- Title: BURUNDI: FUNERALS OF 160 TUTI REFUGEES KILLED IN LAST WEEK'S MASSACRE
- Date: 16th August 2004
- Summary: (W8) GATUMBA, BURUNDI (AUGUST 16, 2004) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. WIDE OF PROTESTERS GATHERED AT BURIAL SITE 0.02 2. SLV POLICE TRYING TO KEEP PEACE 0.05 3. WIDE OF PEOPLE PUSHING /ARGUING WITH POLICE 0.09 4. CLOSE OF PROTESTORS WITH POSTERS 0.17 5. WIDE OF LINE OF POLICE / PROTESTORS WITH BANNER 0.19 6. VARIOUS OF C
- Embargoed: 31st August 2004 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: GATUMBA, BURUNDI
- Country: Burundi
- Reuters ID: LVAEZDQ8BF92NO8BLEXOWMOAIZY4
- Story Text: 2000 mourners gather to bury the more than 160
Congolese Tutsi refugees killed in attacks last week.
More than 160 Congolese Tutsi refugees hacked,
burned and shot to death in western Burundi were mourned on
Monday (August 16) as victims of a genocide attack.
The massacre at a refugee camp on Friday provoked
condemnation from the United Nations, which held an
emergency meeting on the attack, the European Union and the
African Union.
It prompted Burundi to close its border with the
Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday.
At a mass burial service next to the site of massacre,
about 2,000 mourners, including Burundian President
Domitien Ndayizeye and Congo Vice President Azarias
Ruberwa, gathered on Monday under the eyes of Burundian
troops and U.N. peacekeepers.
Ndayizeye said those responsible were trying to thwart
peace and turn the country into a "battlefield".
Ruberwa said that ten years after the Rwandan genocide,
the world should not shy away from acknowledging that this
act was another act of genocide.
The bodies were placed in crude wooden coffins and lain
in four rows in a sandy pit surrounded by mourners. Blood
seeped from the coffins to the sand, and mourners covered
their faces to block the smells of disinfectant and the
dead.
The grave is just a temporary stop for the dead, who
will eventually be returned to Congo for permanent burial.
During the ceremony, several Tutsi groups sang
anti-genocide songs and protested the U.N. Mission in
Burundi.
The Burundian army blamed the massacre -- among central
Africa's worst in years -- on Hutu rebels and allied
attackers from eastern Congo gunning for the refugees.
The Hutu Forces for National Liberation (FNL), the only
rebel group still fighting the Burundian government, took
responsibility for Friday's attack, but said the target had
been a nearby military camp.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, also chairman of
the 53-member African Union, said the AU planned to send an
investigative mission to Burundi and the Congo.
It would join a separate one ordered by the U.N.
Security Council.
The massacre took place before a regional summit on
Burundi's shaky transition to peace after a decade-long
civil war that has killed 300,000 people and displaced
700,000.
South African President Thabo Mbeki was expected to
attend the talks on Wednesday in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.
Some refugees said the attack had been planned, citing
unsigned leaflets circulated last week urging death to the
Banyamulenge
-- the term for Congolese Tutsis.
For a decade, eastern Congo has been a refuge for Hutu
extremists who fled Rwanda after committing a genocidal
purge against Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994.
Rwanda on Sunday said it may enter Congo, as it has
twice in the past, to chase the Hutu rebels it blames for
the massacre.
Gatumba camp, close to the town of Uvira in eastern
Congo, provides shelter for 2,500 to 3,000 Banyamulenge.
Up to 20,000 Congolese Tutsi refugees have sought
shelter in Burundi camps since June, when Congolese troops
and renegade soldiers fought for control of an eastern
Congo town.
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