KIGALI NOVEMBER 10, 2015 (CISA) – Rwandan President Paul Kagame has implored neighboring Burundi to avoid the ethnic violence that ended his country in genocide in 1994, Vatican Radio reported.
Regional and world powers have grown increasingly concerned that the security situation in Burundi could lead to civil war or mass atrocities, and that a weekend deadline for Burundians to give up weapons could spark widespread bloodshed.
At least 200 people have died and tens of thousands have left the country after months of violence and protests since President Pierre Nkurunziza declared he would seek a third term in office, which he then won in a contested vote in July.
“They should have learned the lesson of our history,” Kagame told a gathering in the Rwandan capital Kigali November 6, according to an audio of the speech shared on social media.
Some 800,000 people, most of them Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were massacred before rebel forces led by Kagame ended the genocide in Rwanda.
Burundi is about 85 percent Hutu and 14 percent Tutsi. Rwanda is currently in the process of adjusting its own presidential term limit rules, which would pave the way for President Kagame to seek a third term in office.
In the speech, he was pointedly critical of President Nkurunziza, a former Hutu rebel leader before he became Burundi’s first democratically elected president after its civil war.
President Kagame says President Nkurunziza was allowing his people to die. “No one knows where he is, no one can talk to him.
How does he lead his people? People are dying every day, dead bodies are being dragged on the streets every day,” said Kagame in an emotional message that was shared in social media.
