GITEGA July 19th (ABP) – Burundi Senate President Emmanuel Sinzohagera, has recommended to leaders of religious denominations to join the Senate in raising awareness on the emergence of a Burundi without ethnic speculation.
Ethnic construction is an invention of colonialism in Burundi, part of the logic of the colonial policy of divide and rule, Mr. Sinzohagera said.
He delivered those words on July 16, in an evangelization conference organized by the Full Gospel Church of Gitega (center of the country), from July 15 to 18. “There are no ethnic groups in Burundi,” he said, arguing that an ethnic group is a group with its own culture, language and territorial constituency.
He added that in Burundi, the colonizers erected three ethnic groups, namely the Tutsi, the Hutu and the Batwa for purely political purposes. “However, we know that in Burundi, these groups speak the same language, have the same culture and share the same territory,” Mr. Sinzohagera said, before adding that the colonizers created ethnic groups in order to sow divisions within the same people. Unfortunately, they succeeded in their divisive policy owing to the fact that, for nearly a decade, the country lived in tears and mourning, against the background of ethnicity.
“We must break with these ethnic considerations to reconnect with the Burundi of our ancestors which was characterized by a united people”, the president of the Senate insisted. He informed that the institution he chairs has the mission of engaging the country on the path of the allocation of positions of responsibility without consideration of ethnic quotas, currently in vogue. Religious denominations, as builders of souls, can play their role in building a long-awaited new Burundi, said Sinzohagera, before reassuring that those denominations can do so because society obeys them.
After that communication, the president of the Senate encouraged the pastors of the churches to preach the word of God with abnegation. He reminded them that their reward will be great in the kingdom of heaven.