The media responds to market forces as does every other industry.
Legislation to limit what can be reported is a popular remedy. There are even suggestions that it may, in the future, be harder to persuade able people to accept any public office. Instead of bemoaning the intrusions of tabloids and the distress inflicted on innocent families unexpectedly caught in storms not of their own making, we should recognise that newspapers print stories they believe their readers want to read. While there is no progress on these fundamentals, Burundians will face mortal danger.. The swift downfall of another public figure in the wake of revelations in a Sunday newspaper has brought the usual cries of foul play from the press. Yet long-term international support for the Rwandan refugees is waning.

There is little enthusiasm for picking up the political issues which lie like entwined snakes around Rwanda’s body politic.There can be no peace in this region until the refugees and displaced can return in safety to their homes, until the instigators of genocide are named and a new political dispensation is agreed. But Western governments and the international agencies have much to do to prevent Burundi reaching that calamity.The simple truth is that Burundi will not be safe until Rwanda is put together again. Throughout the whole region tension is higher and trust lower than at any previous time Rwanda’s war is not halfway through. The initiators of genocide are still free and more than 2 million people have been driven from their homes Militias are organising, training and arming. Some agencies are now warning of the possibility of a renewed ethnic war engulfing both countries.The International Red Cross, the UN’s Department of Humanitarian Affairs and the UN High Commission for Refugees all report that they have contingency plans for the worst.

So far Burundi’s politicians have continued to talk and negotiate.But despite all Burundi’s advantages over Rwanda, disaster could still happen. Burundi, however, has benefited from the skill and patience of an outstanding UN representative, Ould Abdallah. He is backed by uncharacteristic support and interest from the Security Council and UN headquarters in New York. Yet although there are many similarities, there are also essential differences between Rwanda and Burundi. They may have the same ethnic mix – about 85 per cent Hutu and about 10 per cent Tutsi – but while Rwanda was an oppressive system of aristocracy and serfdom, Burundi’s history was less confrontational and more subtle.
In Rwanda the Hutus held power from independence, when the power of the Tutsis was broken and many of them were killed or driven into exile. When the Tutsi returned as a guerrilla army in 1992, Hutu extremists resorted to genocide. By contrast, in Burundi the Tutsis never lost power and – even after the coming of democracy in 1993, when a Hutu was elected president – the Tutsis retained control of the army.