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 | ALBRIGHT WARNS BURUNDIJULY 23, 1996TRANSCRIPT |
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The United States' UN Ambassador, Madeleine Albright, says the Central African nation of Burundi is on the brink of "national suicide". Her warning comes amid continuing repatriation of 85,000 Hutus to Rwanda, and days after 300 Tutsis were massacred, allegedly by Hutu rebels. Margaret Warner provides a backgrounder, followed by a Newsmaker interview.
May 23, 1996:
Susan Rice, deputy National Security Advisor for Africa, discusses growing tensions in Burundi, a nation that shares a border, and similar ethnic make-up, with Rwanda.
March 28, 1996:
At a crucial moment in Burundi's history, Charlayne Hunter-Gault investigates whether tribal wars, with Rwanda-like genocide, are about to erupt.
Browse the NewsHour's Africa Files.
MARGARET WARNER: Ambassador Albright has just returned from a trip to the Eastern
Mediterranean, but her return coincides with an escalation of violence in another part of the world in which she’s been deeply involved, the African nation of Burundi. We’ll talk to Ambassador Albright about this and other issues but first this background.
MARGARET WARNER: This was the somewhat encouraging scene last week at one refugee camp in Burundi. Representatives of the Tutsi and Hutu tribes, the two rival
ethnic groups who’ve been waging a bloody civil war in Burundi and neighboring Rwanda, held what appeared to be a conciliatory meeting, but just days later, something went horribly wrong.
More than 300 Tutsi residents of this camp were murdered. One hundred more were wounded but survived. The village held a mass funeral for the victims today.
Burundi’s Tutsi-led government blames Hutu rebels for the massacre. Hutu leaders deny they were responsible. It is a familiar pattern in this country where Hutus, who make up 85 percent of the population, and Tutsis, the long-time ruling elite who still control the army, have been waging a low-level but bloody civil war that has claimed 150,000 lives over the past two years.
This week, the Hutus have a new grievance of their own. In the last few days, Burundi’s Tutsi-dominated army has been forcibly returning to Rwanda thousands of Hutu refugees from camps along the border. These refugees fled to Burundi during the 1994 civil war in Rwanda which left more than one-half million dead.
The Burundi army accuses these Rwandan refugees of assisting their fellow Hutu rebels in Burundi. The Burundi army has been cramming the refugees into trucks and driving them to Rwanda. Relief workers say at least three people have died of suffocation on the trip and several others, mostly children, have had their bones broken
in the crush inside the trucks.
Despite protests from United Nations officials, army leaders insisted earlier today that they were going to deport all 85,000 Hutu refugees from the camps, but later today, there were reports that Burundi had agreed to temporarily halt the operation.
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