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Political Violence is as Concerning as Genocide

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Posted: May 11th, 2016

By Hilary Matfess

Hilary Matfess is author of the forthcoming book, Women and the War on Boko Haram, which will be available in November 2017, and a PhD student in the Political Science Department at Yale University, where she studies gender and conflict in sub-Saharan Africa.

When President of the Burundian Senate Révérien Ndikuriyo reportedly said this fall, “on this issue, you have to pulverize, you have to exterminate – these people are only good for dying. I give you this order, go!” parallels were immediately drawn to 1994 Rwanda, where targeted Tutsis were referred to as cockroaches. Amid the recent assassinations and photos of bodies strewn across the streets of Bujumbura, such rhetoric from an elite politician is chilling.

Among those making direct comparisons between the current Burundian crisis and the 1994 genocide was Rwandan President Paul Kagame. In a November speech, Kagame lamented to a crowd in Kigali that Burundi “should have learned the lesson of our history.” The lessons of the Rwandan genocide should certainly be brought to bear in instances of ethnic violence.

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