Former Burundi President Melchior Ndadaye, who was killed inside military camp ( Photo Courtesy)
After years of chaotic era of coups and counter-coups, Burundi officially transitioned into a democracy in 1993 when 40-year old Melchior Ndadaye was elected President.
The election of Ndadaye, a Hutu, marked the end of the political dominance of the minority Tutsi. To many, it was a new dawn in Burundi. However, this optimism soon evaporated when the military carried out a bloody coup that plunged the country into a civil war. So what exactly happened?
On October 20, 1993, military assemble armoured vehicles at the presidential palace ready to carry out a coup. After hours of chaotic scenes outside the palace, the beleaguered President is arrested and driven inside a military barracks within the capital, Bujumbura.
With his executioners ready to end his life, Ndadaye was shot at 14 times. He would die on the spot.
Keen to conceal the evidence of the President's murder, he was buried in a mass grave alongside his companions.
The death of Ndadaye would mark the beginning of a civil war in Burundi. Within two months of the President's death, over 150,000 people had died in what became like ethnic cleansing.
In 2020, another former Burundi President Pierre Buyoya would be convicted amid claims that he was the man behind the death of Ndadaye.
Content created and supplied by: LarryKatana (via Opera News )
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