BURUNDI-POLITICS: New Rulers Determined to Sit Sanctions Out

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Jean Baptiste Kayigamba

HARARE, Aug 8 1996 (IPS) - Burundi’s new rulers are determined to soldier on in the face of pressure from neighbouring states and the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) for them to relinquish power.

“It is all a question of misunderstanding,” Lt Col. Longin Minani, national army spokesman, told IPS by phone from Bujumbura. “We hope that later on they will understand the real reasons which pushed us to carry out this coup.”

“We prefer to stop genocide,” he explained. “Between death and sanctions, we prefer to stop death and endure sanctions because the latter will be lifted. There is no way these countries can suffocate people who are striving to end the three-year bloodshed.”

East and Central African leaders decided at a Jul. 31 summit in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha to impose economic sanctions on Burundi in response to a Jul. 25 military coup there.

They also called for the reinstatement of the national assembly, dissolved by new ruler Maj. Pierre Buyoya, and a lifting of the ban he has imposed on political parties.

However, the government maintains that it had no choice. “In the face of the daily massacres which risked becoming generalised, there was no other credible alternative,” said a statement from Buyoya’s office.

“There was no way out of that dramatic impasse: the political class and the regime had practically resigned. The country was abandoned to violence,” it charged, adding that the coup was a step towards the opening of dialogue and national debate.

However, some groups view the coup as the completion by Tutsis of a drive, begun three years ago, to regain the power they lost as a result of elections in mid-1993, at which the country’s first Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, was swept to power.

Ndadaye’s assassination in a failed military coup in October that year triggered ethnic bloodshed which affected both Tutsis and Hutus in 12 of the country’s 15 provinces.

Tens of thousands were killed in “massacres of genocidal nature against Tutsis and Hutus favorable to national unity,” a group of provincial and community development associations said in an 800-page report titled ‘Burundi: the genocide of Tutsis and moderates Hutus in October-November 1993’, issued in July.

The associations charged that the then ruling Front for Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU) had been behind the killing of Tutsis.

“The trigger came from Dr Jean Minani, Minister of Health at the time and today chairman of the FRODEBU,” they claimed in the report, which charged that Minani used ‘Radio Rwanda’ and the notorious ‘Radio-Television des Milles Collines’ to instigate the country’s leaders to organise the pogroms.

On the other hand, FRODEBU members have charged that the army also committed atrocities against Hutus. Similar accusations have been made by international human rights groups.

Aid agencies and diplomats estimate the number of people who have lost their lives in the three-year-old conflict at more than 150,000.

Former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere has been trying to mediate but his effort has proved ineffective in a country torn apart by the fear of extermination that grips both its main communities.

Mutual suspicion and ethnic hatred nurtured by killings and and counterkillings which aid agencies blame on the armed wing of the National Council for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD), an overseas- based opposition group led by former Interior Minister Leonard Nyangoma, and elements of the military, have made Nyerere’s task all the more difficult.

According to one human right activist who has been conducting research in the region, the coup has torpedoed Nyerere’s initiative, hence the current campaign to pressure Burundi’s military rulers into restoring the country’s democratic institutions and engaging in talks with the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD — the CNDD’s armed wing) as a means of settling the crisis.

Nyerere shares this idea with Jeff Drumira of the US Committee for Refugees who thinks that “Buyoya should offer to negotiate with rebel leaders without preconditions.

“Although a cease-fire in the civil war is desirable,” Drumira points out, “the lack of ceasefire should not be used as an excuse to delay talks.”

But the military rule out negotiations with the CNDD. “There cannot be talks with Nyangoma,” says Lt Col Minani. “Nyangoma has got to be judged first and the blood of innocent Burundians cleaned off his hands. Nobody in the West would talk with terrorists, why should this be imposed on Burundians?”

The Burundian army purports that instead of democracy in their country, there was ethnocracy.

According to one Burundian diplomat from the Union for National Progress (UPRONA), traditionally allied to the army, the Burundi issue has given rise to too much partisanship and passion.

“The declaration by the former Tanzanian Prime Minister, John Malecela, in a parliamentary session last week is just one instance of the bias of some people vis-a-vis our internal problems,” indicated the diplomat, who requested anonymity. “These people have continually poored oil on the glowing fire that is devoring our country.”

He was referring to a report in a Tanzanian newspaper, ‘Uhuru’, which quoted Malecela as saying that Tanzania should “give sticks to Hutus to kill the ‘snakes’,”.

(‘Snakes’ was the code word Rwandan Hutus used for Tutsis during the 1994 genocide.)

“It is a very unfortunate statement from such a prominent politician,” commented Minani. “However, this is his own idea, and it does not reflect the stand of the people and government of Tanzania, neither the mediator’s.”

In the meantime, pressure has been mounting on Bujumbura.

Uganda and Kenya have followed Tanzania’s lead in implementing the decision to impose a total economic blocade on landlocked Burundi.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has expressed concern that the embargo threatens the well-being of hundreds of thousands of Burundians by blocking the delivery of relief supplies to the country.

It has also noted that the interruption of emergency food, medical and fuel supplies could worsen ethnic tensions there.

Buyoya’s government maintains that there is no reason why these sanctions should be maintained. They claim the coup has helped avoid chaos.

“The whole country is quiet now, and many CNDD rebels have started to hand in their arms to the army,” Minani said, adding that on Monday, about 50 rebels in the north-western province of Cibitoke surrendered their arms to the army.

For Burundi’s new leaders, a just released UN Human Rights report on Burundi which accuses the army of committing atrocities against Hutus since April is part of a campaign against them.

“Obviously there is conspiracy because these monitors never talked about these killings before and never condemned the massacres of Tutsi women and children for which the CNDD claimed the responsiblity in Teza and Bugendana,” argued Minani.

“What we seek from the international community is understanding and assistance to achieve this objective,” he pleaded.