Case Study:

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 C - Victims

If the exact number of deaths is anyone’s guess, there can be no doubt about the murder of the single most prestigious victim: late on the evening of April 29, shortly after his return from six years of exile, ex-King Ntare was assassinated in his royal residence in Gitega. This was not an act of random vengeance. Whether the order to kill Ntare came from Shibura, Simbabaniye or Micombero, all three shared, with other members of the Bururi lobby, a pathological fear of a monarchical plot. And if such indeed was the sub-text of the Hutu insurrection, regicide was the only option.

Even more haunting than the monarchical menace was the nightmare of an impending genocide of Tutsi. Hence the appropriateness of mass murder as a preventive strategy. Extreme threats required extreme solutions. After the “clean-up” of rebel-held positions, Hutu troops, numbering approximately 750, were systematically murdered by their Tutsi commanders. Those few holding officer’s rank, like the highly popular Cabinet Minister Martin Ndayahoze, were the first to be killed. The same fate befell an estimated 300 Hutu gendarmes. Next in line were Hutu students and teachers in secondary and technical schools. By June, approximately 45 per cent of primary school teachers and the near totality of secondary school teachers were reported missing. In a scenario that recur time and again, groups of soldiers and JRR would suddenly show up in classrooms, call Hutu students by name and take them away. Few ever returned. At the Université Officielle in Bujumbura, about one third (120) of the students disappeared in such circumstances. The école normale of Ngagara, a suburb of Bujumbura, lost more than 100 students out of a total of 315. Of the 415 students enrolled at the école technique of Kamenge, 60 are believed to have been killed, while another 100 fled. Out of 700 students enrolled at the athénée (secondary school) of Bujumbura, at least 300 disappeared, some killed and others fleeing to avoid being killed. At the athénée of Gitega, some 40 students were massacred, raising the total of missing students to 148; at the institut technique agricole, also in Gitega, 40 students out of a total of 79 were listed as missing, of whom 26 were said to have been executed. (Lemarchand, 1994, 2002) The list extends to confessional schools, both Catholic and Protestants. In short, not only Hutu elites but potential elites were physically liquidated. Nor was the Church spared. Reporting from Bujumbura in early June, New York Times journalist Marvine Howe noted that “twelve Hutu priests are said to have been killed, and thousands of Protestant pastors, school directors and teachers”. What we are dealing with was not so much a repression as a ghastly slaughter of Hutu populations. The carnage went on for months. By the end of August as many as 200,000 people were reported killed.

This is not meant to obscure the atrocities committed by Hutu insurgents, but to underscore the contrast with the rather more improvised nature of the massacre of Tutsi civilians during the rebellion. Aside from the fact that the number of victims was only a fraction of the Hutu killed at the hands of the army and the JRR, the killings of Tutsi were noticeably more indiscriminate and uncoordinated. In contrast with the carefully targeted nature of the repression and its follow-up, neither gender, age, religion or ethnicity for that matter made a difference in the choice of victims. Admittedly, civil servants and military establishments were a key target, as shown by the systematic massacre of provincial authorities in Bururi and Rumonge. But the overall impression is one of random assassinations of Tutsi civilians, along with those Hutu who refused to heed the call of rebels. While some Tutsi were killed, others were spared (Chrétien et Dupaquier, 90). In some localities victims were picked on the basis of pre-established listings, but not in others. Sometimes victims who could bribe their prospective executioners were spared, while others were killed. In some places, Tutsi houses were torched, and shops looted, but not elsewhere. The “Muleliste” dimension – in the form of slogans such as “Mai Mulele”, “Mai Muhutu” and appeals to magic – was much in evidence in some localities (Kigwena, Mugara, Vyanda), but not in others. For all their brutality and anti-Tutsi thrust, the evidence strongly suggests that the killings of Tutsi civilians were not nearly as well organized, systematically implemented and carefully planned as the annihilation of the Hutu elites.

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