Dec. 29 — BUJUMBURA (Reuters) - The Vatican's ambassador to Burundi was shot dead on Monday in an attack which Burundi's army blamed on Hutu rebel fighters who have refused to join a peace process.
Army officials in the tiny African country said papal nuncio Michael Courtney was ambushed by National Liberation Forces (FNL) rebels and shot three times. He later died in hospital. "The nuncio was ambushed this afternoon by elements of the FNL near the Minago locality 25 miles south of Bujumbura," army spokesman Augustin Nzabampema said.
It is estimated 300,000 people have been killed in Burundi's decade-old civil war, in which rebels of the majority Hutu ethnic group are fighting to end the political dominance of the Tutsi minority.
The main rebel group in Burundi, the FDD (Forces for the Defense of Democracy), has signed a peace deal with the government, which has awarded top ministerial posts to rebel leaders.
But the FNL has refused to negotiate with the government and has continued to fight it. African leaders have given the FNL three months to join peace talks or be branded as outcasts.
That figure sounds low, but irrelevant for the purpose of my comments.
This is a painfully classic example of a little learning is a dangerous thing. When the Tutsi-Hutu blowup first occured, I immediately sympathised with the majority, based on pretty much total ignorance. It was the human thing to do; an instinctive human response.
I was wrong.
Digging and studying and grasping as much of the background as was available made it crystal clear that the situation was analogous almost perfectly to the Israeli "palestinian" conflict. The concept of "freedom" and "fairness" can be fatal to the ignorant, when one blindly assumes that rats, for example, are entitled to rule over us simply because "there are more of them".
'Nuff said.