AC GENOCIDE CIRIMOSO PRESENTATION

AC GENOCIDE CIRIMOSO PRESENTATION

AC Genocide Cirimoso is an association registered in Burundi and which was incorporated under the law on August 19, 1997.

 General objectives.

AC Genocide Cirimoso activities are designed to combat the genocide ideology by keeping awareness of the "ultimate evil" and by working for the judgment of the perpetrators.

 Specific objectives.

 At the political level

The main activity of AC Genocide Cirimoso is to carry out sustained advocacy for genocide victims. It regularly petitions the authorities. It periodically issues memoranda on the condition of the survivors of the genocide, who, in their great majority, are left to fend for themselves. It should be remembered that the ruling party in Burundi is the CNDD-FDD, that is to say, the same organization that the United Nations has identified as having concluded a cooperation agreement with the Interahamwe and ex- FAR (the Rwandan Armed Forces before 1994) to continue the Genocide against the Tutsis of Burundi first, then those of Rwanda. It was in the S/1998/777 Report addressed to the Security Council by the Secretary General.

Three times a year, AC Genocide Cirimoso organizes field visits in the hinterland to gather at the main sites of the genocide. These include:
-October 21 commemoration at Kwibubu, Gitega Province, where Tutsi students attending the Kibimba High School were gathered and burned alive under the supervision of the School Director. 
-July 20, a day when the commemoration takes place at Bugendana (in the same province of Gitega), on a site where lay the remains of 648 Tutsi victims killed on July 20, 1996 by the militiamen loyal to the CNDD-FDD organization.
-April 30 at the Buta Junior Seminary (in the southern Province of Bururi) where, on that same date on April 30, 1997, the CNDD-FDD militiamen attacked the school and killed the students because they refused to separate on an ethnic basis in order to let this militia massacre the Tutsi alone as it did everywhere.

AC Genocide Cirimoso issues periodically official statements whenever government orders or condones persecution of genocide survivors. This type of writing is also produced whenever there are acts that intend to deny or conceal of genocide. For example, when a United Nations Mission sent to Burundi to prepare the feasibility of an International Criminal Tribunal for Burundi, issued a report jointly with the Burundi government, which recommended a Special Chamber within the Burundian Judicial System, AC Genocide Cirimoso solemnly condemned this move: the CNDD-FDD ruling party cannot be judge and party, as they are the very perpetrators that should be brought to justice rather than judging other people themselves.

 At the social level

AC Genocide Cirimoso regularly organizes commemorative sessions to cultivate and maintain the principle of awareness against genocide. The association conducts a series of sustained awareness campaigns against this scourge of genocide.

On the 21st of each month (the date of the beginning of genocide of the Tutsi in October 1993), AC Genocide Cirimoso members and supporters gather for a session of retreat and moral rearmament. This gathering doubles as a psychological healing session where subjects comfort each other, especially since many of AC Genocide Cirimoso members are genocide survivor who have lost scores of family members because of this crime.

AC Genocide Cirimoso collects aid for the most deprived survivors, especially that most of them are affected by the government campaign of spoliation targeting ethnic Tutsi and which is carried out by the militiamen Imbonerakure, the youth section of the ruling CNDD-FDD.

AC Genocide Cirimoso provides also legal advice to survivors who are in camps for IDP’s (internally displaced persons).

Finally, AC Genocide Cirimoso organizes each year a basketball tournament called Coupe de la Mémoire Vigilante [French for “Cup for Vigilant Memory”]. This tournament brings together Burundi’s best teams to compete in friendly matches to determine the winner of the Vigilant Memory Cup. The tournament, which lasts for one week, takes place in October to commemorate the beginning of the Tutsi genocide in 1993.