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IV. Background

These events took place in the context of intensified political tension in Burundi, the proliferation of illegal small arms in civilian hands and a growing problem of armed robbery.  

On September 7, 2006 the government of President Pierre Nkurunziza and the armed opposition FNL, led by Agathon Rwasa, signed a ceasefire, to be implemented over a period of six months under the supervision of a Joint Verification and Monitoring Mechanism.⁴⁰ Pierre Nkurunziza, and his party, the National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Forces for the Defense of Democracy (Conseil national pour la défense de la démocratie—Forces pour la défense de la démocratie, CNDD-FDD), itself a former armed opposition movement, had come to power in 2005, in Burundi’s first elections under a new constitution accepted by a popular referendum earlier in the year. The FNL had remained in armed opposition.

The 5,600 United Nations peacekeepers participating since May 2004 in the United Nations Operation in Burundi (Operation des Nations Unies au Burundi, ONUB) left the country in December 2006. They were replaced by the civilian United Nations Integrated Office in Burundi (BINUB), whose primary mission is to support consolidation of the peace and to coordinate UN agencies working in Burundi, and by 1,100 South African peacekeeping troops working under the aegis of the African Union.⁴¹

Talks on implementing the 2006 ceasefire started belatedly in February 2007. The FNL quit the discussions on July 21, 2007, alleging that the South African facilitator was partial to the government.⁴² In the meantime, in contravention of the ceasefire agreement, the FNL continued to recruit new combatants, and by the time of its withdrawal from the talks, Burundian authorities and BINUB estimated the FNL to be as much as twice as strong as it had been at the time of the ceasefire.⁴³ Although the FNL has not formally withdrawn from the ceasefire deal, in late 2007 and early 2008 FNL soldiers carried out several attacks on both government troops and so-called “FNL dissidents”—combatants who had quit the movement and moved into cantonment sites (camps where FNL combatants wishing to demobilize are protected by government and African Union soldiers while questions concerning their disarmament and reintegration are resolved).

The FNL’s departure from the implementation talks coincided with an increase in crime throughout the country, most notably robbery. The number of armed or aggravated robberies committed by civilians and recorded by the Burundian police in 2007 was 4,004, up from 2,530 in 2006.⁴⁴ The increase in robberies reflects both an opportunistic resumption of predatory attacks as well as the growing desperation of many Burundians in the face of continuing poverty and the failure of long-promised economic improvements to materialize.⁴⁵ Much of the crime has been perpetrated by current and former FNL combatants as well as by other assailants who have often posed as FNL combatants.⁴⁶ 

The proliferation of illegal firearms in the hands of civilians (and the conduct of ill-disciplined police officers and soldiers) is often said to contribute to both the number and seriousness of crimes committed.⁴⁷During the years of conflict, previous governments occasionally provided arms to civilians to form militias for local defense. In addition many Burundians obtained arms to protect themselves, their families, and their property. Gun possession is in most cases illegal, though a small number of civilians receive gun permits by applying to the Ministry of Defense.⁴⁸

The current government launched a campaign in mid-2006 to collect illegal firearms, estimated as between 100,000 and 300,000, and established a Technical Commission for Civilian Disarmament and the Fight Against the Proliferation of Small Arms (Commission Technique de désarmament de la population civile et lutte contre la prolifération des armes légères et de petit calibre, CTDC). ⁴⁹ The commission started with few resources and has not yet made any significant impact on the number of firearms present throughout the country.⁵⁰ Recent data released by BINUB suggests that civilian disarmament efforts may not greatly reduce property crime: only about 1% of recorded thefts perpetrated by civilians in 2007 involved firearms.⁵¹ Police sources suggested the majority of armed robberies in 2007 were committed by members of the FNL, a group that is not currently targeted by the forced disarmament campaign.⁵²

The Burundian National Police

One of the significant challenges faced by the current government has been the building of a competent, properly-trained, professional police force. Security sector reform has been an integral feature of each agreement aimed at ending civil war between the Burundian government and rebel groups, beginning with the Arusha Accord of 2000. A new national army and a national police force have been established, each including members of former government forces and former rebel combatants.

Formally established on December 31, 2004, the Burundian national police is a civilian force operating under the newly created Ministry of Public Security, formerly an arm of the Ministry of the Interior.⁵³ It consists of four commissariats: the Internal Security Police (PSI), the Judicial Police (PJ), the Penitentiary Police, and the Police for Air, Borders and Foreigners (PAFE). The Rapid Mobile Intervention Groups (GMIR), a specialized reserve founded in 2006, was part of the PSI until December 2007, when under a police restructuring program it became a stand-alone force directly accountable to the director of the national police.

Judicial police officers and security police officers share responsibility for the prevention and punishment of ordinary crime and are most regularly and directly in contact with the population. The judicial police investigate crimes, question suspects, and provide evidence to the prosecutor (Ministère Public).⁵⁴ The security police guard public places, apprehend perpetrators, and execute search and arrest warrants issued by the prosecutor. ⁵⁵ Security police, including GMIR agents, are not authorized to conduct interrogations or to detain suspects.

The integration of demobilized combatants has caused the number of national police to swell from 2,300 in 2000 to somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 officers in 2007.⁵⁶ The actual current number of police officers appears to be unknown even to those heading the force, because not all have been registered and some do not have administrative files.⁵⁷ It is widely recognized, however, that the size of the police force far exceeds national needs. In accord with conditions set by the International Monetary Fund for future aid, the police force plans to select and demobilize officers in order to reach a target number of 15,000, but as of late 2007 this had barely begun, in part because of delays in the implementation of a program to identify and register officers, which is to be carried out with the assistance of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), an international NGO.

The force established in 2004 incorporates elements from the former Public Security Police (PSP) and Judicial Police, the former government army and gendarmerie, and former armed opposition movements. The latter make up over a third of the new police force. Merging these diverse components into a single, impartial force to serve citizens of all ethnic and political affiliations, and ensuring that all officers are trained to the necessary standard, have proven to be major challenges. Officers from the former police force had been trained to do police work, but soldiers transferred from the army had military but no police training. In addition, according to one high-ranking police officer, some of the soldiers transferred from the army had performed poorly in military service and were sent to the police because the army did not wish to retain them.⁵⁸  More than a third of the new police officers were former rebel combatants with no formal police or military training. Some of these new officers are illiterate.⁵⁹

With the need for training obvious, several international governmental and nongovernmental actors have been providing assistance, detailed below. But despite their efforts, at the end of 2007 a substantial number of officers—certainly more than half—were operating with little or no training.⁶⁰ This is a problem of particular concern given that many officers had served with armed forces or factions known to have engaged in human rights violations. ⁶¹ Despite a provision in the 2000 Arusha Accord requiring the exclusion from the police force of former combatants found guilty of “genocide, the coup d’etat of October 21, 1993, human rights violations or war crimes,” Burundi has not established any mechanism to screen police officers for crimes related to the armed conflict, nor have the majority of such crimes been prosecuted. Thus no violators have been excluded from the security forces.⁶²

Despite efforts to create a unified, impartial force, it is widely accepted in Burundi that under the surface some officers have retained strong political loyalties, particularly those who were once part of the FDD, the military branch of the CNDD-FDD.⁶³ Under the terms of the 2003 Pretoria Protocol signed between the interim government and the CNDD-FDD when it was still a rebel movement, FDD combatants were to make up 35 per cent of the police force.⁶⁴ At the time of the events described in this report, the Minister of the Interior and Public Security, the director general of the police, the Commissioner General of the PSI, and the chief commander of the GMIR were all former CNDD-FDD officers, creating a chain of command heavily weighted towards one political party. However, Desiré Uwamahoro, commander of the unit responsible for events described in this report, was apparently from an armed faction that split off from the CNDD-FDD in 2001.⁶⁵

Police officers are prohibited from belonging to political parties so none is openly a CNDD-FDD member, but some police officers as well as other observers claim that former FDD combatants sometimes follow orders from CNDD-FDD members who are high-ranking officials but not their hierarchical superiors or even police officers.⁶⁶ One high-ranking police official told a Human Rights Watch researcher that “The police are politicized. At times we are obliged to work in the shadows.”⁶⁷ This sentiment was echoed by a GMIR officer present at Rutegama, who told Human Rights Watch, “The party uses the national police to get people in line.” In his estimation, the unit was sent to Muramvya “because the government thinks that people are abandoning the party in power, and that people won’t vote for them in 2010… They sent us there to intimidate the population, to win back the population by force.”⁶⁸