The Speaker of the Senate participates in the fourth testimonial and reflection conference on the 1972 events in Burundi

Friday, June 11, 2021, the Speaker of the Senate, the Right Honourable Emmanuel SINZOHAGERA participated in the fourth testimonial and reflection conference on the 1972 events in Burundi; at the Hotel Club du Lac Tanganyika, in the capital Bujumbura. The theme which concerns the whole series of those conferences is: “Remember and properly qualify the events of 1972 in Burundi”.

During that conference, the former Head of State, the Honourable Sylvestre NTIBANTUNGANYA, who saw and experienced the massacres of that time was the keynote speaker. That conference focused on the unfolding of the facts, prepared and presented by NTIBANTUNGANYA, through his report spanning 40 years of research.

According to that report, those massacres were started on April 29, 1972, just after the assassination of King Charles NDIZEYE, and all that was necessary to enable MICOMBERO to carry out the assassinations was set. All the Hutu elites, high authorities, high rank officials, tradespeople, students, pupils, schoolchildren and others were targeted.

The soldiers got up and down the country to arrest and kill on the basis of previously established lists. There was a state call for a mass murder. The national army and the national radio were among the first tools of killing.

A curfew has been imposed across the country, with a ban on gatherings of more than three people. Arrests were then carried out, then assassinations and burial in mass graves dug by the military. The operation took place throughout the national territory.

The genocide was carried out after an attack by a rebellion composed mainly of foreign elements. Thus, the power spoke of repression of the rebels. It was an obviously organized state massacre. According to the plan of MICOMBERO and his collaborators, the objective was to reduce the number of bahutu for several years and reduce the families of the victims to poverty, through the theft of their property. 

After the massacres, the government then proceeded to the confiscation of movable and immovable property of the victims, some of which became state property. It is therefore the state in power of Micombero, which is responsible for the genocide against the Hutu in Burundi in 1972.

NTIBANTUNGANYA calls on the government and the international community to do everything to validate that genocide.

He says what he is presenting to the public about the 1972 massacres is no trial against anyone, rather a step and plea for the truth.

All the speakers qualified those massacres as genocide perpetrated against the Hutus.

The last conference is scheduled for Friday, June 25, 2021, in Gitega, the political capital of Burundi