After five years of legal limbo, the remains of Burundi's deposed king Mwambutsa IV, who died 40 years ago, were reburied in Switzerland on Friday. The small, intimate ceremony in a Geneva cemetery was conducted under police protection, the ATS news agency reported.
Mwambutsa led Burundi at independence from Belgium in 1962, but was deposed just four years later in a dispute linked to rivalries between ethnic Tutsis and Hutus, which still haunt the country. The monarch died in Switzerland in 1977, leaving clear instructions that his remains should never be returned to Burundi. But his daughter and the Burundian government campaigned for his remains to be repatriated, reportedly hoping to use the occasion to organise a ceremony promoting national reconciliation. In 2012, one of the king's relatives authorised the exhumation of his remains ahead of an eventual repatriation. Mwambutsa's niece Esther Kamatari opposed the process insisting the king's last wishes should be honoured. Finally, last month, Switzerland's federal court sided with Kamatari, meaning Mwambutsa's remains could finally be laid to rest once again.
During the years-long legal back and forth following his exhumation, his remains had been held in a cold-storage facility at a Geneva funeral home. Kamatari, who herself fled Burundi in 1970 and ultimately settled in Paris where she worked as a model, attended Friday's ceremony, laying a white rose on her uncle's casquet and wishing him "eternal peace", ATS reported.
Comments
Comments are closed.