20 years on, genocide cases filed over Burundi refugee massacre

In this photo taken on August 16, 2004, people gather for the burial of refugees killed in an attack on August 14 in Gatumba camp, 15 km west of Bujumbura. At least 153 Congolese Tutsi refugees were killed in the massacre blamed by the government on Hutu rebels. (AFP/File)

• The cases relate to the massacre of around 160 Congolese Tutsi refugees at a camp in Gatumba in Burundi near the border with DR Congo
• The August 2004 killings were documented by the United Nations and Human Rights Watch but the perpetrators have never faced justice.

GOMA, DR Congo: Survivors and relatives of victims of a 2004 massacre of Tutsi refugees in Burundi have filed legal cases claiming genocide and crimes against humanity, their lawyer told AFP on Thursday.
The cases relate to the massacre of around 160 Congolese Tutsi refugees at a camp in Gatumba in Burundi near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Three complaints have been lodged, in Burundi, in DR Congo and in Rwanda, the countries of the suspected perpetrators, Paris-based lawyer Dominique Inchauspe said by telephone.
A complaint has also been sent to the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC), he added.
Although formally filed against X, the complaints cite Agathon Rwasa, former leader of Burundi’s Hutu rebel National Liberation Forces (FNL), now a leading figure in Burundi’s political scene.
It also names its former spokesman Pasteur Habimana, who had assumed responsibility for the massacre on air before backtracking saying his voice had been “imitated” during the radio broadcast.
The United Nations and victims’ testimonies also point to involvement of militias integrated into the DRC’s army, as well as members of Rwanda’s ethnic Hutu rebel group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), formed by some of those behind the 1994 genocide of minority Tutsis in that country.
The August 2004 killings were documented by the United Nations and Human Rights Watch but the perpetrators have never faced justice.
“It is absolutely scandalous that such an atrocity, documented by the UN, has not been prosecuted” and “that no compensation has been paid,” said Inchauspe, who represents the Gatumba Refugees Survivors’ Foundation.
“There is a symbolic need for justice and recognition of the suffering experienced, even if we are unable to identify the 200 to 300 assailants,” he added.
In 2013, after refugees in Burundi lodged a complaint against Rwasa, prosecutors opened a formal probe into the ex-rebel chief, which never led to a trial.
Rwasa, 60, has since laid down his weapons and has been granted provisional immunity. But the prosecutor’s office said at the time of the probe that this immunity did not cover “crimes against humanity or war crimes.”
He has since been elected to Burundi’s parliament and came second to President Evariste Ndayishimiye in the 2020 presidential election.