Buyoya, Pierre, 1949–2020, Burundian political leader. An ethnic Tutsi, he had a successful military career before he overthrew President Jean-Baptiste Bagaza and became president of a Tutsi-led military regime that provoked (1988) an unsuccessful uprising by Hutus in which some 20,000 died. He approved a new constitution in 1992 and elections were held, resulting in a multi-ethnic government led by Hutu Melchior Ndadaye, who succeeded Buyoya in 1993, but Ndadaye was soon assassinated by the military. The subsequent ethnic civil war, in which hundreds of thousands died, led to another coup, in 1996, that returned Buyoya to power. Following the 2001 Arusha Accords, a Tutsi-Hutu power sharing agreement, Buyoya handed over power in 2003 to his Hutu vice president, Domitien Ndayizeye. Buyoya subsequently served in diplomatic missions for La Francophonie and the African Union. In 2020, in Burundi, he was convicted in absentia of the attack on Ndadaye.
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