more hills, which are then known as "sous-collines", or large proportions of level valley.

74. In 1993, the gross national product of Burundi was estimated to be 230 billion Burundian francs (about 1.1 billion US dollars). Its per capita income, estimated at 180 US dollars, was one of the lowest in Africa. Its main export is coffee, of which in record years it managed to export around 40,000 tons. Coffee production is declining, due to internal troubles and overpopulation. The only other significant sources of foreign exchange are remittances by Burundians living outside the country, foreign aid and the local administrative expenses of foreign governments and international and non-governmental organizations. In 1993, the US dollar value of its exports was 67 million and that of its imports 211 million. Its external debt grew by 40 million to 1,064 million.

75. Agriculture provides about half of the gross national product, one of the highest proportions in the world. Most of the produce is used for the subsistence of the farmers themselves. The average extension of rural holdings, which was about 1.5 hectares at the time of independence in 1962, is now reduced to less that 0.80 hectares.

76. Except for the Imbo and the southern highlands, there are few extensive pastures. Cattle raising rarely constitutes the sole or even the main source of subsistence of a rural family.

77. Before the present crisis, industrial and mining activities, now severely depressed, provided less than a fifth of the gross national product.

78. Burundi was a unified, independent kingdom, occupying the central highlands, at the time of the German conquest in 1893. The royal caste, the Baganwa, was placed above both the Hutus and Tutsis and claimed to have a mixed ancestry. Under the King and other Baganwa, both Hutus and Tutsis exercised positions of power and prestige. There is no record of ethnic massacres from the pre-colonial period. Judicial authority was exercised by the King himself, by the local chiefs appointed by him, and by wise men designated by consensus on each hill, the Bashinganhaye.

79. During German colonial dominance, which ended in 1916, and during the Belgian mandate that followed, the country was governed formally through the King (indirect rule). In the last years of the mandate the King had become a mere figurehead. Colonial administration generally favored the Tutsis at the expense of the Hutus, accentuating the social and economic differences between them. The Belgians administered Burundi together with Rwanda from Burumbura. Burundians and Rwandese were a minority of the population of Bujumbura until independence.

80. As the end of the mandate approached, Prince Louis Rwagasore, the King's eldest son, founded a multiethnic political party, the National Unity and Progress Party ("Union pour le progrés national"), UPRONA, along the lines of other African national liberation movements. The Belgian authorities promoted a competing, docile party, the "Parti démocratique chrétien", PDC, led by members of a rival branch of the royal family. In the national elections that were to lead to independence, UPRONA won an overwhelming victory. Shortly afterwards, Prince Rwagasore was assassinated at the instigation of PDC leaders. An UPRONA Tutsi Prime Minister, André Muhirwa, headed the first independent Government of Burundi, which became a constitutional monarchy.

81. To understand the post-independence political process in Burundi, it is necessary to be aware of the parallel process in its twin country, Rwanda. Both countries have the same culture, virtually the same language, and the same "ethnic" mix. They are roughly equivalent in size, in population and in geographical characteristics. In Rwanda, however, the royal family and the nobility were Tutsi. Tutsis had exercised for centuries the monopoly of power. Rwanda had been a unified, independent monarchy even longer than Burundi at the time of the German conquest.

82. To counter Tutsi pressure for independence on their terms, the Belgians favored a Hutu uprising in Rwanda in 1959, which led to a state of emergency and the effective end of Tutsi supremacy. Independence was granted in 1962 under an elected Hutu Government led by Grégoire Kayibanda. Tutsis lost all effective political power. In December of the following year, there was a massacre of some 20,000 Tutsis by Hutus, the first in recorded history, and great numbers went into exile. Persecution and exile of Tutsis continued during the years that followed. Most of these exiles went to Uganda, but a great number settled in Burundi and other countries.

83. In Burundi, the political struggle became increasingly ethnic. In 1965, parliamentary elections led to a greater than two thirds Hutu majority in Parliament, but the King, in the face of Tutsi opposition to the designation of a Hutu Prime Minister, appointed a member of the royal family instead. The same year, Hutu officers attempted a coup and a Hutu youth militia massacred Tutsi families in two localities in the Province of Muramvya. This first ethnic massacre made some 500 victims. The Army, under the command of Captain Michel Micombero, a Tutsi officer from the Hima clan from the Province of Bururi, carried out a bloody ethnic repression, sided by Tutsi militias. Several thousand Hutus were killed and most Hutus were purged from positions of power.

84. In 1966, Micombero overthrew the Monarchy and assumed absolute power. He filled the officer corps and the ranks of the Army with Tutsis of his same clan, a situation that persists to this day. UPRONA, the sole legal party, although retaining its bi-ethnic appearance, became a mere instrument of the military dictatorship.

85. In April 1972, Hutus trained outside the country carried out a massacre of several thousand Tutsi men, women and children in the region adjoining Lake Tanganyika in the south, while other armed groups attempted attacks in Bujumbura, Gitega and Cankuzo. The Micombero regime responded with a genocidal repression that is estimated to have caused over a hundred thousand victims and forced several hundred thousand Hutus into exile. Hutus with any degree of education who did not manage to flee into exile were systematically killed all through the country, down to high school students. The repression, which went on for months, was denounced at the United Nations by the Government of Rwanda. In that country persecution of Tutsis was intensified, and a coup the following year led to the military dictatorship of Juvénal Habyarimana, who was to rule until his death in 1994. His regime continued the pogroms against Tutsis, who continued to flee the country by the thousands.

86. In the aftermath of the repression in Burundi, Hutus were deprived of all effective political power, down to the local level. This situation did not change substantially under the dictatorship of Jean-Baptiste Bagaza, another Hima Tutsi officer who overthrew Micombero in 1976 and who, like him, led a one-party Government that drew support from the Eastern Block. However, no ethnic massacres took place under his rule.

87. Bagaza was in turn overthrown by yet another Hima Tutsi officer, Pierre Buyoya, in 1987. Except for its international political alignment, Buyoya's regime did not differ substantially at first from those of his predecessors. In 1988, Hutus massacred several hundred Tutsis in two northern communes adjoining Rwanda, Ntega and Marangara, in what is now the northern Province of Kirundo. The repression by the Army was brutal and indiscriminate. Several thousand Hutus were killed and tens of thousands fled to Rwanda. International reaction to the repression led Buyoya to liberalize his regime and allow Hutu political participation without, however, modifying the one party system. A Hutu Prime Minister was appointed and a large proportion of Hutus occupied important posts, including those of cabinet minister and provincial governor.

88. In Rwanda, in 1990, an armed group consisting mainly of exiled Tutsis from Uganda, the Rwandese Patriotic Front, RPF, attempted an invasion. After the invasion was defeated with the aid of French, Belgian and Zairean troops, the RPF carried on an effective guerilla war in northern Rwanda, which led to their control of some territory, and to renewed persecution of Tutsis by the Habyarimana regime.

89. In Burundi, while the liberalization process was progressing, a clandestine Hutu party, the Party for the Liberation of the Hutu People, PALIPEHUTU, carried out an attack against Army posts and Tutsi civilians in the Provinces of Cibitoke, which borders both on Rwanda and Zaire, and in Bubanza and Bujumbura, which border on Zaire. Several hundred people were killed. The repression, in which hundreds if not thousands of Hutus died was, however, less indiscriminate than in the past.

90. This new episode of violence did not interrupt the process of ethnic reconciliation. With the encouragement and support of the Western countries, in the wave of democratization that followed the end of the Cold War, Buyoya allowed a free, multiparty electoral process that culminated in the elections of 1993. Educated Hutus that had survived the 1972 massacres and had spent years of exile in Rwanda, together with a small number of Tutsis, founded the "Front pour la démocratie au Burundi", FRODEBU, which was joined by a comparatively small number of Tutsis and soon drew support in the Hutu majority. The elections were won by the FRODEBU candidate, Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, with 65 percent of the votes. In the parliamentary elections that followed soon after, FRODEBU candidates obtained 71 percent of the vote. The composition of the resulting parliament was 69 Hutus, and 12 Tutsis, including eight belonging to FRODEBU, which won 65 of 81 seats.

91. While the electoral process was taking place in Burundi, in Rwanda, after a ceasefire agreed by the Government and the RPF in February, negotiations were taking place for the establishment of a bi-ethnic government of national unity.

92. After an attempted coup by Army officers, on 3 July 1993, had been suppressed, Ndadaye was inaugurated on the tenth of that same month. He named an UPRONA Tutsi Prime Minister, Sylvie Kinigi, and gave one third of the Cabinet posts to UPRONA. Tutsis, from the FRODEBU as well as from UPRONA, held one third of Cabinet level posts. Two UPRONA provincial governors were appointed.

93. The three months of Ndadaye's presidency brought unprecedented harmony and prosperity to the country. Some processes, however, were sources of unrest:

a) The media often exercised their recently acquired freedom in an incendiary manner, with negative effects on a population unaccustomed to open debate.

b) Some contracts and concessions approved by the preceding Government were questioned, affecting powerful economic interests closely associated with the Tutsi elite and the Army.

c) At the commune and colline level, the take over by new FRODEBU authorities was almost total throughout the country.

d) Thousands of Hutus that had gone into exile after 1972, began to return to the country and demand restitution of their land. Although President Ndadaye proposed their resettlement in outlying areas, in fact local authorities proceeded to many evictions. Given the characteristics of Burundi, evicted families found themselves with no means of subsistence.

e) Most important of all, changes were introduced in the military. The "Gendarmerie" or national police, a fully militarized body that was under the same command as the Army and has the same ethnic composition, was put under separate command. Changes were made in the requirements for admission to certain military and police training institutions, creating the fear in the Army that modifications would be made in the process of annual recruitment of soldiers, which was to take place in November, that might weaken or end Tutsi dominance.

94. A military coup took place in Bujumbura on Thursday, 21 October 1993, in the course of which President Ndadaye was assassinated. A detailed description of the events is made in the appropriate part of this Report.

95. In the course of Thursday 21 October, the surviving members of the Government sought asylum in foreign embassies or went into hiding.

96. Around 2 p.m. of that day, a committee ("Comité de gestion de la crise") was formed at the headquarters of the Army. It was presided by François Ngeze, a Hutu member of the National Assembly belonging to UPRONA, who had been Minister of the Interior in the Buyoya Government, Lt. Col. Jean Bikomagu, Chief of the General Staff of the Army and two other lieutenant colonels, Pascal Simbanduku and Jean-Bosco Daradangwe. Lt. Col. Sylvestre Ningaba, who had been freed from prison, joined them later. This committee ordered military commanders in the provinces to replace and detain the Governors, placed the Gendarmerie again under Army command, and summoned political leaders and foreign diplomats to "discuss ways to manage the crisis". At 9 p.m., Ngeze, presenting himself as President of a non existent "Conseil national de salut public" announced measures taken to "manage the crisis", among them the replacement of the Governors.

97. News of the coup and of the President's captivity were broadcast by Radio Rwanda early in the morning of Thursday, 21 October. On the same day, through most of the country, trees were felled and bridges cut to bar the roads. In many places young and adult Tutsi males were gathered as hostages, as well as some UPRONA Hutus. In the evening, the killing of hostages began.

98. In the early evening, Radio Rwanda announced the death of President Ndadaye. Jean Minani, Burundian Minister of Health, who was at that time in Kigali, addressed the Burundian people through the same station, exhorting them to resist the coup.

99. On Friday and Saturday, while the committee attempted negotiations with the members of the Government that had taken refuge in the embassies, the killing of hostages went on and spread to the killing of entire Tutsi families, while the Army repressed the Hutus as it progressively unblocked the roads.

100. On the evening of Saturday 23, the reinstatement of the civilian Government was announced, and the next day the authorities, working together with both political parties and the Army, attempted to put an end to the carnage in the country. The Government operated at first from the offices of the French Embassy, and for a later period from a resort hotel. After prolonged negotiations, Cyprien Ntaryamira, a FRODEBU Hutu, was elected President by the Assembly and designated a Tutsi Prime Minister from UPRONA. Forty percent of Cabinet posts were filled with members of the opposition. Although comparative peace was maintained in the interior, violent ethnic clashes began in Bujumbura, which had been spared in the days following Ndadaye's assassination.

101. On 6 April 1994, President Ntaryamira was killed in an airplane crash in Kigali, together with President Habyarimana of Rwanda.

102. In Rwanda, a massive genocide of Tutsis took place, in which over half a million people perished. The FPR renewed its military offensive and occupied Kigali in July 1994. Over a million Hutus, including the members of the Army and armed militias who had participated in the genocide, crossed the border into Zaire.

103. In Burundi, the President of the Assembly, Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, a FRODEBU Hutu, became President, and continued the bi-partisan Government established by his predecessor. Negotiations between the parties went on with the encouragement of the United Nations, resulting in the adoption, on 10 September 1994, of a pact, the "Convention de Gouvernement", which provided for the exercise of shared power between the two main political parties for the rest of the presidential term.

104. In spite of this pact, however, the situation deteriorated steadily. Some Tutsi factions, notably the PARENA ("Parti pour le redressement national") led by ex-President Bagaza, refused to take part, while a sector from the FRODEBU, led by Léonard Nyangoma, a Hutu, rejected it and created the "Conseil national de défense de la démocratie", CNDD, to oppose it. As a result of violent action by Tutsi youth militias, and with the tolerance when not the active participation of the armed forces, violent ethnic clashes went on in Bujumbura, resulting in the expulsion of almost all the Hutu population from the city. In the interior, Tutsi survivors of the massacres remained in camps in a condition of hardship, unable to regain their former homes. The Forces de défense de la démocratie (FDD), the armed wing of the CNDD, began a guerilla war, attacking both soldiers and Tutsi civilians. The Army, in turn, responded by often indiscriminate repression. The economic crisis worsened.