The Long Road Home - Global Rights

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Photos by Maria Koulouris C O V E R S T O R Y 4 Summer 2005 Global Rights VOICES The In 1972, when Etienne* was just five years old, a brutal campaign of ethnic violence swept Burundi, engulfing his village in the country’s north. Etienne’s mother, in an attempt to avoid the cruel fate of so many of her compatriots, fled to neighboring Rwanda with seven children in tow. The family left behind two parcels of land. Twenty-one years later, after historical elections brought Burundi’s first Hutu president to power, Etienne’s family, feeling hopeful for the future of their country, decided the time had come to return home. But upon arrival in Burundi, they quickly found that they had no land to which they could return. Their primary family home had been illegally occupied, the second one was destroyed during the fighting they had fled. Seeking to reclaim what had been legally theirs, Etienne turned to the local governor for help. Recognizing the family’s right to the land, the governor ordered the new tenant off the disputed property. But the home’s wealthy new occupant simply *Names have been changed. Long Road Home ignored the governor’s demand. Etienne’s family received no compensation for its loss and was soon forced to scatter across the country, each member settling wherever he or she could find work. Twelve years later, Etienne now scrapes together just enough money to pay his rent, unable to save enough to buy new land or rebuild his family’s property. Conflicts over land are all too common among the people of Burundi, a small landlocked country that borders Rwanda, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. With the country’s 6.8 million people living in an area approximately the size of Maryland, population density is the second highest on mainland Africa. The population is growing at the staggering rate of three percent a year — a figure that, if maintained, will mean a doubling of the population every two decades. And although only 44 percent of Burundi’s land is arable, more than 90 percent of the population lives in the rural countryside (which begins just minutes outside the capital Bujumbura) and relies on agriculture for their subsistence. Per capita yearly income is just $100 and there are few other ways to earn a living. Family disagreements over the inheritance and sharing of property and the repeated sub-division of land into ever-smaller parcels are a source of conflict throughout the country. Compounding this problem, Burundi’s successive governments have poorly managed official land policies for decades, and Burundians — most of whom have been dissuaded by the lack of opportunity to raise their individual concerns in a traditionally centralized society — have not, for the most part, engaged local authorities on the issue. Making Burundi’s land issue even more complex, cycles of violence have forced several waves of refugees to flee their homes and, upon their return, serious disputes have arisen over the land left behind. These disputes, many of which involve illegal occupations and state expropriations, threaten Burundi’s bid for a peaceful and stable future.
Burundi’s Land Crisis Today, with the country now enjoying peace for the first time in decades, the number of people who may soon return home is staggering. In April 2004, roughly 140,000 Burundians still resided in the country’s internally displaced persons camps; at the end of the year, almost three quarters of a million remained in Tanzania. These figures indicate that as the situation in Burundi improves, nearly one in eight of the country’s citizens may soon embark on a return from exile. But according to Refugees International, more than 95 percent of these displaced Burundians have no home to which they can return. History of the Conflict The 1972 violence from which Etienne’s family fled came just a decade after Burundi gained its independence from Belgium, a colonial power that had privileged the country’s minority Tutsi population and marginalized the majority Hutus. In the years leading up to the violence, a small sub-clan of Tutsis seized power in a bloody coup and stripped Hutus of all positions of authority. When the Hutus revolted, their efforts were met with disproportionate and systematic violence from the Tutsi-dominated military. In the fighting that ensued, about 200,000 Burundians were killed.Hundreds of thousands of others,like Etienne’s family, fled to neighboring countries, leaving behind their land and property. In the years that followed, this land and property were illegally occupied,looted or, in many cases, expropriated by the state. In the southern city of Rumonge, for example, where valuable palm plantations dot the hills, the government seized property and arbitrarily distributed it to select businesses and powerful individuals. Elsewhere, people simply occupied the empty homes of those who had fled.And conflict continued unabated. In 1993, for the first time in Burundi’s history, a Hutu was elected to the country’s presidency. Before long, he began to urge those who had fled the violence to return home.A generation of refugees saw hope in this change and some, like Etienne’s family, began their journey back to Burundi. Just months after his election, however, the president and several members of his administration were assassinated — sparking what would beome a 12 year civil war. It is said that these killings were motivated, in part, by the government’s handling of land conflicts. About 300,000 men, women, and children died in this wave of violence, and 800,000 were displaced from their homes. Many of these people fled to neighboring Tanzania, while others were displaced within Burundi, settling in squalid camps. Like those who had fled previous periods of conflict, these Burundians left behind property that was soon taken over, adding yet another layer to the country’s already serious land crisis. In 2000, things began to improve when the warring parties signed the Arusha Agreement, a comprehensive peace settlement. Even more significantly, the government and main rebel groups agreed to a critical ceasfire. And in early 2005 the country held a peaceful referendum on its post-transition constitution, which includes a powersharing system between Hutus and Tutsis. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been established,the security situation has improved drastically, and general elections will begin in June 2005. With the possibility of peace now on the horizon, those forced to flee Burundi’s waves of conflicts have again begun to return home. Long Road Home, continued on page 6 Global Rights VOICES Summer 2005 5
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