Burundi, 2015 — military coup attempt

Event Summary

On 13 May 2015 Major General Godefroid Niyombare, a former army chief of staff and intelligence head, announced on radio that he had removed President Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi from office, launching a coup that seized the capital amid mass protests against Nkurunziza's bid for an unconstitutional third term, only to collapse within about 36 hours. Nkurunziza, a Hutu former rebel who had led Burundi since the 2005 end of its long civil war, had provoked weeks of street demonstrations by announcing he would run again, in defiance of the two term limit enshrined in the Arusha peace agreement. Niyombare, who had been dismissed by Nkurunziza in February for opposing the third term bid, seized his moment while the president was in Tanzania at a regional summit on the crisis: coup soldiers took the airport and private radio stations, and jubilant crowds poured into the streets of Bujumbura.

But loyalist forces held the state broadcaster and the presidential palace, and after heavy fighting the coup unraveled; Nkurunziza's plane was turned back but he soon returned, and Niyombare and the other leaders surrendered or fled. Nkurunziza crushed the plotters, won his disputed third term, and plunged Burundi into years of repression and unrest.