Burundi: Heavy sentences in the Melchior Ndadaye case: A rather political trial (Part 3)
We continue our analyses during this week devoted to the assassination of President Melchior Ndadaye and the genocide of the Tutsis that followed his death. We have tried to show, even if we have not been exhaustive, a lot of people who would be involved, directly or indirectly, in the death of the late President Melchior Ndadaye. Yesterday we were talking about France with President Mitterrand, of Rwanda with Juvénal Havyarimana: the presence in Bujumbura on the night of October 21, 1993 of French captain Paul Barril and President Juvenal Havyarimana’s intelligence officer has its significance. Power Ndadaye was starting to have a lot of enemies. Some shrewd observers say that even within Frodebu there were people who were not happy with the start of his reign, not to mention the palipehutu who had been by his side (teaching hatred against Tutsis) during the electoral campaign. Add to this the problems linked to mining with the AFFIMET companies whose exploitation rights he had already suspended, the lands of Rumonge that his regime was already starting to distribute to Hutu returnees chasing out the Tutsi occupants without any formality.
With all these files, we don’t really know what triggered his death. All that is known for sure is that he was killed in a military coup, and it was an army corporal who cut his throat. It is difficult to know all those who would have participated in the planning of his death, because even the coup plotters did not compromise on his assassination. It is said that the officers who were in a meeting at the para battalion where Ndadaye had been taken after the Chief of Staff, Jean Bikomagu, extracted him, with his family, from the hands of the enraged commandos of Camp Muha (Bikomagu gave Ndadaye’s wife and children a jeep to take them home and the soldiers drove Ndadaye alone to the Para Battalion); these officers also learned by surprise that Ndadaye is already dead. They were still debating whether to kill him or leave him alive and demand certain things to change in his governance. Could the decision to kill him be the sole initiative of Corporal Kiwi? Or would there be one of the officers walking past to order him to do this quickly? There, we have no answer.
We say that trying and punishing those who have committed this crime is in itself a good thing. But it takes a fair and just trial. Here, people are asking themselves many questions: why the people who have just been tried on October 19, 2020 were not at the same time as the other corporals who have even served their sentences? Why is the cnddfdd, which has been in power since 2005, thinking of dealing with and completing this file today?
This trial is not fair; it is more of a political trial. Two goals targeted by the cndd fdd power: A power resulting from an electoral coup d’état which knows that the Hutus whom he believed to serve (they always exploit the ethnic cord to be elected because they have no project of society to be presented and which would be appreciated by the people) did not elect the cnddfdd candidate; they chose change in the May 2020 elections. The current power then tries to show, through this trial, that it is strong, that it can even close cases that frightened the other powers; they believe they can restore the confidence of the Hutu mass. Evariste Ndayishimiye’s military power knows that those who voted for Melchior Ndadaye were Hutus (non-democratic, but ethnic vote), and that they would all be happy to hear that these figures are condemned by his regime. He is wrong because he does not know that things have changed, people’s minds are elsewhere today, seeking change from his regime that kills, imprisons, and impoverishes the people and the country in general. The second goal of the military clique in power is to succeed in creating really two antagonistic blocs between Burundians: a real break between Hutus and Tutsis in order to succeed without too much difficulty in its plan to complete the genocide of the Tutsis and the Hutus of the ‘opposition. The time was not right for such a trial, nor is the framework suitable because such trials are foreseen in the Arusha accord (the cnddfdd violated it), people who cannot go present their defence in Burundi (fear for their lives) and the authorities refuse to hear their lawyers; this is an atmosphere in which these condemnations took place.
URN HITAMWONEZA believes that the military clique in power is doing everything in its power to provoke a revolt of a certain category of the population in order to find a pretext to end the genocide that it has always carried out in dropper. Otherwise, trying the assassins of Melchior Ndadaye and the planners and executors of the genocide that followed is our constant concern. A fair trial for all is not possible with this power which seeks only to manipulate justice for its own interests. How can a power in the hands of genocidaires, whose place should be the prison, judge others at fault? Burundians should first consider changing, by all means, this power in order to achieve real justice for all.