By Sabine CessouPosted on 21-03-2019Modified on 21-03-2019 at 16:55
Commissioner for Human Rights and Refugees in Cnared, the platform of the Burundian opposition in exile, Aline Ndenzako launches with Beate Klarsfeld the association Common memories, common future. An initiative to get out of interethnic conflicts in Burundi. A committed African woman and granddaughter of the last king of Burundi, she carries a whole section of the history of her country.
It's been almost four years since Al Ndenzako slept badly, like many Burundians who mourn 3,000 dead, a thousand missing and are concerned about 450,000 refugees spread across Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and the Republic. Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Four years that she is of all the meetings of the platform of the opposition in exile, the National Committee for the defense of the Agreement of Arusha (Cnared), whereas it does not belong to any party.
Four years on her own funds, she comes and goes between Kigali, Brussels, Arusha and Tel Aviv. She has sought the advice of an association of Holocaust victims in Israel to draw up a list of the dead and missing since the beginning of the crisis in 2015. Her goal: " That their names do not fall into oblivion and that One day justice can be done. In Paris, she set up in 2017 an association called "Burundi: Common Memories, Common Future", which is attended by the German Beate Klarsfled , known for the prosecution of officials of the Holocaust. The goal is to put an end to the hatred of identity in Burundi, of which Hutus and Tutsis have been victims.
Granddaughter of King Mwambutsa IV
Initially active in civil society, this entrepreneur graduated in communication has helped from Brussels, during the civil war (1993-2002), agricultural associations and AIDS patients. During the peace interval that followed, from 2006 to 2015, she was the vice-president of one of the largest Burundian NGOs, Maison Shalom , founded in 1994 to help war orphans, Hutus as Tutsis.
Today based in Dakar, she is on the bridge both by choice and by " lack of choice ", she explains, without wanting to insist on her story: " Every time a friend is impressed by my status as a member of the royal family, I am disappointed. ". Nevertheless, the fact that she is one of the granddaughters of Mwambutsa IV, former king of Burundi from 1915 to 1966, is nothing trivial. It belongs to an aristocracy, the Ganwas, a social class that belongs to a fourth "ethnic group" alongside the Twas, Hutus and Tutsis. Which prevents him from thinking along the ethnic divide. " His status gives him a neutrality that allows him to criticize the biases of both groups, Hutus and Tutsis, while allowing him to federate, " said a close. She admits it: " It motivates all my commitment. The injustice suffered by my family made me realize very early on the issues. "
The hero of independence, his uncle, murdered
It is that the independence of Burundi, in 1962, was in pain. Mwambutsa IV, his maternal grandfather, died in 1977 in exile in Switzerland, and his two uncles murdered. The first, Louis Rwagasore, is none other than the hero of independence. A fervent nationalist and founder of the Union for National Progress (Uprona), he led campaigns to boycott Belgian businesses and pay taxes to colonial power. It was shot down on October 13, 1961, a month after the victory to 80% of his party in legislative elections. The election had made him a Prime Minister ready to prepare for the exit of the colonial yoke.
In July 1966, the king was deposed by a second coup d'etat, but immediately named his second son, Ntare V., after exile. The monarchy was abolished four months later by a Tutsi soldier who imposed himself as president, then bloody dictator.
Caval in pirogue on Lake Tanganyika
Aline Ndenzako, has only very vague memories of that time. Her most distant memory goes back to the 1966 coup d'etat, when she came and went in the gardens of the royal palace in Bujumbura, where antelopes frolicked. " One day, there was shooting when I was passing with my sister from the lodge where my family lived in my grandfather's living room in the main residence. Then I remember a few suitcases, soldiers everywhere, and life changed. Enrolled in the convent of the Sisters of Mary, she knew nothing of the material difficulties of her divorced mother and her grandmother "Mwamikasi", the queen who remained in the country.
In 1971, history is racing again. A cousin comes to alert them: we must leave. " A taxi came to pick us up and at midnight we crossed Lake Tanganyika by canoe to Uvira, Zaire, then we arrived in Kenya through Uganda in trucks and an old Volvo. It was not until much later that she understood that the trip was aimed at escaping the "events" of 1972, as modestly called in Burundi the first interethnic massacres post-independence. They were perpetrated by the Tutsi military dictatorship of Micombero, ready to eliminate the country's Hutu elite.
End the spiral of violence
His uncle Ntare V did not escape, killed at the age of 24 in 1972. Two decades later, democratization is just as bad in Burundi: Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, first elected president in 1993, is immediately assassinated by Tutsi soldiers. The reaction is immediate: the Tutsis of Burundi are hunted down and massacred by the Hutu majority. The country will only come out of the war in 2002, after 200,000 deaths.
A government is formed in 2005 and a new Constitution adopted. Ten years of peace followed, to which President Pierre Nkurunziza ended in 2015, by running a third non-constitutional mandate. " By political manipulation, he re-animates the desire for revenge of the orphans of the massacres of Hutus in 1972, of which he is a part ", analyzes Aline Ndenzako.
For four years, the violent repression of the opposition has provoked a new wave of orphans and refugees. The nightmares of the 1990s haunt the nights of Aline Ndenzako once again, without renouncing her dream: " Let the trauma stop and the youth of Burundi finally have the right to its future ..."
comments