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.
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.
- ABBREVIATIONFINDER: Click to see the meanings of 2-letter acronym and abbreviation of BI in general and in geography as Burundi in particular.
Climate
The climate is tropical and humid with two rainy seasons (spring and autumn). The temperatures are tempered by the altitude.
Population 2008
According to Countryaah reports, the population of Burundi in 2008 was 8,675,491, ranking number 93 in the world. The population growth rate was 3.330% yearly, and the population density was 337.8350 people per km2.
Dictionary of History (2010)
Burundi A state in central-eastern Africa, on the NE shore of Lake Tanganyika, one of the smallest on the continent with its neighbor and similar Rwanda. It coincides with the pre-colonial kingdom of Burundi. The population, linguistically homogeneous, is historically divided into differentiated subcommunities and competing for control over the land (scarce in the face of a very dense demography). Originally inhabited by Twa pygmoids, around the 11th century. AD it had already been occupied by Bantu-speaking farmers (➔ Hutu) and then by shepherds, called Tutsi and Hima. The Burundi was unified perhaps starting from the 16th century. by the legendary mwami (“King”) Tutsi Ntare Rushatsi. However, the first well-documented reign is that of Ntare Rugamba (ca. 1800-50), who expanded the state and established a territorial administrative network. Mwezu Gisebo (1857-1906) resisted the expansion of Rwanda and the Arab-Swahili and Nyamwezi merchants, and saw the arrival of the Germans. The degree of interaction between the Hutu, Tutsi and Hima communities was very high, even though the Tutsis were at the top of the socio-political hierarchy. German protectorate from 1884, effectively occupied in 1903, Belgium (1916) took over it during the First World War, which administered it as a mandate of the League of Nations from 1922. Colonial power accentuated and formalized the role of domination of the Tutsi over majority Hutu. The demands for independence began after the Second World War. mwami Mwambutsa IV (1915-66); but the assassination of Rwagasore sharpened the rift between Hutu and Tutsi, which had deepened in connection with the intercommunal conflicts of neighboring Rwanda. The country achieved independence on July 1, 1962, while conflicts in the elite itself complicated the situation. Tutsi. In 1965 a coup attempt by Hutu elements was bloodyly suppressed. In July 1966 Mwambutsa IV was dismissed by his son, Ntare V, and in November General M. Micombero, a Tutsi, abolished the monarchy and with it the main element of mediation between the communities. In 1972 a Hutu revolt was fiercely suppressed (causing between 100 and 200,000 deaths and 100,000 refugees) and in 1976 General J.-B. Bagaza deposed Micombero and started a reconciliation, among other things attempting the agrarian reform to eliminate the slave-master relationship (➔ ubuake) between Tutsi and Hutu, but clashing with the powerful local Catholic Church, which demanded more radical changes. In 1987 Major P. Buyoya took power, who relaxed relations with the Church and began a political liberalization, launching a cabinet with a Hutu majority (1988), without however managing to avoid serious clashes. In the 1993 elections, which put an end to the military regime, Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, was elected president, but was soon killed by Tutsi soldiers, sparking reactions and massacres and effectively opening a civil war. The president appointed by the Parliament, Cyprien Ntaryamira, a Hutu, died in the downing of the plane on which he was flying with his counterpart from Rwanda (1994): in the latter country the event triggered the catastrophic clash between Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups. In 1996 Fr. Buyoya resumed power and passed a transitional constitution in 1998, but the civil conflict continued. A power-sharing agreement (2001), reached with the mediation of N. Mandela, led in 2003 to the presidency of Domitien Ndayizeye, a Hutu, and to the peace pact with the principalrebel Hutu leader, Pierre Nkurunziza, elected president by parliament in 2005. However, conflicts and discontent with the government’s authoritarianism have delayed stabilization. In 2009, the last armed opposition group laid down their arms.