Citation
NAIROBI, April 10 (Reuter) - More than 500 refugees arrived in Tanzania
on Sunday from Burundi, radio Tanzania said, after signs that turmoil
that has engulfed Rwanda had spread into its central African neighbour.
The radio, monitored by the BBC in Nairobi, quoted a student among the
570 refugees as saying the Burundian capital Bujumbura was tense, with
attacks on residential areas occupied by members of the majority Hutu
tribe.
The attacks were the first evidence of renewed violence in Burundi
since President Cyprien Ntaryamira and his Rwandan counterpart, Juvenal
Habyarimana, both Hutus, died in a plane crash last week.
The deep rivalries between the Hutu and the Tutsi tribes in both tiny
states have given them bloody histories since before independence from
Belgium in 1962.
The student told officials of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees in the remote northwestern Tanzanian town of Kibondo that he
had been forced to run away from the University of Burundi to avoid
being killed by an army of Hutu students, the radio added.
The death of the Rwandan president in the air crash threw Rwanda into
chaos with thousands of people killed in the worst tribal bloodletting
the country has seen.
Neighbouring Burundi, itself the scene of tribal killings in recent
weeks, was quiet immediately after losing its own leader in the crash,
but the attacks in Bujumbura indicated that the initial calm may have
been deceptive.
Burundi has been unstable since renegade soldiers from the minority
Tutsi tribe murdered Melchior Ndadaye, the country's first elected
leader in October last year. Ndadaye was a Hutu.
Up to 50,000 Tutsis and Hutus have been slaughtered across Burundi
since Ndadaye's death.
The Hutu account for an estimated 85 per cent of the estimated 5.6
million population. The Tutsi, feudal overlords before colonial days,
make up less than 15 per cent.
Tribal hatred has exploded repeatedly since Burundi became independent,
with an estimated 100,000 people, mainly Hutu, killed in massacres by
the Tutsi army in 1972.
In August 1988 Hutu farmers along the border with Rwanda staged an
uprising. Some 5,000 people died before the army could restore calm.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
