The death of Burundian President Melchior Ndadaye on October 21, 1993, was used by Hutu extremists in Rwanda as a powerful propaganda tool to justify the dehumanisation of the Tutsi and the planning of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Extremists exploited his death to reinforce the Hutu Power ideology, arguing that the Tutsi could never be trusted in a power-sharing government.

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There is a profound link between the escalation of the genocide in Rwanda and the October 1993 Burundi crisis. President Ndadaye’s death had serious repercussions for identity mobilisation in Rwanda. Media propaganda built around the death of the Burundian president created a distorted climate that favoured the descent into genocide.

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Before examining the role of the Burundi crisis in the radicalisation of identities in Rwanda, it should be recalled that Ndadaye was a former Burundian refugee in Rwanda from 1972. He came to power in early July 1993 following legislative and presidential elections that were largely won by his party Front pour la démocratie au Burundi (FRODEBU – translated as the Front for Democracy in Burundi. His death, along with that of other members of his political party, including the Speaker of the National Assembly on October 21, 1993, provoked a serious social and political crisis in Burundi.

In many regions of Burundi, militias and supporters of FRODEBU, acting under the influence of local party leaders, carried out massacres of Tutsi civilians. Some Burundian Hutu exiled in Rwanda used Radio Rwanda to incite the systematic killing of Burundian Tutsi. They also used the same platform to spread hatred against Rwandan Tutsi.

Demonised by politicians and overwhelmed by the complexity and speed of events, the Burundian army was unable to stop the massacres of the Tutsi as well as some Hutu members of the Union pour le progrès national (UPRONA) party – translated as the Union for National Progress. When the army eventually regained control, at least 50,000 people, the majority of whom were Tutsi, had been killed. The proximity of Burundi’s Ngozi, Kayanza, Cibitoke, Muyinga, and Bubanza provinces played a decisive role in the mobilisation of identities in Rwanda.

After the massacres of Tutsi and Hutu members of UPRONA, thousands of Burundian Hutu fled to Rwanda. The unexpected arrival of refugees, two months after the signing of the Arusha Accords between the Rwandan government and the RPF, created—like in 1972—a climate of panic that was amplified by genocide ideologues. In the Burundian crisis, they found a pretext to reject the Arusha Peace Accords and to harden their rhetoric against the Tutsi "enemy.”

Jordane Bertrand, a French author, pointed out that the death of the Burundian president served as a catalyst for Rwanda’s radicalisation of identities by strengthening structural ideological alliances that had begun earlier. From that moment, a climate of intense fear developed, which was exploited by extremists who further intensified it. The interpretation of events, increasingly framed along ethnic lines, contributed to the formation of new alliances and movements defined by ethnic division. Fear was heavily manipulated, leading to greater sensitivity to arguments for ethnic solidarity.

Thus, arguments that had been developed for more than a year by the extremist CDR party, as well as the ethnic interpretation of PARMEHUTU, re-emerged more forcefully. This led to a resurgence of the confusion, present since the 1950s, between ethnicity and politics.

The writer is a historian based in Kigali.