BURUNDI

World Report 2001 Entry

World Report 2000 Entry

World Report 1999 Entry

World Report 1998 Entry

Emptying the Hills: Regroupment Camps in Burundi
Although the government of Burundi has promised Nelson Mandela that it will close its squalid "regroupment" camps, that promise has not yet been fulfilled, Human Rights Watch charged in this report. The former South African president is leading a new round of the Burundi peace talks, opening tomorrow. Burundian rebel groups, who are of critical importance to any efforts to end the six-year civil war, have said  they will attend the talks only if the regroupment camps are closed. The 35-page report, "Emptying the Hills," says that the Burundian government forced as many as 350,000 civilians into the camps. Although Burundi president Pierre Buyoya promised Mandela to close the camps by July 31, some tens of thousands of people are still living in them.  The report also details abuses of the National Liberation Forces (Forces Nationales pour la Libération, FNL), a rebel group fighting the Burundian government.
(A1204), 7/00, 38pp, $5.00
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Burundi: Neglecting Justice in Making Peace
Continuing abuses of civilians by all parties, the growing regionalization of the Central African conflict, and the threat of increased violence from extremist organizations underscore the urgency of ending the war in Burundi. But a peace without accountability for past crimes offers little hope for future stability within Burundi or the larger region. More than one hundred thousand civilians have been slain in Burundi, both by Hutu and by Tutsi. Many of these killings are crimes against humanity and some have been described as genocide by a U.N. commission of inquiry. They must be prosecuted promptly and effectively by an international tribunal as well as by Burundian courts. Some Burundians and foreign observers now propose yet another international investigation as well as a Burundian Truth and Reconciliation commission. Such commissions may add greater detail to what is already known of this tragic past, but they serve a different purpose from that of prosecutions and must not become a pretext for delaying them.
(A1202), 4/00, 18pp, $3.00
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Proxy Targets:
Civilians in the War in Burundi
The civilian population of Burundi feels trapped between the two sides in the civil war, as both the armed forces and the rebels have used civilians as proxy targets. The civil war raging in Burundi since October 1993 has above all been a war against civilians. When Major Pierre Buyoya took power in a July 1996 coup, he claimed that he was intervening to prevent an expansion of ethnic violence. Since then, however, the armed forces of Burundi have engaged in massive violations of human rights. They have driven the rural Hutu population in large areas of the country into regroupment camps by indiscriminately attacking civilians, burning their homes, and engaging in extensive rape and torture. Large numbers of civilians were killed during the formation of the camps, and many more have died from malnutrition and disease because of deplorable conditions in the camps. In other areas, armed forces have sought to subdue the Hutu civilian population through arbitrary arrest, rape,torture, looting, summary execution, and indiscriminate attack. If the armed forces have succeeded in bringing a semblance of order to parts of the country, they have done so at an unconscionably high cost to life and liberty which has been extracted overwhelmingly from the majority Hutu population. For their part, the Hutu rebel groups, such as the Forces for the Defense of Democracy, have also targeted civilians. They have engage in both indiscriminate attacks on civilians and summary executions, targeting in particular Tutsi and Hutu whom they consider collaborators. The rebel groups have looted extensively, contributing to famine and poverty in the country.
(1797) 3/98, 136 pp.,
ISBN 1-56432-179-7, $10.00
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