Genocide in Burundi - General Background

Hello everyone. I want to apologize for being absent from the blog for a little while but I'm excited to be back now and starting on my first blog about ethnic conflict in Burundi. One of the things I consider so important that we as bloggers and members of the Student Board have is the ability to learn more even while we serve as activists for genocide prevention now. I certainly am learning in this process of researching ethnic conflict in Burundi and I have been surprised at how its history, while unique to its own set of circumstances, is a microcosm representative of a larger conflict that has consumed countries in central Africa.

The Republic of Burundi (bordered by Rwanda, the DRC, and Tanzania) is a country roughly the size of Rwanda that shares a similar trajectory as the former in terms of ethnic conflict. Home to roughly 7,500,000 people the state has had to deal with the crisis between Hutu and Tutsi, which was not merely contained within Rwanda’s borders, since even before it officially became a nation upon gaining its independence from Belgium in 1962. Once again, in Burundi it is those of the Tutsi “race” which have held power since the beginning though they are in the minority with respect to Hutus.

Generally, conflict in the region between the two groups has been going back and forth since the end of the 1950s with one side attacking the other and then the other retaliating. In Burundi, however, that which has become known as the Burundi genocide of 1972 was sparked by a particular incident. During the night of August 13, 1972, Hutu rebels took the lives of some 160 Tutsi in the camp of Gatumba. In response the Tutsi government, between April (the same month as the onset of the genocide in Rwanda which would come 22 years later) and September of that year, took the lives of anywhere between 100,000 to 150,000 lives of Hutu living in Burundi.