![]() ![]() The force is now mixed but has shown rifts.Ī group of Hutu and Tutsi generals launched a coup that failed last week, after mounting violence during protests in Bujumbura against Nkurunziza’s third term bid. “It is very, very dangerous,” he told reporters after the meeting.īurundi, which has the same ethnic mix as Rwanda, emerged from a civil war in 2005 in which Hutu rebel groups, including one commanded by Nkurunziza, fought an army then led by the Tutsi minority. Assistant Secretary of State Tom Malinowsky told Nkurunziza last month of Washington’s concerns about the arming of Imbonerakure. Rwandan President Kagame, a Tutsi, has vowed not to allow a repeat. In 1994, the Interahamwe militia of Rwanda’s ethnic Hutu majority butchered 800,000 people in just three months, most of them from the Tutsi minority or moderate Hutus. Some have crossed to next door Rwanda, a nation shattered by genocidal forces two decades ago. More than 110,000 Burundians, or 1 percent of the population, have fled to neighboring states for fear of violence. One diplomat said Imbonerakure was the “scariest” element in a crisis engulfing Burundi and spilling over into a region with a history of ethnic slaughter. The group insists it is focused exclusively on campaigning for elections, including a presidential poll on June 26 in which President Pierre Nkurunziza will seek a third term, a bid which protesters in the capital say is unconstitutional.īut Western diplomats refer to it as an armed militia of the ruling CNDD-FDD party and a great concern in a country that has faced a coup attempt this month and violent street clashes that threatened to reopen the ethnic wounds left by a civil war and decades of sporadic ethnic killings before that. In a smart white shirt and pressed trousers, he bears little resemblance to the image of youths bearing arms which refugees say have terrified them into leaving their homeland. “It is impossible to say that people have machetes for killing.”īarutwanajo works as a marketer for a brewery. ![]() “Whoever has a machete uses it for cultivating, not for other purposes,” said Patrice Barutwanajo, 28, a member of the so-called Imbonerakure in Ngozi in northern Burundi. Supporters of Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza carry his picture as they wait for him to return to the capital, at a street in Bujumbura, Burundi May 15, 2015. ![]()
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