BUJUMBURA 15th April (ABP) – The chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR), Pierre Claver Ndayicariye, handed over the report produced by the Commission at the end of the 2020-2023 financial year to the president of Burundi’s National Assembly, Daniel Gélase Ndabirabe, on Thursday 11 April.
According to Mr Ndayicariye, the report contains three main sections. The first concerns the launch of people who have been murdered or disappeared, people who have protected others and people who have already asked for forgiveness from injured families.
The second part concerns the CVR ‘s missions to the diaspora living in Kigoma in Tanzania, Brussels in Belgium, Nairobi in Kenya and Washington in the United States. Mr Ndayicariye pointed out that Burundians in the diaspora include widows, orphans and refugees who have been affected by the crises that have plunged Burundi into mourning. The CVR gave them the opportunity to express their views.
The third section relates the meetings held by the Speaker of the CVR within the country with national partners, church and university leaders, political parties and civil society organisations with a view to finding out the truth about Burundi’s past.
On that occasion, the President of the CVR explained that the CVR had carried out censuses in three of the country’s provinces, namely Cankuzo, Bururi and Rumonge.
Three lessons had been learned from that work, he said. He said that the people of those three provinces had welcomed that activity which, he said, had enabled them to find out about their relatives who had been murdered.
The second lesson is that there are people who did not know about the CVR’s work during the investigations, but who, with that census, have come to appreciate its work. As a third lesson, that census has shed more light on the truth about the genocide committed in Burundi in 1972 and 1973 against the Hutus, he said, adding that there are Tutsi families who were affected by those crises. He said that those three lessons would ease people’s minds, because the truth-telling process was a step towards reconciliation.