Human rights group Amnesty International on Thursday called for an independent international investigation into last week’s massacre in western Burundi, when 158 Congolese refugees were shot, hacked, clubbed and burnt to death.
”This investigation is crucial in order to counter any manipulation of the killings by political and military actors within the region, and to pre-empt any resulting actions likely to lead to further human rights abuses against the civilian population,” the organisation said in a statement.
The FNL (National Liberation Forces), the last rebel group fighting the government in Burundi, immediately claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack on the Gatumba refugee camp.
Although the FNL said it was behind the massacre, Burundi and Rwanda have voiced suspicions that extremist Hutu militias based across the border in DRC may have been involved, and the armies of the two countries have warned they may enter the DRC to hunt down those responsible.
This prompted a tightened security in the DRC border town of Bukavu on Wednesday. At the summit Congolese representatives were quoted as saying their army had been put on standby following the warnings, and that they at any time would be ready to defend their border.
Amnesty said that ”speculation about the perpetrators is likely to fuel, and indeed will be used to fuel, existing political and ethnic tensions in both Burundi and [the] DRC leading to further human rights abuses”.
The organisation urged regional leaders to use their influence to call for calm.
In the DRC, however, the leader of an ethnic Tutsi rebel group threatened to resume hostilities against the government if it does not do more to protect the Tutsi community in the country.
”We cannot wait to be exterminated. We are going to solve it by means of guns if the government does not act now,” Laurent Nkunda told the BBC in the eastern DRC.
At a summit on the Burundi peace process in Dar es Salaam on Wednesday, called to ratify a power-sharing agreement for the battered country, regional leaders strongly condemned the massacre and decided to brand the FNL a ”terrorist organisation”.
The United Nations mission in Burundi had earlier suspended negotiations with FNL aimed at making them join the peace process.
The conflicts in the three central African countries, Rwanda, Burundi and the DRC, are closely linked. Armed Hutu extremist groups based in the eastern DRC are fighting the armies in Rwanda and Burundi, that are both Tutsi-dominated.
Rwanda and Burundi have sent their armies twice before to hunt down Hutu extremists. The second invasion, in 1998, started a five year war, which involved several other African countries and came to be known as Africa’s World War. An estimated three million people died as a result of the conflict.
The summit ended with the ratification of a power sharing agreement signed earlier this month by 20 Burundian political groups.
It also said a new constitution must be ready by the end of this month to pave the way for elections in October.
The leaders of ten Tutsi groups, who had already rejected the original power sharing agreement, said the schedule was too tight and impossible to implement.
The power sharing accord gives 60% of Parliament and cabinet seats to the majority Hutus, and 40% to the Tutsis, who make up 15% of the population.
At least 300 000 people have died in Burundi since 1993, when Hutu rebel groups took up arms against the Tutsi-dominated government and army. – Sapa-DPA