Pierre Buyoya

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Pierre Buyoya (2013)

Pierre Buyoya (born November 24, 1949 in Rutovu , † December 17, 2020 in Paris ) was a Burundian politician . He was President of Burundi from 1987 to 1993 and from 1996 to 2003.

In September 1987, Major Buyoya led a military coup against the second republic in Burundi under Jean-Baptiste Bagaza and set himself up as the first president of the third republic. He announced a program to liberalize and improve relations between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups , but he himself led a violent, Tutsi-dominated junta. This led to a Hutu uprising in 1988, killing around 20,000. Buyoya then set up a commission to find ways out of the violence.

This commission drafted a new constitution , which Buyoya adopted in 1992. This constitution called for a non-ethnic government with a president and a parliament. The elections held in June 1993 were won by the Hutu Melchior Ndadaye , who formed a balanced Hutu and Tutsu government. Nevertheless, the army murdered Ndadaye, so that the civil war flared up again. Approximately 150,000 people were killed in the war. There were various attempts by the government to end the fighting, but even the coalition government under Sylvestre Ntibantunganya failed.

In another coup on July 25, 1996, Buyoya ousted Ntibantunganya and returned to power. The civil war then weakened, but continued. Buyoya appointed Hutu Domitien Ndayizeye as vice-president , to whom the presidency passed on April 30, 2003.

In 2012, when the civil war flared up in northern Mali, Buyoya was appointed representative of the African Union for Mali and the Sahel region and continued to do this until November 2020.

Buyoya died in Paris in December 2020 at the age of 71 on his way to hospital from the effects of COVID-19 . He had previously been flown from Mali, where he had already been ventilated.

Individual evidence

  1. NRZ: Federal government excludes Bundeswehr combat deployment in Mali
  2. Burundi's Pierre Buyoya dies from Covid-19. In: IOL. December 18, 2020, accessed December 18, 2020 .