Burundi is a former German and Belgian colony which became independent in 1962. Located in the region of the great lakes of Eastern Africa, the Twa, Tutsi and Hutu people live together in the country. In the 1960s, the fighting between the Tutsis and Hutus worsened and the underlying conflicts continued during the seventies and eighties until they ended in the civil war that lasted between 1993 and 2005, in which between 50,000 and 100,000 people died. Although many schools were closed, the Catholic Buta Seminar (province of Bururi, in the south of Burundi) remained open. 

On April 30, 1997, around 5:30, an armed group of the National Council for the Defense of Democracy – a Hutu political party – attacked the Seminar. The attackers ordered the seminarians to separate in two groups: Hutus and Tutsis. When realizing that one of the two ethnic groups would be executed, the students decided to remain united. Forty students of about 15 and 24 years were murdered and others were wounded. The massacre was covered by the media around the world and the dead students were promptly remembered as the “martyrs of the fraternity”.

In 1998, peace conversations started between the Twa, Tutsi and Hutu, which were crystalized in the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi, signed in 2000. The Agreement established a power system shared by Tutsis and Hutus and several constitutional reforms. It also created the Committee of Truth and Reconciliation, a Special Court and prepared other memory initiatives.

In a 2018 report, the Committee of Truth and Reconciliation identified approximately 70,000 victims, 13,000 alleged perpetrators and 3,500 mass graves.