Burundi Civil War - War

War

On October 21, 1993, Burundi's first democratically elected Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, was assassinated by Tutsi extremists. As a result of the murder, violence broke out between the two groups, and an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people died within a year. A 1996 UN report into Ndadaye's assassination and its aftermath, concluded that "acts of genocide against the Tutsi minority were committed in Burundi in October 1993". The report also implicated senior figures in Burundi's Tutsi-dominated army in the assassination. In Burundi, Tutsi civilians have been targets of mass killings and acts of genocide organized by the state and by armed militia groups (see Burundi genocide (1993)). They were followed by a long civil war that killed both Hutu and Tutsi.

This violence prompted Buyoya to speed up liberalization and national dialogue, allowing other political parties to compete in the 1993 election. Melchior Ndadaye was democratically elected and became first Hutu president in the country’s history. He was assassinated three months later, in October 1993, by Tutsi army extremists. The country’s situation rapidly declined as Hutu peasants began to rise up and massacre Tutsi. In acts of brutal retribution, the Tutsi army proceeded to round up thousands of Hutu and kill them. The Rwandan Genocide in 1994, sparked by the killing of Ndadaye’s successor Cyprien Ntaryamira, further aggravated the conflict in Burundi by sparking additional massacres of Tutsis.