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The Burundian Civil War was an armed conflict lasting from 1993 to 2005. The civil war was the result of long standing ethnic divisions between the Hutu and the Tutsi ethnic groups in Burundi. The conflict began following the first multi-party elections in the country since independence from Belgium in 1962, and is seen as formally ending with the swearing in of Pierre Nkurunziza in August 2005. The estimated death toll stands at 300,000 killed. ==Background== Prior to colonialism, Burundi was led by a Tutsi monarchy like its neighbor Rwanda. The Belgians and the Germans found it convenient to rule through the existing power structure in which the Tutsi were already dominant over the Hutu. They therefore perpetuated Tutsi domination. The Belgians generally identified the peoples of Burundi and Rwanda with the following observations: the Twa who were short, the Hutu who were of medium height and the Tutsi who were tallest among them. Those individuals who owned more than ten cows were normally described as Tutsi. After the independence of the Belgian Congo and colonies across Africa from 1960, Belgian administrators in Ruanda-Urundi began to prepare the territory for independence. Following independence in 1962, a federation with Rwanda was rejected, and Rwanda and Burundi separated. Unlike Rwanda, Burundi chose to retain its monarchy. Burundi’s first multi-party national elections were held on 27 June 1993. These elections were immediately preceded by 25 years of Tutsi military regimes, beginning with Michel Micombero, who had led a successful coup in 1966 and replaced the monarchy with a presidential republic. Under the Micombero regime, the minority Tutsi generally dominated governance. In 1972, an all-Hutu organization known as Umugambwe w'Abakozi b'Uburundi or Burundi Workers' Party (UBU) organized and carried out systematic attacks on ethnic Tutsi, with the declared intent of annihilating the whole group. The military regime responded with large-scale reprisals targeting Hutus. The total number of casualties was never established, but estimates for the Tutsi genocide and the reprisals on the Hutus together are said to exceed 100,000. As many refugees and asylum-seekers left the country for Tanzania and Rwanda. The last of the coups was in 1987 and installed Tutsi officer Pierre Buyoya. Buyoya attempted to institute a number of reforms to ease state control over media and attempted to facilitate a national dialogue. Instead of helping the problem, these reforms instead served to inflame ethnic tensions as hope grew amongst the Hutu population that the Tutsi monopoly was at an end. Local revolts subsequently took place by Hutu peasants against several Tutsi leaders in northern Burundi; these Hutu militias killed hundreds of Tutsi families in the process. When Buyoya sent in the army to quell the uprising, they in turn killed thousands of Hutu. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Burundian Civil War」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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