Most notable among these were Party for the Liberation of the Hutu People – National Forces of Liberation ( Parti pour la libération du peuple Hutu – Forces nationales de libération, PALIPEHUTU-FNL) and National Liberation Front ( Front de libération nationale, FROLINA) which had been active from the 1980s. A low-level insurgency developed, and the first Hutu rebel groups were formed. When the army came to quell the uprising, they in turn killed thousands of Hutu, leading to an estimated death toll of between 5,000 and 50,000. Local revolts subsequently took place by Hutu peasants against several Tutsi leaders in northern Burundi these Hutu militias killed hundreds of Tutsi families in the process. Instead of helping the problem, these reforms instead served to inflame ethnic tensions as hope grew among the Hutu population that the Tutsi monopoly was at an end. Buyoya attempted to institute a number of reforms to ease state control over media and attempted to facilitate a national dialogue. The last of the coups was in 1987 and installed Tutsi officer Pierre Buyoya. As many refugees and asylum-seekers left the country for Tanzania and Rwanda. The total number of casualties was never established, but estimates for the Tutsi genocide and the reprisals on the Hutus together are said to exceed 100,000. The military regime responded with large-scale reprisals targeting Hutus. In 1972, Hutu militants organized and carried out systematic attacks on ethnic Tutsi, with the declared intent of annihilating the whole group.

Under the Micombero regime, the minority Tutsi generally dominated governance. These elections were immediately preceded by 25 years of Tutsi military regimes, beginning with Michel Micombero, who had led a successful coup in 1966 and replaced the monarchy with a presidential republic. The country's first multi-party national elections were held in June 1993. The independent country initially preserved its monarchy. Those individuals who owned more than ten cows were normally described as Tutsi.īurundi became independent in 1962, breaking from a colonial federation with Rwanda. The Belgians generally identified the ethnic distinctions in Burundi and Rwanda with the following observations: the Twa who were short, the Hutu who were of medium height and the Tutsi who were tallest among them. German, and subsequently Belgian, colonial rulers found it convenient to govern through the existing power structure, perpetuating the dominance of the Tutsi minority over the ethnic Hutu majority. Background īefore becoming subject to European colonial rule, Burundi was governed by an ethnic Tutsi monarchy, similar to that of its neighbor Rwanda.

The estimated death toll stands at 300,000. Children were widely used by both sides in the war. The conflict began following the first multi-party elections in the country since its independence from Belgium in 1962, and is seen as formally ending with the swearing-in of President Pierre Nkurunziza in August 2005. The civil war was the result of longstanding ethnic divisions between the Hutu and the Tutsi ethnic groups. The Burundian Civil War was a civil war in Burundi lasting from 1993 to 2005.

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