Former Burundian President Buyoya is buried in Mali

Former Burundian President Pierre Buyoya was buried Tuesday in Mali, thousands of kilometers from his country of origin, where he had been sentenced to life, an AFP journalist noted.

Buyoya, who died in Paris from coronavirus on December 17 at the age of 71, was buried in the capital Bamako, his base for eight years as the African Union’s special envoy to Mali and the Sahel.

Buyoya, an officer in the Tutsi army, came to power in Burundi in a coup in 1987.

He resigned in 1993 in the country’s first democratic elections in which Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, resoundingly defeated him for the presidency.

He returned to the presidency in 1996, again in a coup, and in 2000 signed the Arusha Accords aimed at ending the country’s brutal civil war. He resigned in 2003 in accordance with the agreement.

In October this year, he was sentenced to life in absentia along with 18 other defendants for the assassination of Ndadaye, a Hutu killed by extremist Tutsi soldiers after less than four months in power.

The murder sparked a ten-year conflict between the majority Hutu and the Tutsi minority which left around 300,000 dead.

Buyoya called the trial “a sham … (and) purely political” but later left his post at the AU, saying he wanted to clear his name.

A funeral mass was held Wednesday morning in the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Bamako, celebrated by the cardinal and archbishop of the city, Jean Zerbo.

About 100 people were present, including Buyoya’s widow and three children and representatives of the State of Mali, the AU and the European Union.

“Relatives, friends and former colleagues came from Burundi, but there was no official government delegation,” a family friend said.

A senior Burundian government official said the family had been informed that Buyoya had “the right to be buried” in his country of origin “like any Burundian citizen”.

However, he would not receive the honors of a former head of state “because of his conviction,” the official said.

The coffin, covered with a white shroud, a belt in the Burundian national colors and a bouquet of white roses, was transported to the Catholic cemetery in Bamako, where Buyoya was buried in the early afternoon.

Burundi has been ruled since 2005 by the CNDD-FDD party, which emerged from the main Hutu revolt.

In 2015, President Pierre Nkurunziza’s candidacy for a third term sparked protests and a failed coup, with violence killing at least 1,200 people and some 400,000 fleeing the country.

Nkurunziza, a devout evangelical, died unexpectedly in June, shortly before handing over to Evariste Ndayishimiye, a tough guy who had won elections the previous month.