President Évariste Ndayishimiye said the mass killings that devastated Burundi in 1972 were orchestrated by the country’s rulers at the time and should not be blamed collectively on the Tutsi ethnic group, arguing that responsibility rests with those who exercised state power.
“Bad leaders have no ethnicity,” Ndayishimiye said, according to remarks made this week, adding that the massacres were “planned and carried out by the authorities of that time, and not by the Tutsi.”
His comments come days after Burundi’s Parliament endorsed the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR), which concluded that genocide was committed against Hutu populations in 1972 and recommended legal action against those responsible.
The president’s remarks touch one of the most painful and politically sensitive chapters in Burundi’s history, where memories of past violence continue to shape national debates over justice, reconciliation and collective responsibility.
Separating perpetrators from communities
Ndayishimiye’s intervention appeared aimed at distinguishing between the military regime that ruled Burundi in 1972 and the broader Tutsi community, amid longstanding concerns among historians and survivors that assigning collective guilt risks perpetuating ethnic divisions.
The violence erupted in April 1972 after an armed rebellion in southern Burundi by Hutu insurgents that claimed the lives of thousands, including many Tutsi civilians. The government of then-President Michel Micombero responded with a sweeping crackdown led by the army and state institutions, targeting Hutu intellectuals, civil servants, students and military officers.
Historians and researchers have described the campaign as systematic and organised. French political scientist René Lemarchand, one of the leading scholars on Burundi, characterised it as a “selective genocide.” Estimates of the death toll vary widely, ranging from roughly 100,000 to as many as 300,000 people.
For decades, public discussion of the events remained limited. The 2000 Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement called for mechanisms to address Burundi’s violent past, leading to the establishment of the CVR in 2014. Since then, the commission has conducted investigations, collected testimonies and exhumed mass graves.
In 2021, the commission formally declared that genocide had been committed against Hutu communities in 1972-73, attributing the crimes to the government of Micombero. Its findings were reaffirmed in the final report presented to Parliament this month.
Yet the commission’s work has also generated controversy. Critics, including some opposition figures and members of the Tutsi community, have argued that focusing primarily on 1972 risks overlooking atrocities committed during later episodes of violence, notably the killings that followed the assassination of Burundi’s first democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye, in 1993.
Supporters of the process contend that decades of silence surrounding 1972 made official recognition necessary and that acknowledging the crimes is essential for national healing.
A message aimed at reconciliation
Ndayishimiye has repeatedly called for Burundians to avoid ethnic divisions and to confront the country’s history without stigmatizing entire communities. His latest comments suggest an effort to frame accountability in terms of political leadership rather than ethnic identity.
That distinction carries particular weight in Burundi, where successive cycles of violence have often fueled competing narratives of victimhood.
More than five decades after what Burundians commonly refer to as Ikiza “the catastrophe” the central question remains how to establish historical truth while avoiding the transmission of collective blame to generations that neither planned nor carried out the crimes.
By declaring that “bad leaders have no ethnicity,” Ndayishimiye has entered a debate that reaches beyond the past and into Burundi’s continuing search for reconciliation, whether responsibility for national tragedies belongs to entire communities, or to the leaders who wielded power in their name.
