On April 18, troops loyal to President Pierre Buyoya, a member of the Tutsi ethnic group, dislodged hardline Tutsi soldiers calling themselves the Patriotic Youth Front from Radio Burundi. In an act reminiscent of African coups during the 1970s and 1980s, the rebels had occupied the station and aired a statement announcing Buyoya’s overthrow.
IN 1996, MAJ. PIERRE BUYOYA SEIZED POWER and promised a quick end to Burundi’s murderous civil war, which has taken more than 200,000 lives since 1993 and now consumes 50 percent of the national budget. His promises remained unfulfilled last year, leaving local journalists victims of and sometimes actors in a poisonous communal conflict. Amid…
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is appalled to learn that your government has ordered the Burundian army to treat journalists as legitimate military targets. On September 9, Your Excellency’s Defense Minister, Colonel Alfred Nkurunziza, said in a speech broadcast on state radio that the army should consider all journalists as enemies, and therefore legitimate targets, if they entered the Bujumbura Rurale province near the capital, where the army is fighting ethnic Hutu rebels.