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Official Reactions

When a Human Rights Watch researcher informed General Niyoyankana of alleged killings, rapes, and other abuses by government soldiers in December 2003 he ordered his officers to investigate the cases. In late March, he told the researcher that his subordinates had found no proof of wrongdoing. He admitted that “Not all soldiers were saints,” but concluded that FDD combatants had been responsible for the instances of looting reported. He also said that any crimes by government soldiers were punished but conceded that the movements of units in the field and the time that often elapsed before crimes were reported made it difficult to establish accountability. In discussing a case where government soldiers had hit civilians with a poorly aimed shell, he said the fault lay with a poor quality weapon. He agreed to look into new accusations of abuses by the Bakonangwe on March 20 at Kabezi and of a killing by a military patrol at Mwico.⁶⁵

In some cases local officials or military officers on the ground tried to protect civilians from abuses by government soldiers. In the incident at Karinzi market described above, two government soldiers, one a sergeant, were killed. They were described officially as casualties of FNL fire, but according to local people the sergeant was killed by other government soldiers because he was trying to prevent them from killing and pillaging civilians. A major from the government post at Mutambu supposedly then stopped soldiers from further looting. ⁶⁶ Other government officers reportedly stopped soldiers from looting at Rukuba, Nkombe, and Nyamabokio-Kibazo on the hill Nyamaboko in commune Kanyosha.⁶⁷

When questioned about command relationships between the government army and the FDD, General Niyoyankana told a Human Rights Watch researcher that the commanding officers of each force continued to be responsible for the conduct of their own troops. He said that the integrated general staff combining government and FDD officers was a discussion group meant to lead to new army structures rather than a functioning general staff.⁶⁸ FDD commanding officers, he stressed, were the appropriate authorities to answer for alleged abuses by FDD combatants.

When victims of FDD exactions in Bujumbura rural sought help from government soldiers, the representatives of the only supposedly legitimate forces of order in the area, the soldiers told them to complain to FDD commanders.⁶⁹ 

The CNDD-FDD responded inconsistently to complaints of abuses by their forces or political representatives. In mid-February CNDD-FDD leader and State Minister for Good Governance Pierre Nkurunziza asked “pardon from God and all the people” for abuses committed by his combatants during the war. But when then asked to account for the whereabouts of a local administrator abducted in August 2003 by his combatants, Nkurunziza gave no answer. He underlined merely that transitional periods after conflict were difficult everywhere in the world.⁷⁰ In one meeting with local residents at Mbare Gasarara, FDD officers and a CNDD-FDD political representative admitted that FDD combatants had been guilty of abuses but then tempered this admission by accusing listeners of continuing to support the FNL. ⁷¹

High-ranking FDD officers in charge of field operations have never been available to discuss FDD abuses with a Human Rights Watch researcher who tried to reach them on several occasions. But some local officials who found their own superiors unwilling or unable to help them in cases of FDD abuses were able to reach local FDD commanders and got prompt action on their complaints. According to local observers in a position to follow the cases, the commanders on several occasions summarily judged and severely punished the accused.⁷² When victims in Rushubi complained in one case about looting by FDD combatants, their commanders ordered the goods returned. But in later cases in the same area, victims received nothing but the usual explanation that the perpetrators were FNL and not FDD, highly unlikely since the FNL combatants had long since fled the area. ⁷³  When one group in Ruyaga complained about FDD stealing their property, an FDD commander reportedly answered “If you don’t want us to loot you, then sell your goats! We have nothing to eat. Go complain to the government.”⁷⁴