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VI. Other Killings and Abuses by Government Soldiers

Members of the Burundian armed forces stationed in relatively small posts around the country lived in close proximity to civilians and often appropriated their property or extorted services from them. Some deliberately killed or otherwise injured civilians in the course of robberies or as punishment for noncompliance with their orders. If such crimes were reported to the commanding officers of the accused, military authorities rarely investigated and, more rarely still, prosecuted such crimes. At most, they transferred the accused to another post. As one civilian commented:

In any case, the presence of the soldiers causes us insecurity. They ought to be spending their days at the battlefront, not going around where we live disturbing us. Besides having them always around makes the rebels think we are collaborating with them and then the rebels target us too.¹³⁴

Soldiers frequently required services from civilians who lived near their posts, such as providing firewood, fetching water, or transporting materials. Sometimes they obliged civilians to transport military supplies, like ammunition, into combat areas, at considerable risk to themselves.¹³⁵ In Bubanza province, taxi-bicyclists who ply their trade along the Muzinda road complained about the demands of soldiers. ¹³⁶ “We’re forced to provide services to the soldiers,” said one man, “unless we want to be arrested or beaten.” ¹³⁷

The consequences of refusing to do what the soldiers wanted were sometimes more serious. In the Musaga neighborhood of Bujumbura, a soldier from the Gitoko post deliberately killed a resident of Second Avenue because he had refused to carry water for him.¹³⁸ In a similar case in Kamenge, also a neighborhood in Bujumbura, a soldier killed a taxi-bicyclist for having refused to give him a ride back to his post. The soldier fired into the crowd that attempted to intervene in the dispute and was himself beaten by the crowd after he killed the man.¹³⁹

Local people complain about exactions by soldiers at the military post of Muhanambogo in the hills above Bujumbura. One man said:

We come home already tired from work or from having done errands in the city. They stop us and force us to work for them. They tell us, “When you try to kill us, then you are not tired.” ¹⁴⁰

According to local people, soldiers killed seven civilians at the hill Mubeye, Bubanza province, in what was apparently a robbery. One witness said, “They’ve been here for two months and we’ve ended up being able to recognize them.”¹⁴¹ In early April, soldiers from the Gatumba camp killed seven civilians at Nyamabere, between Buringa and Maramvya, on the border between Bubanza and Bujumbura rural provinces, and stole the bicycles that the men had been using to transport loads of charcoal for sale in Bujumbura.¹⁴² In another case four people were killed at Musagara hill, Bubanza, and soon after local people saw a military truck rolling by carrying off sacks of rice and other food.¹⁴³ On June 11 people in the same area captured soldiers of the 15^th battalion of Muzinda who were trying to steal bicycles and took them to their commanding officer.

According to one elderly man, the officer “nearly shot us,” and did nothing about the attempted theft.¹⁴⁴

In some cases of killings by soldiers, there was no clear reason for their behavior. During the night of July 15, soldiers in Kinama, a zone in the northern part of Bujumbura, killed three young Guardians of the Peace. It seems that they had at first taken them for rebel combatants, but they killed them even after they had checked their identity papers. They killed one by bayonet. ¹⁴⁵

Killings and Abductions by the FDD and FNL

While engaged in their war against government soldiers, combatants of both rebel movements sometimes have deliberately targeted civilians, often because they knew them to have or believed them to have links to the authorities. In other cases, they have killed civilians to demonstrate that government officials could not or would not protect the people of a given area.

In June in Mwaro province, FDD combatants killed two civilians and wounded one when they attacked Nyabihanga commune and in a later incident they killed three civilians and burned local government buildings and those of a cooperative when they attacked Rusaka commune. They killed four civilians during an attack at Nyankara hill, Makamba province on May 28 and killed two others in an attack on a camp for Tutsi displaced persons in Ngozi province on June 20.¹⁴⁶

In the past, both rebel movements have targeted local administrative officials. The head of Twinyoni quarter in Bujumbura was killed on May 31, for example, reportedly by FNL combatants.¹⁴⁷ But it was the FDD that especially increased such attacks in during the first nine months of 2003. The Minister of Interior and Public Security Salvator Ntihabose condemned the FDD practice, saying that the FDD “avoid any contact with the government army, they plunder social infrastructure and kill or kidnap local administrative officials.”¹⁴⁸

On June 2, FDD combatants abducted the administrator of Cendajuru commune, Cankuzo province, after he complained at a security meeting about the departure of some sixty persons from his commune to join the FDD.¹⁴⁹ At the same meeting, which was chaired by the governor, the adminstrator accused the FDD of attacking his commune from bases in Tanzania. On June 16 FDD combatants attacked the commune of Gatara, Kayanza province; they kidnapped the local administrator and looted his house. Not long before he had arrested a suspected member of the FDD and had sent him to the brigade in Kayanza.¹⁵⁰ The administrator of Rusaka commune, Mwaro province, was kidnapped, apparently by FDD combatants, but was freed after paying an undisclosed amount in ransom. The administrator of Mutimbuzi commune, Bujumbura-rural, was the target of an assassination attempt, apparently by FDD combatants; he survived but his bodyguard was killed.¹⁵¹ In late June, FDD combatants abducted the head of the zone Muzinda and the head of zone Muyebe, commune Musigati near the Muyange cantonment site in the troubled province of Bubanza. The official from Muzinda was later found dead.¹⁵² On July 17, FDD combatants kidnapped a local official of Gisuru commune, Ruyigi province, and the next day they briefly detained the administrator of Kayogoro commune, Makamba.¹⁵³

On June 14 an armed group attacked a bar in Makamba and killed Gerard Buryo, an Uprona member of parliament, and a soldier. At the same time they abducted two persons who were later released in return for a ransom. Authorities said that the assailants were FDD combatants.¹⁵⁴

On June 29 four members of parliament, their driver, and seven other civilians were taken hostage as they were driving towards Gisuru in Ruyigi. One of the members of parliament and five other persons have since been released. The FDD took responsibility for the kidnapping, saying it was a warning to the government to end its propaganda campaign against their movement.¹⁵⁵

Armed men kidnapped three Burundian employees of international humanitarian agencies in two separate incidents the same day in Makamba province and demanded a large ransom for their safe return. The three were later released unharmed. Authorities charged the FDD with this abduction but presented no proof of the claim.¹⁵⁶

Both movements abducted civilians also for short or long-term service. In early April the FDD forcibly recruited forty young men for military service; the unwilling recruits escaped some two weeks later in Murwi commune, Cibitoke province.¹⁵⁷ Similarly the FDD forcibly enrolled some thirty young men who later escaped from their base in Kibira forest on June 18, in an incident mentioned above.¹⁵⁸

Soon after, the FDD abducted fifteen persons, two of them still children. One of them, a fifteen-year-old told a Human Rights Watch researcher about how he had been mistreated by FDD combatants. He was captured one evening with six others, as he was returning home. He and one other were school pupils. He was ordered to carry a bag of ammunition but found it was too heavy for him to carry. Instead he was told to look after cattle that the group had taken. He and the group walked five nights before reaching the Kibira forest. “There we had to cut bamboo,” said the youngster. “We had to work very, very hard to build shelters. I was very hungry and was given only a little cooked manioc to eat. I ran away. I had to; if not, I would have died.”¹⁵⁹ Another civilian, abducted by the FDD the evening before his marriage, showed the Human Rights Watch researcher large wounds on his left shoulder and lower back. After he had tried to escape, his captors beat him so badly that he could no longer walk. The combatants had then thrown him in a hole for two weeks. “There,” he said, “I was not allowed to stand up. I had to stay lying down or crouched over.”¹⁶⁰

In a mid-May attack on Gihanga commune, Bubanza province, the FNL forced five civilians to accompany them to carry the goods they had just looted.¹⁶¹ Other FNL combatants successfully attacked the military post at Mubone, Bujumbura Rural, on June 3 and forced local residents to transport the ammunitions and other goods that they seized there.¹⁶²

After looting goods on Kigamba, Musenga, Muyange and Sorero hills in Butezi, Ruyigi, in mid-May, FDD combatants abducted an eighteen-year-old young man to serve as their guide. ¹⁶³On June 16, FDD combatants reportedly abducted two high school girls from Nyakayi in Butezi commune, Ruyigi province for an unknown purpose.¹⁶⁴

FNL combatants including both men and women attacked Gihanga commune on May 18. While the children in their ranks prayed and sang, the combatants looted bicycles and goats and burned one vehicle.¹⁶⁵ In another incident FNL combatants wounded one person, burned twenty houses, and looted cattle and goats at Murwi commune, Cibitoke province, on May 20.¹⁶⁶

Civilian Casualties of Violence between FDD and FNL

In early September FDD and FNL combatants began fighting each other, first in parts of Bujumbura rural, Bubanza, and Muramvya provinces and soon after in the streets of Bujumbura. The forces sometimes engaged in skirmishes, especially at the start in the rural areas, but more recently they have targeted specific persons presumed to be linked to the rival movement. In many cases, the combatants deliberately killed family members or others found in the company of their supposed target.

An old woman in dirty, damp clothes related how a skirmish between FDD and FNL had forced her to flee her home in Mubimbi commune, Bujumbura rural, three weeks previously. She said:

The two groups are after each other. Even now. I left on a Monday evening. There was a lot of shooting and men in uniform came saying, “You are the ones who work for the enemy.” They killed eleven people that day.¹⁶⁷

A twelve-year-old girl in the zone Kayange, commune Rugazi, hesitantly described how FDD “soldiers” came to chase away the FNL.

There was a lot of shooting. It was early on a Saturday morning. “We’ve come to get the FNL,” they said. They stayed there. There were a lot of them. I fled with my mother and some others. No one was killed on our hill but about twenty people were killed on the adjacent hill, Bugume, that same day. We fled without having the time to take anything with us. When it calmed down, we went back. They had burned our house and many others, including that of my sister.¹⁶⁸

By early October the combatants moved their struggle into the crowded and poorer neighborhoods of Kamenge and Kinama in Bujumbura. In the Gitega quartier of Kinama, FNL combatants killed a suspected member of the FDD in broad daylight. The FDD then killed two persons supposedly linked to the FNL and burned down a house.¹⁶⁹ One October 22 FDD combatants killed two persons in Taba quartier of the Kamenge zone, one of them a fifteen-year old youth who reportedly had no connection with any rebel movement. They also broke down the doors of some houses, burned down others, and looted possessions.¹⁷⁰ During the night of November 3 combatants, said by local residents to be FDD, attacked several houses and abducted four persons whom they executed a short distance away.¹⁷¹

By the end of the month, authorities estimated that at least twenty persons had been killed in clashes between FDD and FNL in the city and its suburbs. The actual number was almost certainly higher to judge from scattered reports collected by a Human Rights Watch researcher. An undetermined number of those slain were persons who were not combatants and some of them had no link whatsoever with either political group.¹⁷²

Both FDD and FNL combatants burned the houses of those thought to be associated with the other group and looted property from the homes of people who had fled the violence.

Witnesses can sometimes identify the attackers in these incidents, but often they cannot or will not do so, usually from fear of reprisals.

Far from the site of diplomatic negotiations, fear and flight are part of the daily routine of most people living in Kamenge and Kinama districts. They speak of lists drawn up by the FDD naming those to be targeted next.¹⁷³ One young man said:

We would like to be able to spend the night at home. But if this continues we’ll end up by leaving our home permanently. Just last night, there was gunfire from 7 pm to 10 pm and we didn’t even know who was shooting. But we fled and there was really a lot of shooting.¹⁷⁴

In several cases witnesses reported that soldiers responded to calls for help and intervened to protect them, but more often victims say that the military or police do little or nothing to stop violence by the combatants. Authorities imposed a curfew on the parts of the city most troubled by violence and in early October arrested thirty-six persons in a sweep to identify supposed rebels living in the city.

While these measures may have brought some temporary improvement, by late October there was at least one part of Bujumbura where the FDD combatants rather than city officials controlled the movement of citizens. They put up barriers and determined who could move between the Gituro quartier of Kamenge, where they are in large numbers, and neighboring Taba quartier which is said to house many FNL adherents. They interrogated passers-by, including children, before deciding whether or not they would be allowed to pass the barrier.¹⁷⁵ One witness who observed this conduct said:

How can armed people be allowed to just install themselves like that for a month in our neighborhood without anyone bothering them? One of the FDD even said to the soldiers, “You don’t have the right to stop me.” The real FNL collaborators are long since gone. If they want to fight, let them it out between themselves, at their military positions, and not here among the people.¹⁷⁶

Killings and Abuses by the FDD and FNL in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Combatants of both the FDD and the FNL have set up bases in areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo adjacent to Burundi, particularly along the shores of Lake Tanganyika, south of the city of Uvira in the region of Fizi, and north of Uvira in the Ruzizi plain, which is separated from Cibitoke province of Burundi by the Ruzizi River. Here they prepare for raids into Burundi but they sometimes also attack Congolese civilians, usually to steal their property. In some cases they killed civilians and in others, they raped women.

In one such attack on October 6, combatants identified by local people as FDD killed some fifteen people who had been working in their fields at Ndunda, a village just north of Uvira and on the Burundi border. Most of the victims were women andincluded: Ruzabeti, Charlote, Majaribu, Mama Guylain, Lukogo, Pendege, Nyihasha, Nyirabonore, Lena, Kyubwa, Kiponda, Kaseti, and Michel.¹⁷⁷

On October 9 rebels abducted nine people from Kiliba, an operation also attributed to the FDD.¹⁷⁸

FDD officials denied involvement in these crimes and blamed them instead on the FNL.¹⁷⁹

One man from this area, thin, tired, and haggard, sadly recounted these abuses to a Human Rights Watch researcher. He and his neighbors no longer count the number of ambushes, abductions, rapes, and cases of looting. North of Uvira the villages near the Burundi border are empty: Namijembo, Kimuka, Mwaba, Ruziha, and Kajori. The man left his own home village after his wife was raped by four FNL combatants. “It’s easy to know who they are,” he said. “We have lived together with them along the border; they speak Kirundi.” He described commander Bitarumunyu, discussed above, as an FNL leader based in the DRC but operating also in Cibitoke province in Burundi. Talking of how people have all fled their homes because of these attacks, the witness said:

We flee with nothing. We take nothing with us because we have nothing. Look at me. I am not yet forty years old and see how I am like an old man.This is because of all this misery.¹⁸⁰

A young Congolese woman said that she did not know the difference between FDD and FNL combatants but that she knew that those who attacked her area were from Burundi. “They come in a group,” she said. “They are guerrillas. They come to take girls to make them their wives. Today we no longer go to work in our fields along the road to Burundi. It is too dangerous.” ¹⁸¹

Both the FDD and the FNL used Burundian children for military service in their forces in the DRC. Dozens of these children, transported from Burundi, have been forced to fend for themselves in the DRC after having been abandoned by the rebel troops or after having fled the rebels following ill-treatment.¹⁸²