BURUNDI-ECONOMY: Massacres Weaken Bid to Have Sanctions Lifted

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Jan 15 1997 (IPS) - Burundi’s government is again urging its neighbours to lift economic sanctions aimed at forcing de facto president Pierre Buyoya to step down, but its arguments weigh little against continued massacres by its army.

The latest mass killing, admitted by the Burundi military, occurred on Friday, just four days before Defence Minister Firmin Sinzoyiheba met Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in Kampala to enlist his support for an end to the sanctions.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which has condemned the massacre, 122 Hutu refugees who had just returned to Burundi from Rwanda were killed in the incident. UNHCR said soldiers opened fire on the refugees when a woman lobbed a grenade at them, although it did not explode.

Thousands of civilians have been killed in Burundi, some by the Tutsi-led military and others by Hutu rebels bent on overthrowing the Buyoya junta, which seized power on Jul. 25 last.

The latest killing did not prevent the government in Bujumbura from dispatching Sinzoyiheba to Kampala where he was reportedly told by Museveni that any decision to lift the sanctions would have to be taken collectively by East and Central Africa heads of state.

The Burundian defence minister was also scheduled to travel to other regional capitals to lobby for the scrapping of the sanctions, which he said were “hurting” Burundi.

East and Central African nations imposed an embargo on all trade with and transport to Burundi on Jul. 31 last to force the military junta to return the country to democratic rule.

The blockade has crippled Burundi’s foreign trade, especially coffee, which is its leading export, accounting for 80 percent of the country’s foreign earnings and about 40 percent of its gross domestic product before the ban.

Given the continuation of human rights violations in the Central nation and the fact that the Buyoya regime has held on to power, neighbouring states are unlikely to lift the ban, which the opposition wants them to maintain.

In Nairobi, Burundi’s main armed opposition group, the Hutu- dominated National Council for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD), insists that the embargo should be tightened, charging that some regional countries are violating it, especially Rwanda.

In a letter last week to the Sanctions-Monitoring Committee on Burundi — set up by the leaders of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Zambia, Zaire and Cameroon — the CNDD said Rwanda had allowed goods into Burundi in violation of the ban.

“On Friday, Jan. 3, twenty lorries with trailers transporting all kind of unidentified goods, including caps for beer bottles, entered Burundi at the official border between Rwanda and Burundi,” the CNDD said.

“They were chauffeured by soldiers of the Burundi regular army and directed to the industrial estate in Bujumbura just next to the building of a transit and transport company called TRANSINTRA,” the CNDD added in the document, signed by Innocent Nimpagariste, its representative in Nairobi.

“When asked, the government of Rwanda said that it was the work of uncontrolled smugglers. Yet the presence of soldiers as drivers exclude every possibility of smuggling without prior authorization of the Rwandese authorities,” added the letter, a copy of which was made available to IPS.

The CNDD charged that goods were also finding their way into Burundi from other countries: cement from Zambia, beer from Zaire as well as Rwanda, and perfumes, cooking oil and salt from Kenya and Tanzania.

A Ugandan journalist writing in the Jan. 6-12 issue of ‘The East African’ weekly here said he witnessed vehicles transporting fuel to Burundi while on a visit to that nation.

“Recently I saw a convoy of 10 fuel tankers, their number plates obscured by mud, driving to Bujumbura, the Burundi capital,” he wrote. “Five of the tankers, with trailers, came from Rwanda and five from Tanzania. They converged at Kayanza junction inside Burundi then proceeded in single file to Bujumbura where residents said they entered the city.”

In its letter to the Sanctions-Monitoring Committee, the CNDD also charged that Burundi’s authorities were seeking the help of countries that have not joined the embargo.

It said a delegation of civil aviation officials travelled at the beginning of January to Congo “to negotiate with Congolese authorities an agreement on an air-corridor connecting (the port of) Pointe Noire and Bujumbura to be operated by Air Burundi as a way of beating sanctions.

“The first plane has already landed in Pointe Noire and will continue doing so on a regular basis if the agreement is signed,” the CNDD charged. “Air Burundi will be transporting tea and coffee from Burundi, while on the return flight it will take arms and ammunitions to Bujumbura.”