Burundi: Planning for the assassination of President Ndadaye would have started just after his victory (Part 7)
We are heading towards the end of the week dedicated to the memory of President Ndadaye who was assassinated on October 21, 1993 by a group of soldiers and which was followed by genocide of the Tutsis by the Hutus of his Frodebu party. As we have had time to demonstrate that the genocide of the Tutsis was not the result of a spontaneous reaction by the Hutu population to the news of the death of their leader Ndadaye, that it is not the “little anger” as some seemed to want to make known to cover up their crime, but that it was an action planned for a long time and taught to the Hutus; we also discover that President Ndadaye’s coup d’état was conceived long before his inauguration. Ndadaye’s victory came as a shock to some as they did not expect it despite the crowds behind him during the campaign; such a crowd was behind Buyoya. The more naive did not know that most of those who wore the Uprona cap were nothing more than Frodebu Hutus sent on this mission to make Pierre Buyoya believe that his policy of national unity has borne fruit. However, district commanders (gendarmerie) kept saying it, but Pierre Buyoya and some army officers did not want to believe it. It would then be the very ones who were shocked and who did not digest the victory of Melchior Ndadaye. They then started planning a coup d’état since his victory, which was done. They killed the king of the bees and the bees stung theirs as a lot of Hutus said in an attempt to justify the genocide of the Tutsi of 1993.
Reading the report of the United Nations Commission, S / 1996/682 of August 22, 1996, there is a lot of testimony that shows the details of the course of the coup and the genocide that followed, but it is interesting to read in the first pages of other coup attempts that took place just before the swearing in of Ndadaye. We offer you a small excerpt from the testimonies found in this report:
On July 3, 1993, men of the 2nd Commando Battalion attempted a coup shortly before President Melchior Ndadaye was sworn in. The coup attempt failed and orders were given to arrest several officers and soldiers, including Lieutenant-Colonel Sylvestre Ningaba, who had been President Buyoya’s Chief of Staff, Major Bernard Buzokosa, Major Jean Rumbete , Captain René Bucumi, Captain François-Xavier Nintunze and Commander Hilaire Ntakiyica.
President Ndadaye was sworn in on July 10, 1993 and took up residence in the former presidential palace which stood in the middle of a large perimeter surrounded by a high wall, at the northwest corner of the intersection from two wide avenues in the centre of the city. To the north of the palace is the old Méridien hotel, renamed Source du Nil. A golf course extends beyond the outer western enclosure and part of the outer northern enclosure.
On October 11, 1993, at around 11 a.m., Lieutenant Gratien Rukindikiza, head of the President’s bodyguard, according to his own testimony, received from Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Bikomagu, Chief of Staff of the army, the order to leave for Mauritius the same afternoon, in order to prepare for the arrival of the President, expected for the meeting of French-speaking heads of state which was to be held from October 16 to 18. Bikomagu also ordered him to return before October 21, without giving him any explanation. Before leaving Bujumbura, Rukindikiza told Lieutenant-Colonel Pascal Simbanduku, President of the Military Court, that he suspected that a coup was in preparation, mentioning the names of some officers, including that of Lucien Rufyiri.
On October 18, 1993, President Ndadaye returned from the Mauritius summit. On the same day, the Minister of Defence, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Ntakije, was informed by the Chief of Staff of the Gendarmerie, Lieutenant-Colonel Epitace Bayaganakandi, that according to reliable sources, a coup d’état was in preparation for. Rumours of a coup had begun to circulate insistently on the same day.
On October 19, 1993, President Ndadaye chaired a council of ministers, which lasted all day and resumed the next day until evening. As early as October 20, 1993, intelligence officials started talking about the imminent coup; From the president’s chief of staff to the president himself, everyone was informed. Some authorities, both military and civilian, seemed to overlook the information, others pretended to reassure that they were in control. There is reason to see certain complicity.
The sequence of events from October 20 to 21, 1993 is too long, you have to read the report, it describes hour by hour, how the events continued until the assassination of Melchior Ndadaye, with the responsibilities of some and others.
What is a little surprising, and which shows that the trial of October 19, 2020 is rather a political trial, is that certain figures noted in the report and who played a decisive role in the coup, were never subject to no prosecution
URN HITAMWONEZA condemns with its last energy all those who planned and executed the death of President Ndadaye and his collaborators and calls for international commissions of inquiry to be set up to rigorously investigate the responsibility of all actors in this file so that all the real culprits are punished; a way of avoiding the settling of scores of the cnddfdd power by using its jurisdictions which it directs as it wants. The real planners of the coup d’état should also know how to explain how they did not think about protecting the Tutsi and Hutu population of the Uprona since they were not unaware of the genocidal plan of Frodebu; the members of this party did not hide it during the election campaign. If they fail to explain it, they risk sharing responsibility with those who carried out the genocide. They must also be judged and punished because they are all known, all their names, hill by hill, are recorded in a document at our disposal; the survivors denounced them. We are awaiting a competent court to try all these criminals and others who have continued to commit various crimes to this day. This is the only way Burundi can regain lasting peace and stability.