Burundi: Death of President Melchior Ndadaye in 1993 followed by the genocide of Tutsis and Hutu members of the Uprona: analysis (first part)
On October 21 of each year, Burundians remember in pain the death of the first Hutu president ‘ ‘democratically elected’ in the 1993 elections. The Hutus lost an elected president in an ethnic vote because that is what it really was. Their only objective was to get rid of the military powers that they called “hima Tutsi power” and why not all the Tutsis in Burundi (we will come back to this later). They had gone all out to achieve this victory (with a plan B just in case …) to such an extent that they had even planned Frobebu Hutus who would have to participate in each meeting of President Buyoya of the Uprona with uprona helmets to dissuade him that he has the majority of Burundians behind him so as not to think of any cheating. With its famous policy of national unity, it was easy to believe in it with all possible and unimaginable naivety. The commanders of the districts who rubbed shoulders with the population and who listened to what people were saying around the electoral campaigns kept telling Pierre Buyoya that the majority of those who wore the Uprona cap were members of the Frodebu, but he refused to believe it. , with the risk of disciplinary sanctions for the one who insisted. Ndadaye won the election, Buyoya congratulated him and handed him power; he was killed three months later and plan B, which consisted in killing the Tutsis in the event of Ndadaye’s defeat, was then implemented.
October 21, 1993 reminds the Tutsis of the start of genocide of theirs which was prepared and executed by Hutus from Frodebu as shown in the UN investigation report (S / 1996/682 of August 22, 1996) which remain in the drawers. Tutsis have been systematically killed, men, women and children. There are communes where it is impossible to find a single Tutsi survivor. Their goods and properties were confiscated by their executioners. Those who were saved by the military are still languishing in misery in the IDP camps. There too, the Hutus (the same criminals who were not punished) who joined the rebellion, supposedly to defend democracy, took them as their first targets (getting rid of all the embarrassing elements to appropriate their land) . But the genocidal plan did not stop only at this level, it is very long, it has continued until today.
But where does Ndadaye and his Frodebu come from, who mobilized the majority of the Hutus against the Tutsis (note that the Hutus who had kept the ideology of the unity of the Uprona were also targeted and killed; we also salute the courage Hutus who still had a sense of humanity who warned and saved Tutsis at the risk of their lives). You will have to understand that all the Hutus who fled these military powers, who were in the refugee camps in Tanzania, Rwanda and elsewhere, did nothing else during this whole period than to think about how to get rid of them one day. The majority went to the Rwanda school of Kayibanda and Havyarimana who had succeeded in the policy of exclusion, the ethnic majority having the right to life and death over the minority, with the power to kill and hunt out of the country which they wanted. They were therefore inspired by this ideology. From palipehutu (in Rwanda there was the palmehutu), to the UBU to Frodebu, the observation is that they were political organizations which aimed only at the “ liberation of the Hutu people ” with an agenda to exterminate the Tutsis or at least to dominate them politically, economically and socially and then crush them. This is what the extremist Hutus who rule Burundi today have succeeded in doing.
Melchior Ndadaye’s FRODEBU has therefore strengthened in Rwanda; he even had his office in Kabeza in Kigali, with the colours of the party. To say that the power of Kigali at the time could let it work and evolve in Rwanda without sharing its ideology with them would be doubly wrong. There is no way to be wrong, because we have seen the results. For those who remember the early days of Ndadaye’s power, exclusions from state services had already begun. You remember the policy of ’gususurutsa’ (kick people out of their positions of responsibility). Almost the entire administration was occupied by the Frodebu Hutus. After the death of President Ndadaye, everyone knows her afterwards. How to explain that peasants can have with them gasoline cans to burn houses, chainsaws to cut trees, obstruct roads to prevent the intervention of the military, new machetes etc … How to explain that everywhere in the country everyone the Hutus mobilize at the same time to kill the Tutsis who know nothing about the death of Ndadaye (some did not even know him). All of this shows that the genocide had been prepared, that even if President Ndadaye was not killed, there is nothing to indicate that the country would have had peace and security for all Burundians.
But who are the real planners of President Ndadaye’s death? Would they be only those who have just been sentenced to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court of Burundi? Weren’t there others working in the shadows? Does Melchior Ndadaye really deserve to be called a hero of democracy in view of the events that followed his death? URN HITAMWONEZA promises to come back in detail on all these questions in our next publications. We also ask for your help so that the public knows the truth about the sources of the Burundian problems so that the real culprits can be punished. This is one of the ways out of the Burundian crisis which has lasted too long.
