A secret UN report has blamed Burundi’s army for assassinating President Melchior Ndadaye three years ago, reports Chris McGreal from Bujumbura
A confidential United Nations report on the murder of Burundi’s first Hutu president — kept under wraps because of its potentially explosive impact on the conflict-ravaged country — accuses the army high command of organising the assassination and of complicity in the subsequent slaughter of Hutu civilians by Tutsi soldiers.
While the report does not directly name those responsible for the killing of President Melchior Ndadaye three years ago, it questions the actions of several officers, including the army chief of staff. The UN reaches no conclusion about the role of Burundi’s past and present military head of state, Major Pierre Buyoya.
The report also condemns Hutu leaders, accusing some of whipping up genocide against the Tutsi minority in the wake of the assassination, which started Burundi’s civil war.
Buyoya, who seized power three weeks ago, has declared that no one is above the law. Hutus have accused Burundi’s Tutsi-dominated establishment of stalling its own inquiry into the assassination, while key witnesses have disappeared or died.
The UN commission of inquiry into Ndadaye’s killing completed its report last month, but it was swiftly secreted away. Only members of the UN Security Council have been permitted to read it, and then for only 30 minutes each.
In sections of the report, the UN inquiry focuses on two areas: the October 1993 coup and assassination of Ndadaye, who won Burundi’s first free election four months earlier, and the massacres of an estimated 50 000 Hutus and Tutsis in the weeks after the murder.
The Burundian government has never denied soldiers were responsible for the assassination, but it has portrayed them as low-ranking renegades. The UN commission reaches a different conclusion. “The assassination of President Ndadaye was planned beforehand as an integral part of the coup that overthrew him . … and the planning and execution of the coup was carried out by officers highly placed in the line of command of Burundi’s army,” the report says.
Hutus, devastated at the loss of a man who held out the promise of an end to decades of oppression, turned on the Tutsi minority. Thousands were killed. The UN commission says the army retaliated with considerable brutality.
“Indiscriminate killing of Hutu men, women and children was carried out by members of Burundi’s army and the gendarmerie, and by Tutsi civilians. Although no evidence was obtained to indicate that the repression was centrally planned or ordered, it is an established fact that no effort was made by the military authorities at any level of command to prevent, stop, investigate or punish such acts,” it says.
The commission concludes that organised killing was not one-sided. It says that after Ndadaye’s assassination, members of the murdered president’s party, Frodebu, spurred “a genocide” of the Tutsi minority.
“The commission considers there is sufficient evidence that acts of genocide against the Tutsi minority took place in Burundi on 21 October 1993, with the participation of certain Frodebu functionaries and leaders up to commune level,” the report says.
It concludes that senior Frodebu officials were expecting a coup, and prepared Hutus to resist it. But the UN commission says it has no evidence that the attempted genocide was organised from the top of Frodebu.
While the commission says it does not have enough evidence to accuse specific individuals of plotting the assassination, it is particularly damning towards the army chief of staff, Colonel Jean Bikomagu.
The report recounts actions by Bikomagu which suggest he had full knowledge of what was occurring. It notes that he failed to intervene as his soldiers assassinated the president, set up a ruling committee, and continued massacring Hutus even after the coup collapsed.
“The committee was in control for three days and only reinstated civilian government when it failed to control the bloodbath throughout the country, in spite of the bloody repression by the army under Bikomagu’s command, and had lost all hope of overcoming the adamant opposition of the international community,” the report says.
Bikomagu, who remains in his command, declined an interview. But the head of military intelligence, Colonel Jean-Bosco Daradangwe, dismisses the UN report and defends the army.
“We’re not learning anything new here. The assassination concerns individuals who are not the whole army.”