UN report on mid-August massacre of refugees in Burundi unable to pin blame

A United Nations team probing the mid-August slaying of Congolese Tutsi refugees in Burundi has not been able to identify the perpetrators and is recommending a further investigation of the brutal overnight massacre which left 160 people dead.

Despite extensive research in both Burundi and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the UN investigators are "at this stage unable to conclusively identify who authored, financed, or carried out the killings" of the Banyamulenge at the Gatumba transit centre located just inside Burundi's border.

At the same time, the team "collected sufficient information about this grave crime to recommend a thorough judicial inquiry at both the national level, led by the Government of Burundi, with the full cooperation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, and the international level, led by the International Criminal Court."

In a letter accompanying the report, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stressed his grave concern about crimes against civilians in both Burundi and DRC. "As the Security Council has noted in several of its resolutions and presidential statements, impunity must be brought to an end and perpetrators of crimes such as the one described in the attached report must be brought to justice," he says.

The joint initial investigation by the UN Organization Mission in the DRC and the UN Operation in Burundi (UNOB) was able to establish only such basic facts as the time and method of attack and the number and fate of the victims, the report says.

Despite claims of responsibility from the Parti pour la liberation du peuple hutu-Forces nationales de liberation (PALIPEHUTU-FNL), it seems unlikely that the Hutu group acted on its own, the team says. According to testimony from survivors, other groups were there, identifiable by language and chant, but those statements could not be independently confirmed.

The Governments of Burundi and Rwanda, as well as the DRC's Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba, himself a member of the targeted ethnic group, have levelled charges at an alliance of anti-Tutsi groups in eastern DRC, which might include Mayi-Mayi militia, along with elements from the Armed Forces of the DRC, the ex-Forces armees rwandaises (FAR) and the Interahamwe.

But after investigating these claims, the UN team "was unable to find conclusive evidence implicating any of those actors," the report says.

Sources told the team that refugees in the Gatumba centre were in two groups, supporters of two Banyamulenge leaders: Col. Jules Mutebutsi, who led the June attack on DRC's Bukavu university town, and Patrick Masunzu, leader of a pro-Kinshasa armed group. "However, the United Nations team was unable to determine the composition of political allegiances, if any, of the camp population at the time of the massacre."

It did not find weapons in the centre and could not verify reports of military recruiting, either.