POLITICS-EAST AFRICA: Inclusive Government Crucial for Burundi – Ambassador

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Aug 19 2004 (IPS) - Burundi’s ambassador to Kenya has reiterated the importance of establishing an ethnically-inclusive government in his country. This came after a massacre last week, in which about 160 people were killed in a refugee camp for Congolese Tutsis in Burundi.

“We are looking at how we can organize elections so that we may have all ethnic groups represented in government. We want to incorporate all the ethnic and political parties as part of government so that no one claims he or she is being excluded and starts causing havoc in the country,” Stanis Nsabuwanka told IPS.

Burundi has three ethnic groups, the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. Clashes between the majority Hutus and minority Tutsis have broken out repeatedly since independence in 1962.

In 1993, civil war was unleashed when Tutsi army officers assassinated Melchior Ndadaye – both the first democratically-elected president and the first Hutu head of state in Burundi. Up to 300,000 lives have been lost since then in fighting between Hutu rebels and the Tutsi-led government.

The massacre which took place last Friday, Aug. 13, came amidst moves to finalise a power-sharing government that will give Hutus and Tutsis equal power in the country’s senate – but allow Hutus to control 60 percent of the lower house of the legislature, and of cabinet. A transitional government was installed in October 2001.

Earlier this month, 20 parties signed a power-sharing accord for Burundi. Ten Tutsi groups have remained outside the agreement however, this after the Union for National Progress (Union pour le progrès national, UPRONA), the main Tutsi group, demanded more guarantees concerning Tutsi participation in government.

The National Liberation Forces (Forces nationales de libération, FNL) – the only Hutu rebel group still waging combat in Burundi – has claimed responsibility for the killings at Gatumba refugee camp, which is situated 12 miles from Burundi’s capital, Bujumbura. The FNL claims that Burundian troops and Tutsi militias from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were hiding in the camp.

The killings prompted regional leaders who gathered in the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam Wednesday for ratification of the Burundian agreement to label the FNL a “terrorist organisation”.

The summit was attended by the presidents of Burundi, Tanzania, the DRC, Mozambique, Zambia and South Africa – which has been mediating in the Burundian peace process since the late 1990s. The Ugandan vice-president and Rwandan foreign affairs minister were also present at the talks.

Regional leaders called on the UN to follow their lead by declaring the FNL a terrorist group. The Security Council has also been asked to institute a travel ban on the FNL’s members, freeze its assets and make it the subject of an arms embargo. (The UN has already suspended its mediation in discussions which had been underway between the FNL and Bujumbura.)

Burundi’s army chief, Germain Niyoyankana, has accused Congolese soldiers of participating in the Gatumba massacre, along with Hutu extremists who have their bases in the DRC.

Burundi and Rwanda, which have similar ethnic profiles, have threatened to deploy troops in the DRC to hunt down those who staged Friday’s attack. Ten years ago, Rwanda experienced a genocide in which upwards of 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu extremists.

Kinshasa responded by saying that it hoped to resolve the matter through diplomatic channels, but that it would be forced to act in the event of a foreign incursion.

The two countries have sent troops into the DRC on previous occasions in pursuit of Hutu hardliners. An incursion in 1998 sparked a five-war in the Congo that ultimately involved six African countries, and resulted in the death of about 3.5 million people.

Burundi is scheduled to hold elections by the end of October, when the three-year mandate of the country’s transitional government expires. Nsabuwanka said he hoped the poll would unite Hutus and Tutsis, “and end this long standing problem”.

However, Kizito Sabala, programmes officer at the Africa Peace Forum, a Nairobi-based non-governmental organization, believes it would wise to postpone the election with a view to getting all groups to endorse the power-sharing agreement.

“If Burundi goes on with the elections without taking into consideration the views of the FNL, more massacre will be witnessed than what happened last week,” he told IPS.

“The rebels are trying to pass a message here – to create attention…The international community must intervene before any more damage is caused,” he added.