Chris McGreal
The Burundian army has forced nearly 300 000 people from their homes and into detention camps around the capital, Bujumbura, amid a rise in attacks by Hutu rebels that have claimed thousands of lives.
The government says people have been sent to ”protected villages” for their own safety. But the main Hutu group fighting the Tutsi military regime has accused the army of running concentration camps. Almost all of those driven into the camps are Hutu, to deny the rebels support and cover for attacks on Bujumbura. Assaults on the capital have grown more daring since a raid in July on the palace of military leader Major Pierre Buyoya.
As rebel attacks have increased, the Burundian army has helped to re-arm the Tutsi militias which target influential Hutus in the capital. The fighting has escalated in part because the rebels have been forced to leave the Democratic Republic of Congo by a peace agreement there. Burundi’s foreign minister said his government would talk to any of its opponents in an attempt to end the fighting.
”We are working against the clock in this peace process, which is fragile and can be threatened by different events,” he said. ”The government is willing to consider anything that will lead to a cessation of hostilities. The situation is serious.”
Two United Nations officials were killed in Burundi on Wednesday, raising fears that aid workers will withdraw from the country leaving even less protection for the refugees.
About 250 000 people have died and more than one million have been forced from their homes since civil war broke out six years ago. It began after Tutsi soldiers murdered Burundi’s first democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu. Buyoya seized power in July 1996. His army’s round-up of Hutus has separated the insurgents from the peasants who support them. But the political cost has been high, reinforcing the perception among Hutus of persecution by Tutsi soldiers, whom they accuse of murder and rape.