Jean baptiste bagaza biography of christopher

The onslaught on the Hutu elites and youth in 1972 (sometimes referred to in Kirundi as ikiza, meaning the scourge) had left over 100,000 people brutally killed by the Tutsi-dominated army and the violent youth militia JRR.

This well organised campaign, which was later described by the researcher René Lemarchand as a “selective genocide”[1], led to a massive refugee crisis and the purging of Hutu representation from the political life of Burundi.

Over the following decades several Tutsi-dominated military regimes were in power.

In 1976, Colonel Jean-Baptiste Bagaza took power in a bloodless coup. He encouraged land reform, electoral reform, and national reconciliation and created a new constitution 1981. Major Pierre Buyoya overthrew Col. Bagaza in a military coup in 1987.

Buyoya dissolved opposition parties, suspended the 1981 constitution, and instituted his ruling Military Committee for National Salvation (CSMN). During 1988, increasing tensions betw