Burundi Survives Yet Another Coup Attempt

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Although not as well-known as Rwanda, which suffered a genocide in 1994, Burundi, the country to its south, is almost its mirror image.

This small east African state of 10.5 million people has also seen endless violence between its Hutu majority (85 per cent) and Tutsi minority (14 per cent) since independence from Belgium in 1962.

Indeed, Cyprien Ntaryamira, its then president, was on the same airplane as his Rwandan counterpart, Juvénal Habyarimana, which was shot down on April 6, 1994 – the event that triggered the genocide in Rwanda.

In fact, the country’s first Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, was assassinated by theTutsi-led military a year earlier, plunging the country into a brutal civil war that lasted 12 years, with a death toll of 300,000.

Of the eight people who have served as Burundi’s head of state, five have been either murdered or deposed in a coup.

In August of 2000, an interim peace agreement for Burundi was signed in Arusha, Tanzania, brokered by international leaders, including Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela. 

But not all of the warring parties agreed to the deal, which required power-sharing in government between the Hutu and Tutsi and their equal representation in the nation’s army. It took eight more years until the last rebel groups laid down their arms.

Burundi adopted a new constitution in 2005 in which both Hutus and Tutsis were guaranteed representation in government. It also established presidential term limits.

In August 2005 Pierre Nkurunziza, a former Hutu rebel leader, was selected as president by parliamentarians  after his National Council for the Defence of Democracy-Forces for the Defence of Democracy, one of the former Hutu rebel groups, won parliamentary elections a few weeks earlier.

He was re-elected by popular vote in June 2010, but the election was boycotted by the opposition, which complained of fraud. Since then, opposition leaders have cited increasing attacks on their parties and the media.

This year, Nkurunziza announced he would seek re-election in the vote scheduled for June 26, though the constitution limits presidents to two terms. Demonstrators took to the streets to oppose his plans to run for a third term, but his supporters claim that his first term does not count toward the limit because he was not directly elected by voters in 2005. Government officials have made accusations that the demonstrations were in “Tutsi-dominated areas.”

On May13, a group of army officers attempted to overthrow the government while Nkurunziza was in Tanzania for talks with regional leaders. The coup failed, and many of its leaders, including Major-General Godefroid Niyombare, were arrested.

Niyombare, also an ex-Hutu rebel, was fired in February after he expressed objections to Nkurunziza seeking a third term. 

Armed soldiers continue to patrol the capital, Bujumbura, confronting hundreds of angry protesters calling on Nkurunziza to rescind his decision.