NEW GENOCIDE AGAINST BURUNDI TUTSI IN PREPARATION

Call for action to stop impending genocide against the Tutsi in Burundi 

Dear Prime Minister,

We are bringing to your attention our organization's deepest concern about the advanced preparations of a new genocide against the Tutsi community of Burundi, as ascertained in the appended document; and we hereby request the Government of Canada to take appropriate measures.

The current indifference of the international community, of which Canada is one of leading nations, is preoccupying insofar as it is following a period of prolonged lack of action on another unequivocal genocide against the Tutsi of Burundi that was investigated by UN-appointed Commission of Inquiry and whose Report S/1996/682 has recommended, among other things, an International Tribunal for Burundi.

We believe therefore that this alert will be a reminder of our organization's relentless calls to end the atypical case of Burundi, a country where the United Nations and the rest of the International community were tricked into admitting a Special Chamber within the domestic judiciary, with some of judges being appointed by the CNDD-FDD regime; all this happening while it is public knowledge that the ruling party in Burundi is not only an offspring of the very organization that perpetrated the October 1993 genocide against the Tutsi, but also was found by another UN Investigation Commission of Inquiry (S/1998/777) to be part of a genocidal network operating in the East-African Great Lakes Region, in tandem with the ex-FAR and the Interahamwe militias.

We hope that you realized that:

(a) for having allowed the access to power of identified genocidaires, the international community has emboldened enough the CNDD-FDD, today's ruling party in Burundi, to a point of preparing another genocide against the Tutsi in defiance of international law; and that

(b) it is high time the genocidal plans afoot were stopped.

Yours sincerely,

Emmanuel Nkurunziza
Secretary,
AC Genocide Canada,
Telephone: 1 866 719 3878  (toll free)
                   1 647 719 8479  (mobile)

NEW GENOCIDE AGAINST BURUNDI TUTSI IN PREPARATION

For more than half a century, Tutsi in Burundi and Rwanda have been subjected to cyclic and recurring genocides that have already left millions dead, and that seems far from stopping. In Burundi, the mainly Hutu CNDD-FDD ruling party in Bujumbura is actively preparing one more time what they consider as the final solution to what they call "Tutsi question." The warning signs are numerous and strong as we are going to show it below.

I. List of genocidal killings that are not yet punished

 Several genocidal killings have already been committed in the past in Burundi against the Tutsi although they are still overshadowed by the different political regimes under constant pressure from the obscure organizations that design, plan and finance these heinous crimes:

-         October 1965 : genocidal massacres in Busangana, Muramvya.

-         1972: Genocidal massacres throughout the country ;

-         August 1988 : genocidal massacres in Ntega and Marangara,  Kirundo and Ngozi and Provinces, respectively.

-         October 1993: Genocide in the whole country.

II. Signs of preparation of a new genocide against the Tutsi

These signs are numerous and frightening. The point is not to make their inventory, but to point out some of the most salient facts that should alert any well intended person on a programmed genocide which has reached its final stages of preparation. The situation in Burundi in 2015 is so concerning because it is strangely similar to that which prevailed in Rwanda on the eve of the 1994 Genocide.

-         An exclusively Hutu power, reigning unchallenged over the country, controlling all the spheres of Government: Parliament, Government, Justice, Intelligence, Administration, Security Services, Finance, Ministry of Interior and Local Administration;

-         A hate radio, REMA FM that looks like a monozygote twin of the infamous RTLM. The National Broadcasting station has also been confiscated by the CNDD-FDD administration and is only there to make propaganda for the regime

-         Contemptuous rejection of all the founding texts of the peaceful coexistence of the communities.

-         Just as the eve of the 1994 genocide was marked by the sensational statement of former President Habyarimana describing as ‘scrap paper’ the Arusha agreement that he had signed a few months earlier; similarly, Pierre Nkurunziza's spokesman, Mr. Willy Nyamitwe, has just declared in March 2015, and to the surprise of all, that the Arusha Agreement does not bind the ruling party, CNDD –FDD, although it is embedded in the Constitution preamble ;

-         Imbonerakure, a militia affiliated with the CNDD-FDD ruling party is armed, organized and trained in the DRC and deployed throughout the national territory, exactly like the Interahamwe militia affiliated with the [Rwandese] MRND party of President Habyarimana Juvenal. The Imbonerakure militia lords it over the country, to the point of imposing its omnipotence to the regular army and national police. This phenomenon of a militia over the legislation was observed in Rwanda in 1994, just before and during the genocide. The Interahamwe militiamen of Habyarimana Juvenal’s MRND party had became at that time the de facto true controllers of the country’s defense and security forces;

-         A massive presence of the sinister Interahamwe militia and FDLR negative forces sent as reinforcements from the DRC (some sources say they are as many as 14,000 men).  These sinister fighters staying illegally in Burundi, they are registered nowhere and are not known by the UNHCR. They are deployed under the secret supervision of the Government of Burundi in those provinces where they have many accomplices

-         A political class in turmoil as the general elections of May - July 2015 the approach ; chaos and confusion having always been the ideal setting for unreported mass killings;

-         criminals dressed in police outfit and equipped with firearms are roaming in urban centers and also in the countryside, while the Imbonerakure militias are plundering households, raping mothers and children and killing men and anyone who tries to resist them;

-         Regular raids of police forces in the homes of Tutsi, allegedly in search of guns but which are obviously never found given that the disarmament of the population was completed in 2007.  The real intention of those raids is to keep an atmosphere of fear among the Tutsi and to accustom them to suffering various harassments and attacks from the government and the militias without reacting;

-         An accelerated rearmament of the Imbonerakure and Interahamwe militias is observed alongside the systematic disarmament of the Tutsi.

-         Both Civil Society associations and the UN Representation in Burundi denounced that rearmement of militias in the end of 2014. As well, some opposition figures have informed the African Union of the active preparation of a new genocide by the CNDD-FDD regime ;

-         Presence of weapons caches, including the recent blatant example of the discovery of a private house stuffed with firearms in the residential area of ​​BUTERERE in the capital Bujumbura. The discovery was quickly covered up by the intelligence services –which is a department of the Office of the President of the Republic.

-         The organization and conduct of joint night patrols and daytime operations between the police and the Imbonerakure militias;

-         Imbonerakure militia terrorizing, torturing and killing anyone they want in the ranks of the political opposition, Civil Society and even in the army. The perpetrators of those crimes are never reprimanded or pursued by the Judiciary despite the outraged denunciations of the population on the media;

-         The terror exerted on the media in general and personally on their editors, who are murdered, imprisoned or exiled;

-         Maintaining the general feeling that the militias affiliated with the regime are an invincible force to which nothing can resist;

-         The massive covert distribution of firearms and "third generation" machetes; i.e. hyper-sharp, to the Imbonerakure and Interahamwe; as well as the quartering of the country especially the provinces, urban and rural neighborhoods that are mostly populated by Tutsi;

-         Many arbitrary provocative acts against the Tutsi, either individually or collectively, personal and search without warrant, misappropriation of property in total illegality, or the dismantling of all nightly security guard posts organized in desperation by the Tutsi in neighborhoods where they are the majority;

-         Plans to exterminate or imprison journalists and members of the Civil Society who dare denounce these vile preparations;

-         The mass making and distribution of national army uniforms to the militias in Gihogazi, KARUZI certainly to make it impossible, when the genocide time comes, to distinguish between regular security forces and the negative forces in action;

-         Forcing the Tutsi families in BUKEMBA, Rutana Province, to contribute a minimum of BIF 100, 000 as support to Pierre Nkurunziza’s re-election

-         The deliberate disruption of livestock activities and denial of access to grazing space directed against Tutsi civilization must be destroyed at all costs. All the rural territory was confiscated to be distributed only to "farmers" Hutu, while livestock in Burundi is a major economic activity that should be deployed on a large part of the national rural areas;

-         Creating, through shortages of such basic commodities as fuel and systematic arson of the central markets in shopping centers, an atmosphere of general chaos that is propitious to the implementation of the genocide plan

-         In some provinces, such as Kirundo, Tutsi have started fleeing en masse to neighboring Rwanda, unable to bear it any longer with the abuses they suffer daily at the hands of the Imbonerakure militiamen, and highly anxious of the unusual movements and daytime and night meetings to which they are obviously not invited and whose content is jealously kept secret by the militiamen. But persistent realife evidence point to a preparation of a systematic genocide of the Tutsi to be launched as soon as the death of Pierre Nkurunziza is announced, although no one knows why, when and by whom he will be killed.

Although they are by no means exhaustive, these facts, are public knowledge, well grounded and absolutely verifiable. Tutsi live consistently in fear and insecurity, haunted by an imminent genocide. And as if their reduction to a status of second class citizens imposed on them by the sadistic implementation of the Arusha Agreement was not enough, nothing seems able to stop the extermination process.

III. Organization of genocide operations

The deployment of Hutu militiamen armed with guns and machetes on the hills of the countryside and in urban neighborhoods, is organized in such a way that none of them is affected in their province or town of origin. The aim of this strategy is to ensure that the assailants do not hesitate to kill a Tutsi that they know, and above all, that they are not identified by the victims.

It should be noted that today, as in the past, the genocide against Tutsi is masterminded, planned and funded by secret organizations taking advantage of a corrupt or politically cornered regime. It is executed by young Hutu who had been previously trained ideologically and systematically drugged before and at the time of action, and who are afterwards paid to the task like mercenaries.

IV. Genocide Scenario

-         The Criminal organizations that develop these macabre projects against Tutsi have a plan that has been proven in Burundi since 1993 and 1994 in Rwanda, which is about to be re-enacted in 2015 in Burundi. This is likely to proceed by physically eliminating the Hutu President Pierre Nkurunziza in conditions that will never be understood, and to blame it on the Tutsi. As was the case in 1993, the masterminders can even manipulate straw Tutsi in that perspective so that the charge be plausible. The events will follow automatically as planned, genocide will be launched and then termed the "legitime wrath" of the Hutu avenging "their President" and attack even Tutsi children and pregnant women for having killed him.

-         Beheading political institutions to create absence of Government and chaos, the very propitious conditions for the execution of the genocide.

-         Bringing to power a "neutral" personality who, in reality, is known by the masterminders of the genocide and whose role will be to stifle genocidal prosecutions and investigations that may lead to identify the real planners.

                                        

V. Responsibility of the international community

In these times where social unrest and political uncertainty are expertly maintained by the CNDD-FDD regime in Burundi, it is obvious that another genocide is its advanced stages of preparation. We thus make an urgent appeal to all signatories and sponsors of the Arusha Agreement, to dispatch from the UN, AU and EAC, without delay, disuasion forces in sufficient number and well equipped, with clear ROE, and who will remain until the safety and rights of the Tutsi community are finally recognized and protected.

We appeal to the international community, especially the UN and the Security Council, remind of their responsibility if they take no measure to prevent this announced genocide