Yearbook 2008
Burundi. Another year passed without the stability
wanting to appear, which everyone hoped for when a
power-sharing agreement between the hutu and tutsi ethnic
groups came into force in 2005. At the beginning of the
year, representatives of the previously dominant hutu party
FRODEBU were subjected to several bloody attacks.
In April, the former chairman of the CNDD-FDD government
party, Hussein Radjabu, was sentenced to 13 years in prison
for overthrowing activities. The verdict was the result of a
fierce power struggle within the party, which was previously
a Hutu extremist militia.
According to
Countryaah reports, the last remaining hutumilis, the National Liberation
Forces (FNL), again breached the ceasefire agreement it
signed with the government in 2006 and for a few weeks in
April and May the capital Bujumbura suffered grenade fire.
The army went into counter-attack and hundreds of people
were killed, according to the army at least half of them
militiamen.
Following the UN mediation, FNL signed a new ceasefire
agreement at the end of May and the movement's leader
Agathon Rwasa returned from long-standing refugee flight in
Tanzania. Soon, however, reports emerged that the FNL
continued to recruit new soldiers and at the end of October,
the mediator, South Africa's Defense Minister Charles
Nqakula, said he gave up the attempts to reach a political
settlement between the FNL and the government. The main
stumbling block was said to be that the FNL wanted to
register as a party under the name Palipehutu, an
abbreviation for the Hutu people's liberation party.
Burundi's constitution does not allow parties that
explicitly represent only one people group.
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