Africa watchers warn of potential genocide in Burundi

By John Donnelly
Globe Staff                                                                The Boston Globe
10/15/99

WASHINGTON - In the landlocked central African nation of Burundi, a rebel gunned down two United Nations officials this week. The chief peace negotiator in Burundi's civil war, former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere, died yesterday.

And in recent weeks an ongoing war has escalated in the nation, which at 10,747 square miles is about the size of the state of Maryland, as both Tutsi-dominated government forces and Hutu rebels stand accused of massacres of civilians.

Human rights monitors and African watchers say conditions are ripe for an even greater explosion of killing in Burundi, putting civilians at grave risk.

''You're looking at a potential disaster, a potential genocide in the making,'' Herman J. Cohen, assistant secretary of state for African affairs during the Bush administration, said in an interview. He expressed special concern over the forced ''regroupment'' of an estimated 300,000 people in the Bujumbura Rurale province.

Earlier this month, the US State Department denounced the roundup in a statement, saying it was ''gravely concerned about the forced movement of the population and its humanitarian and human rights consequences.'' A US official, though, disputed Cohen's warning of a possible genocide. ''While we are concerned about the potential for abuse in these regroupment camps, we have no evidence to indicate a genocide is in the making,'' said the official, asking not to be identified.

Still, said Human Rights Watch consultant Alison DesForges, the absence of a peace process and recent rebel attacks on the capital Bujumbura foreshadow ''continuing violence on both sides, with fairly sizable numbers of people killed.'' Several thousand people have died so far this year. The killing of the two UN workers last week, followed by a shootout that killed seven others, underscored the degree of lawlessness in the countryside. Rebels first robbed the UN convoy, and witnesses say a single rebel then shot dead the two.

DesForges, who just returned from three weeks in Rwanda, said prospects for mass killing based on ethnicity were low because ''there's enough consciousness on part of the international community to not let it happen again.''

In 1994, the Rwandan Hutu government and army carried out a genocide of more than half a million Tutsi, until an army of mostly Tutsi refugees defeated them.

In Burundi, the civil war is fueled by a history of Hutu-Tutsi killing. In 1972, the Tutsi-dominated army killed as many as 200,000 Hutu, targeting anyone with more than four years of education. In 1993, Tutsi soldiers assassinated

the first Hutu president. Hutu then slaughtered thousands of Tutsi, and in response the Tutsi army massacred thousands of Hutu.

The government roundup of up to 300,000 Hutu is like ''taking everyone in Montgomery County [Maryland] and putting them in a concentration camp. The conditions in these camps are horrible. People are dying of sickness, sarvation, it's sort of a stealthy genocide,'' said Cohen.

Thomas Ndikumana, Burundi's ambassador to the United States, acknowledged the conditions in the camps need improvement, but said Burundi has asked for international assistance for the refugees.

DesForges, of Human Rights Watch, praised the State Department for condemning the regroupments but said danger persists in the camps.

''On both sides in Burundi, it's getting nastier and nastier,'' she said. ''It's important now to point out the potential for large-scale suffering, even large-scale death in the camps - simply by starving them."