Obedience and Selective Genocide in Burundi

Abstract

Following a localized Hutu uprising in 1972, the Tutsi-dominated state in Burundi embarked on a vast series of reprisals across the country, leaving between 100,000 and 300,000 dead. Prominent political leaders were liquidated, Hutu who were able or learning to read were arrested, and many who had achieved any marginal level of exceptionality in economic success or other social achievement were accused of treason and murdered. Described as a ‘selective genocide’, the means of this violence proved deeply informative of its nature and of the experience of those caught up in the bloodshed. In the northern province of Ngozi, selection was managed through roadblocks and lists of names, creating the inescapable image of a totalitarian and bureaucratic state order. These methods fuelled a strong reaction of obedience, both among the youth and other agents of the state who took part in the arrests, and among the victims, who are commonly described as reacting with ‘docility’ to the violence. A matter of ‘law-making violence’, the selective means of the genocide shaped the political and social order that emerged from it, the ‘implements’ of genocide substantially contributing to the recognition of discrete ethnic communities among the population at large.

The waxing and waning of ethnic boundaries: violence, peace and the ubwoko in Burundi

“…Throughout the country, as these quotations illustrate, the ‘events’ of 1972 created ‘sufficient fear to suppress Hutu unrest for two decades’ and ‘crystallized Hutu and Tutsi identities’ through ‘a climate of permanent mutual fear’ (Uvin 1999: 258). Through the threat of genocide, ‘the state constituted the Hutu as a singular community’, of which they had been hardly aware previously (Russell 2015: 441–2). In fact, the nature of violence ‘is not intrinsic to the act itself; it emerges through after-the-fact interpretive claims’ (Brubaker & Laitin 1998: 444).…”

Women and Genocide in Africa

“…Charles Ndizeye, attempted to fill under the regnal name of Ntare V. 41 Tutsi officials affiliated with the Micombero regime, and the army began inciting Hutu civilians to "act as intelligence agents" for the state. 42 As the violence escalated, Hutu insurgents massacred Tutsi civilians in Bururi, the province from which the Groupe de Bururi originated, as well as any Hutu who refused to join their cause. The historian René…”