The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which presented its progress report to the Burundian parliament in congress on Monday, December 20, described one of the worst episodes of inter-ethnic massacres in the country, which began at the end of April 1972, as “the genocide against the Hutus of 1972 and 1973. The Hutus are now in power. A qualification that was endorsed, by acclamation, by both houses of the Burundian parliament.
Established in 2014, Burundi’s highly contested TRC had the daunting task of investigating crimes committed in that country from the Berlin Conference of 1885 to the end of the civil war in 2008. But the TRC focused its investigation on this dark period.
The report presented to the parliament in congress is rather voluminous. More than 5,000 pages that summarize years of investigation focused exclusively on what Burundians used to call “the events of ’72. This date corresponds to one of the worst episodes of inter-ethnic massacres in the country.