title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: The show's theme song, "Boss of Me", was written and recorded by the alternative rock group They Might Be Giants. The song won the "Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media" award at the 2002 Grammy Awards. The band also performed nearly all of the incidental music for the show in its first two seasons.


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: Mood-setting music is sprinkled throughout the series, in lieu of audience laughter, in a way that resembles feature film more than other TV sitcoms. Some examples of this highly varied music include ABBA, Basement Jaxx, Sum 41, Kenny Rogers, Lemon Jelly, Lords of Acid, The Getaway People, En Vogue, Electric Light Orchestra, Fatboy Slim, Phil Collins, Claude Debussy, Tears for Fears, Quiet Riot, Queen, and Citizen King, whose song "Better Days" is played at the end of both the pilot episode and the series finale. The Southern California pop-punk band Lit have many of their songs featured in several episodes. Lit songs that were never released as singles were also used.


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: The show entered barter syndication in the fall of 2004 one month before the sixth season premiered on Fox and was later aired on FX in the fall of 2007 until the fall of 2011.


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: The show was launched on Nick at Nite on July 5, 2009, at 8:00 pm with an all night marathon. However, the episodes were either skipped over or heavily edited due to content that was too strong for the network's standards. When Nick at Nite pulled "Malcolm" it began airing on TeenNick from November 26, 2010, and continued until December 2010. The show returned to TeenNick's line-up on July 18, 2011.


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: On April 11, 2019, it was originally revealed that the show would be available on Disney+, Disney's direct-to-consumer streaming service, at launch on November 12, 2019. However, the show was not available on launch day for unknown reasons. In March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Disney sent a survey out to Disney+ consumers asking if they would like content on the site such as "Malcolm in the Middle" and other "mature" shows such as "Firefly", "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Modern Family". The series is currently available to watch on Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: In the United Kingdom, the series originally aired on Sky1 from September 3, 2000, later also airing on Sky2 and Sky3 before finally leaving all Sky channels in December 2010. It also aired on free-to-air BBC Two from April 6, 2001, to March 7, 2009. From January 3, 2011, it aired on Fiver (now 5*) at 6:00 pm and again at about 7:30 pm, later moving to a weekly slot at 3:15pm on Saturday afternoons. Repeats continued until January 18, 2014. Comedy Central UK and Ireland picked up the show in November 2015 and aired until 2018. Nickelodeon UK also began showing the series in 2018. 4Music started showing two episodes daily at 6.00pm and 6.30pm, from 6 July 2020. As of December 2021, the series is available on Disney+ in the UK.


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: Only the first season of "Malcolm in the Middle" has been released on DVD in the U.S. Season two was set to be released in the fall of 2003, but was cancelled due to high costs of music clearances.


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: In February 2012, it was announced that Fabulous Films would be releasing the first season of the show in the UK in April, as well as releasing each subsequent season the following month, ending with a complete series set near Christmas 2012. However, in late March 2012, several retailers had removed the release date from their websites; this was later revealed to be because of "technical issues with the Masters" and that the release date had been pushed back to June. Other seasons will now follow on either a monthly or bi-monthly basis.


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: All the UK DVD releases are intact as originally aired with no cuts, with the original music, with the exception of one season three episode "Company Picnic" which was originally aired as a one-hour special, before being re-edited and split into two parts for syndication. The DVD presents the syndicated version.


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: All seven seasons as well as the complete series set were released in Australia in September 2013. The complete series set altered the separate seven season sets to fit into four volumes. A collector's edition boxset which has the seasons split up instead of volumes was released subsequently in 2014. It features everything from the four-volume set and includes a bonus T-shirt. This set is exclusive to Australia.


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: In May 2019, Turbine Medien announced the first ever Blu-ray release of the complete series in Germany, that was released in September 2019. The release however, was in Standard Definition, in similar fashion to the PAL DVD releases.


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: The show is often regarded as influential as a family sitcom that was not filmed in front of a live studio audience and did not feature a laugh track, in addition to being praised for its single-camera filming style which would later be used in "The Bernie Mac Show", "The Office", "Everybody Hates Chris", "30 Rock", and "Arrested Development".


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: In the 2017 film "The Disaster Artist", Bryan Cranston appeared as himself, offering one of the protagonists a guest role on an episode of "Malcolm in the Middle".


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: The series served as inspiration for episode 6 of the Disney+ Marvel Cinematic Universe television miniseries "WandaVision", and the intro of "WandaVision" show in show also parodies "Malcolm in the Middle". In episode 8 of the series, a DVD box of the first season can be seen among DVDs of other shows. Later in that same episode, the main characters are watching season seven's second episode "Health Insurance".


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: There is an alternate ending to "Breaking Bad" released on a DVD box set of the complete series, where Hal (whose actor Bryan Cranston plays Walter White in "Breaking Bad") wakes up from a dream, revealing the entirety of "Breaking Bad" to be a bad dream in "Malcolm in the Middle" that Hal had after eating a deep-fried Twinkie. This is a parody of the ending to the show "Newhart".


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: Season one holds a Metacritic score of 88 out of 100, based on 26 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: The show started off with ratings of 23 million for the debut episode, and 26 million for the second episode.


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: Fox shuffled the show's air time repeatedly to make room for other shows. On January 13, 2006, Fox announced that the show would be moving to 7:00 pm on Sundays effective January 29, 2006. The 151st and final episode aired at 8:30 pm ET/PT (the show's original timeslot) on May 14, 2006. The finale was watched by 7.4 million.


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: Jane Kaczmarek and Cloris Leachman were nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award every year they appeared on the show, as leading and guest actress, respectively. Leachman won in 2002 and 2006. Frankie Muniz was nominated once for lead actor, and Bryan Cranston three times for supporting actor. The show won a total of 7 Emmys during its six-year run and a Peabody Award. Kaczmarek was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards, Muniz was nominated twice, and Cranston was nominated once.


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: Russian channel STS made a shot-for-shot adaptation called "Супер Макс" ("Super Max") that comprises 1 season so far.


title: Malcolm in the Middle

text: In 2016, Bryan Cranston openly expressed interest in doing a reunion. In 2021, Frankie Muniz, while speaking on Steve-O's podcast, revealed that Cranston was writing a script for a movie reunion and that the entire cast was ready to return except for one hold up, though he kept the identity confidential.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi (, ), officially the Republic of Burundi ( ; Swahili: "Jamuhuri ya Burundi"; French: "République du Burundi" ), is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley at the junction between the African Great Lakes region and East Africa. It is bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and southeast, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west; Lake Tanganyika lies along its southwestern border. The capital cities are Gitega and Bujumbura, the latter being the country's largest city.


title: Burundi

text: The Twa, Hutu and Tutsi peoples have lived in Burundi for at least 500 years. For more than 200 of those years, Burundi was an independent kingdom, until the beginning of the 20th century, when it became a German colony. After the First World War and Germany's defeat, the League of Nations "mandated" the territory to Belgium. After the Second World War, this transformed into a United Nations Trust Territory. Both Germans and Belgians ruled Burundi and Rwanda as a European colony known as Ruanda-Urundi. Burundi and Rwanda had never been under common rule until the time of European colonization of Africa.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi gained independence in 1962 and initially had a monarchy, but a series of assassinations, coups and a general climate of regional instability culminated in the establishment of a republic and a one-party state in 1966. Bouts of ethnic cleansing and ultimately two civil wars and genocides during the 1970s and again in the 1990s resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, leaving the economy undeveloped and the population one of the world's poorest. The year 2015 witnessed large-scale political strife as President Pierre Nkurunziza opted to run for a third term in office, a coup attempt failed and the country's parliamentary and presidential elections were broadly criticised by members of the international community.


title: Burundi

text: The sovereign state of Burundi's political system is that of a presidential representative democratic republic based upon a multi-party state. The president of Burundi is the head of state and head of government. There are currently 21 registered parties in Burundi. On 13 March 1992, Tutsi coup leader Pierre Buyoya established a constitution, which provided for a multi-party political process and reflected multi-party competition. Six years later, on 6 June 1998, the constitution was changed, broadening the National Assembly's seats and making provisions for two vice-presidents. Because of the Arusha Accord, Burundi enacted a transitional government in 2000. In October 2016, Burundi informed the UN of its intention to withdraw from the International Criminal Court.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi remains primarily a rural society, with just 13.4% of the population living in urban areas in 2019. The population density of around 315 people per square kilometre (753 per sq mi) is the second highest in Sub-Saharan Africa. Roughly 85% of the population are of Hutu ethnic origin, 15% are Tutsi, and fewer than 1% are indigenous Twa. The official languages of Burundi are Kirundi, French, and English, Kirundi being recognised officially as the sole national language.


title: Burundi

text: One of the smallest countries in Africa, Burundi's land is used mostly for subsistence agriculture and grazing, which has led to deforestation, soil erosion and habitat loss. , the country was almost completely deforested, with less than 6% of its land covered by trees and over half of that being commercial plantations.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi is the poorest country in the world according to gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, with $272 in 2022, and a least developed country, facing widespread poverty, corruption, instability, authoritarianism, and illiteracy.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi is densely populated, and many young people emigrate in search of opportunities elsewhere. The World Happiness Report 2018 ranked the country as the world's least happy with a rank of 156. Burundi is a member of the African Union, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, United Nations and the Non-Aligned Movement.


title: Burundi

text: Modern Burundi is named after the King of Burundi, who ruled the region starting in the 16th century. It may ultimately derive its name from the Ha people of the region, whose place of origin was known as Buha.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi is one of the few countries in Africa, along with its neighbour Rwanda among others (such as Botswana, Lesotho, and Eswatini), to be a direct territorial continuation of a pre-colonial era African state. The early history of Burundi, and especially the role and nature of the country's three dominant ethnic groups, the Twa, Hutu and Tutsi, is highly debated amongst academics. However, it is important to note that the nature of culture and ethnic groups is always fluid and changing. While populations might have migrated to the area at different times and as distinctly different ethnic groups, the current distinctions are considered by some to be socio-cultural constructs. Initially the different ethnic groups lived together in relative peace. The first conflicts between ethnic groups can be dated back to the 17th century, when land was becoming ever more scarce because of the continuous growth in population.


title: Burundi

text: The first evidence of the Burundian state dates back to the late 16th century where it emerged on the eastern foothills. Over the following centuries it expanded, annexing smaller neighbours.


title: Burundi

text: The Kingdom of Burundi, or Urundi, in the Great Lakes region was a polity ruled by a traditional monarch with several princes beneath him; succession struggles were common. The king, known as the "mwami" (translated as ruler) headed a princely aristocracy ("ganwa") which owned most of the land and required a tribute, or tax, from local farmers (mainly Hutu) and herders (mainly Tutsi). The Kingdom of Burundi was characterised by a hierarchical political authority and tributary economic exchange.


title: Burundi

text: In the mid-18th century, the Tutsi royalty consolidated authority over land, production, and distribution with the development of the ubugabire—a patron-client relationship in which the populace received royal protection in exchange for tribute and land tenure. By this time, the royal court was made up of the Tutsi-Banyaruguru. They had higher social status than other pastoralists such as the Tutsi-Hima. In the lower levels of this society were generally Hutu people, and at the very bottom of the pyramid were the Twa. The system had some fluidity, however. Some Hutu people belonged to the nobility and in this way also had a say in the functioning of the state.


title: Burundi

text: The classification of Hutu or Tutsi was not merely based on ethnic criteria alone. Hutu farmers that managed to acquire wealth and livestock were regularly granted the higher social status of Tutsi, some even made it to become close advisors of the "Ganwa". On the other hand, there are also reports of Tutsi that lost all their cattle and subsequently lost their higher status and were called Hutu. Thus, the distinction between Hutu and Tutsi was also a socio-cultural concept, instead of a purely ethnic one. There were also many reports of marriages between Hutu and Tutsi people. In general, regional ties and power struggles played a far more determining role in Burundi's politics than ethnicity.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi ceased to be a monarchy when king Ntare V Ndizeye was deposed by his Prime Minister and Chief of Staff, Capt. Michel Micombero, who abolished the monarchy and declared a republic following the November 1966 coup d'état.


title: Burundi

text: From 1884, the German East Africa Company was active in the African Great Lakes region. As a result of heightened tensions and border disputes between the German East Africa Company, the British Empire and the Sultanate of Zanzibar, the German Empire was called upon to put down the Abushiri revolts and protect the empire's interests in the region. The German East Africa Company transferred its rights to the German Empire in 1891, in this way establishing the German colony of German East Africa, which included Burundi (Urundi), Rwanda (Ruanda), and the mainland part of Tanzania (formerly known as Tanganyika). The German Empire stationed armed forces in Rwanda and Burundi during the late 1880s. The location of the present-day city of Gitega served as an administrative centre for the Ruanda-Urundi region.


title: Burundi

text: During the First World War, the East African Campaign greatly affected the African Great Lakes region. The Belgian and British colonial forces of the allied powers launched a coordinated attack on the German colony. The German army stationed in Burundi was forced to retreat by the numerical superiority of the Belgian army and by 17 June 1916, Burundi and Rwanda were occupied. The Force Publique and the British Lake Force then started a thrust to capture Tabora, an administrative centre of central German East Africa. After the war, as outlined in the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was forced to cede "control" of the Western section of the former German East Africa to Belgium.


title: Burundi

text: On 20 October 1924, Ruanda-Urundi, which consisted of modern-day Rwanda and Burundi, became a Belgian League of Nations mandate territory, with Usumbura as its capital. In practical terms it was considered part of the Belgian colonial empire. Burundi, as part of Ruanda-Urundi, continued its kingship dynasty despite the presence of European authorities.


title: Burundi

text: The Belgians, however, preserved many of the kingdom's institutions; the Burundian monarchy succeeded in surviving into the post-colonial period. Following the Second World War, Ruanda-Urundi was classified as a United Nations Trust Territory under Belgian administrative authority. During the 1940s, a series of policies caused divisions throughout the country. On 4 October 1943, powers were split in the legislative division of Burundi's government between chiefdoms and lower chiefdoms. Chiefdoms were in charge of land, and lower sub-chiefdoms were established. Native authorities also had powers. In 1948, Belgium allowed the region to form political parties. These factions contributed to Burundi gaining its independence from Belgium, on 1 July 1962.


title: Burundi

text: On 20 January 1959, Burundi's ruler Mwami Mwambutsa IV requested Burundi's independence from Belgium and dissolution of the Ruanda-Urundi union. In the following months, Burundian political parties began to advocate for the end of Belgian colonial rule and the separation of Rwanda and Burundi. The first and largest of these political parties was the Union for National Progress (UPRONA).


title: Burundi

text: Burundi's push for independence was influenced by the Rwandan Revolution and the accompanying instability and ethnic conflict that occurred there. As a result of the Rwandan Revolution, many Rwandan Tutsi refugees arrived in Burundi during the period from 1959 to 1961.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi's first elections took place on 8 September 1961 and UPRONA, a multi-ethnic unity party led by Prince Louis Rwagasore won just over 80% of the electorate's votes. In the wake of the elections, on 13 October, the 29-year-old Prince Rwagasore was assassinated, robbing Burundi of its most popular and well-known nationalists.


title: Burundi

text: The country claimed independence on 1 July 1962, and legally changed its name from Ruanda-Urundi to Burundi. Burundi became a constitutional monarchy with Mwami Mwambutsa IV, Prince Rwagasore's father, serving as the country's king. On 18 September 1962 Burundi joined the United Nations.


title: Burundi

text: In 1963, King Mwambutsa appointed a Hutu prime minister, Pierre Ngendandumwe, but he was assassinated on 15 January 1965 by a Rwandan Tutsi employed by the US Embassy. The assassination occurred in the broader context of the Congo Crisis during which Western anti-communist countries were confronting the communist People's Republic of China as it attempted to make Burundi a logistics base for communist insurgents battling in Congo. Parliamentary elections in May 1965 brought a majority of Hutu into the parliament, but when King Mwambutsa appointed a Tutsi prime minister, some Hutu felt this was unjust and ethnic tensions were further increased. In October 1965, an attempted coup d'état led by the Hutu-dominated police was carried out but failed. The Tutsi dominated army, then led by Tutsi officer Captain Michel Micombero purged Hutu from their ranks and carried out reprisal attacks which ultimately claimed the lives of up to 5,000 people in a precursor to the 1972 Burundian Genocide.


title: Burundi

text: King Mwambutsa, who had fled the country during the October coup of 1965, was deposed by a coup in July 1966 and his teenage son, Prince Ntare V, claimed the throne. In November that same year, the Tutsi Prime Minister, then-Captain Michel Micombero, carried out another coup, this time deposing Ntare, abolishing the monarchy and declaring the nation a republic, though his one-party government was effectively a military dictatorship. As president, Micombero became an advocate of African socialism and received support from the People's Republic of China. He imposed a staunch regime of law and order and sharply repressed Hutu militarism.


title: Burundi

text: In late April 1972, two events led to the outbreak of the First Burundian Genocide. On 27 April 1972, a rebellion led by Hutu members of the gendarmerie broke out in the lakeside towns of Rumonge and Nyanza-Lac and the rebels declared the short-lived Martyazo Republic. The rebels attacked both Tutsi and any Hutu who refused to join their rebellion. During this initial Hutu outbreak, anywhere from 800 to 1200 people were killed. At the same time, King Ntare V of Burundi returned from exile, heightening political tension in the country. On 29 April 1972, the 24-year-old Ntare V was murdered. In subsequent months, the Tutsi-dominated government of Michel Micombero used the army to combat Hutu rebels and commit genocide, murdering targeted members of the Hutu majority. The total number of casualties was never established, but contemporary estimates put the number of people killed between 80,000 and 210,000. In addition, several hundred thousand Hutu were estimated to have fled the killings into Zaïre, Rwanda and Tanzania.


title: Burundi

text: Following the civil war and genocide, Micombero became mentally distraught and withdrawn. In 1976, Colonel Jean-Baptiste Bagaza, a Tutsi, led a bloodless coup to topple Micombero and set about promoting reform. His administration drafted a new constitution in 1981, which maintained Burundi's status as a one-party state. In August 1984, Bagaza was elected head of state. During his tenure, Bagaza suppressed political opponents and religious freedoms.


title: Burundi

text: Major Pierre Buyoya (Tutsi) overthrew Bagaza in 1987, suspended the constitution and dissolved political parties. He reinstated military rule by a Military Committee for National Salvation (CSMN). Anti-Tutsi ethnic propaganda disseminated by the remnants of the 1972 UBU, which had re-organized as PALIPEHUTU in 1981, led to killings of Tutsi peasants in the northern communes of Ntega and Marangara in August 1988. The government put the death toll at 5,000; some international NGOs believed this understated the deaths.


title: Burundi

text: The new regime did not unleash the harsh reprisals of 1972. Its effort to gain public trust was eroded when it decreed an amnesty for those who had called for, carried out, and taken credit for the killings. Analysts have called this period the beginning of the "culture of impunity." Other analysts put the origins of the "culture of impunity" earlier, in 1965 and 1972, when a small number of identifiable Hutus unleashed massive killings of Tutsis.


title: Burundi

text: In the aftermath of the killings, a group of Hutu intellectuals wrote an open letter to Pierre Buyoya, asking for more representation of the Hutu in the administration. They were arrested and jailed. A few weeks later, Buyoya appointed a new government, with an equal number of Hutu and Tutsi ministers. He appointed Adrien Sibomana (Hutu) as Prime Minister. Buyoya also created a commission to address issues of national unity. In 1992, the government created a new constitution that provided for a multi-party system, but a civil war broke out.


title: Burundi

text: An estimated total of 250,000 people died in Burundi from the various conflicts between 1962 and 1993.


title: Burundi

text: Since Burundi's independence in 1962, two genocides have taken place in the country: the 1972 mass killings of Hutus by the Tutsi-dominated army, and the mass killings of Tutsis in 1993 by the Hutu majority. Both were described as genocides in the final report of the International Commission of Inquiry for Burundi presented in 2002 to the United Nations Security Council.


title: Burundi

text: In June 1993, Melchior Ndadaye, leader of the Hutu-dominated Front for Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU), won the first democratic election. He became the first Hutu head of state, leading a pro-Hutu government. Though he attempted to smooth the country's bitter ethnic divide, his reforms antagonised soldiers in the Tutsi-dominated army, and he was assassinated amidst a failed military coup in October 1993, after only three months in office. The ensuing Burundian Civil War (1993–2005) saw persistent violence between Hutu rebels and the Tutsi majority army. It is estimated that some 300,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the years following the assassination.


title: Burundi

text: In early 1994, the parliament elected Cyprien Ntaryamira (Hutu) to the office of president. He and Juvénal Habyarimana, the president of Rwanda, both Hutus, died together when their aeroplane was shot down in April 1994. More refugees started fleeing to Rwanda. Speaker of Parliament, Sylvestre Ntibantunganya (Hutu), was appointed as president in October 1994. A coalition government involving 12 of the 13 parties was formed. A feared general massacre was averted, but violence broke out. A number of Hutu refugees in Bujumbura, the then-capital, were killed. The mainly Tutsi Union for National Progress withdrew from the government and parliament.


title: Burundi

text: In 1996, Pierre Buyoya (Tutsi) again took power through a coup d'état. He suspended the constitution and was sworn in as president in 1998. This was the start of his second term as president, after his first term from 1987 to 1993. In response to rebel attacks, the government forced much of the population to move to refugee camps. Under Buyoya's rule, long peace talks started, mediated by South Africa. Both parties signed agreements in Arusha, Tanzania and Pretoria, South Africa, to share power in Burundi. The agreements took four years to plan.


title: Burundi

text: On 28 August 2000, a transitional government for Burundi was planned as a part of the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement. The transitional government was placed on a trial basis for five years. After several aborted cease-fires, a 2001 peace plan and power-sharing agreement has been relatively successful. A cease-fire was signed in 2003 between the Tutsi-controlled Burundian government and the largest Hutu rebel group, CNDD-FDD (National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Forces for the Defense of Democracy).


title: Burundi

text: In 2003, FRODEBU leader Domitien Ndayizeye (Hutu) was elected president. In early 2005, ethnic quotas were formed for determining positions in Burundi's government. Throughout the year, elections for parliament and president occurred.


title: Burundi

text: Pierre Nkurunziza (Hutu), once a leader of a rebel group, was elected president in 2005. , the Burundian government was talking with the Hutu-led Palipehutu-National Liberation Forces (NLF) to bring peace to the country.


title: Burundi

text: African leaders began a series of peace talks between the warring factions following a request by the United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali for them to intervene in the humanitarian crisis. Talks were initiated under the aegis of former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere in 1995; following his death, South African President Nelson Mandela took the helm. As the talks progressed, South African President Thabo Mbeki and United States President Bill Clinton also lent their respective weight.


title: Burundi

text: The peace talks took the form of Track I mediations. This method of negotiation can be defined as a form of diplomacy involving governmental or intergovernmental representatives, who may use their positive reputations, mediation, or the "carrot and stick" method as a means of obtaining or forcing an outcome, frequently along the lines of "bargaining" or "win-lose".


title: Burundi

text: The main objective was to transform the Burundian government and military structurally in order to bridge the ethnic gap between the Tutsi and Hutu. It was to take place in two major steps. First, a transitional power-sharing government would be established, with the presidents holding office for three-year terms. The second objective involved a restructuring of the armed forces, where the two groups would be represented equally.


title: Burundi

text: As the protracted nature of the peace talks demonstrated, the mediators and negotiating parties confronted several obstacles. First, the Burundian officials perceived the goals as "unrealistic" and viewed the treaty as ambiguous, contradictory and confusing. Second, and perhaps most importantly, the Burundians believed the treaty would be irrelevant without an accompanying cease fire. This would require separate and direct talks with the rebel groups. The main Hutu party was skeptical of the offer of a power-sharing government; they alleged that they had been deceived by the Tutsi in past agreements.


title: Burundi

text: In 2000, the Burundian President signed the treaty, as well as 13 of the 19 warring Hutu and Tutsi factions. Disagreements persisted over which group would preside over the nascent government, and when the ceasefire would begin. The spoilers of the peace talks were the hardliner Tutsi and Hutu groups who refused to sign the accord; as a result, violence intensified. Three years later at a summit of African leaders in Tanzania, the Burundian president and the main opposition Hutu group signed an accord to end the conflict; the signatory members were granted ministerial posts within the government. However, smaller militant Hutu groups – such as the Forces for National Liberation – remained active.


title: Burundi

text: Between 1993 and 2003, many rounds of peace talks, overseen by regional leaders in Tanzania, South Africa and Uganda, gradually established power-sharing agreements to satisfy the majority of the contending groups. Initially the South African Protection Support Detachment was deployed to protect Burundian leaders returning from exile. These forces became part of the African Union Mission to Burundi, deployed to help oversee the installation of a transitional government. In June 2004, the UN stepped in and took over peacekeeping responsibilities as a signal of growing international support for the already markedly advanced peace process in Burundi.


title: Burundi

text: The mission's mandate, under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, has been to monitor cease-fire, carry out disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of former military personnel, support humanitarian assistance and refugee and IDP return, assist with elections, protect international staff and Burundian civilians, monitor Burundi's troublesome borders, including halting illicit arms flows, and assist in carrying out institutional reforms including those of the Constitution, judiciary, armed forces and police. The mission has been allotted 5,650 military personnel, 120 civilian police and about 1,000 international and local civilian personnel. The mission has been functioning well. It has greatly benefited from the transitional government, which has functioned and is in the process of transitioning to one that will be popularly elected.


title: Burundi

text: The main difficulty in the early stages was continued resistance to the peace process by the last Hutu nationalist rebel group. This organisation continued its violent conflict on the outskirts of the capital despite the UN's presence. By June 2005, the group had stopped fighting and its representatives were brought back into the political process. All political parties have accepted a formula for inter-ethnic power-sharing: no political party can gain access to government offices unless it is ethnically integrated.


title: Burundi

text: The focus of the UN's mission had been to enshrine the power-sharing arrangements in a popularly voted constitution, so that elections may be held and a new government installed. Disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration were done in tandem with elections preparations. In February 2005, the constitution was approved with over 90% of the popular vote. In May, June and August 2005, three separate elections were also held at the local level for the Parliament and the presidency.


title: Burundi

text: While there are still some difficulties with refugee returns and securing adequate food supplies for the war-weary population, the mission managed to win the trust and confidence of a majority of the formerly warring leaders, as well as the population at large. It was involved with several "quick effect" projects, including rehabilitating and building schools, orphanages, health clinics and rebuilding infrastructure such as water lines.


title: Burundi

text: Reconstruction efforts in Burundi started to practically take effect after 2006. The UN shut down its peacekeeping mission and re-focused on helping with reconstruction. Toward achieving economic reconstruction, Rwanda, D.R.Congo and Burundi relaunched the regional Economic Community of the Great Lakes Countries. In addition, Burundi, along with Rwanda, joined the East African Community in 2007.


title: Burundi

text: However, the terms of the September 2006 Ceasefire between the government and the last remaining armed opposition group, the FLN (Forces for National Liberation, also called NLF or FROLINA), were not totally implemented, and senior FLN members subsequently left the truce monitoring team, claiming that their security was threatened. In September 2007, rival FLN factions clashed in the capital, killing 20 fighters and causing residents to begin fleeing. Rebel raids were reported in other parts of the country. The rebel factions disagreed with the government over disarmament and the release of political prisoners. In late 2007 and early 2008, FLN combatants attacked government-protected camps where former combatants were living. The homes of rural residents were also pillaged.


title: Burundi

text: The 2007 report of Amnesty International mentions many areas where improvement is required. Civilians are victims of repeated acts of violence done by the FLN. The latter also recruits child soldiers. The rate of violence against women is high. Perpetrators regularly escape prosecution and punishment by the state. There is an urgent need for reform of the judicial system. Genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity continued to go unpunished.


title: Burundi

text: In late March 2008, the FLN sought for the parliament to adopt a law guaranteeing them 'provisional immunity' from arrest. This would cover ordinary crimes, but not grave violations of international humanitarian law like war crimes or crimes against humanity . Even though the government has granted this in the past to people, the FLN has been unable to obtain the provisional immunity.


title: Burundi

text: On 17 April 2008, the FLN bombarded Bujumbura. The Burundian army fought back and the FLN suffered heavy losses. A new ceasefire was signed on 26 May 2008. In August 2008, President Nkurunziza met with the FLN leader Agathon Rwasa, with the mediation of Charles Nqakula, South Africa's Minister for Safety and Security. This was the first direct meeting since June 2007. Both agreed to meet twice a week to establish a commission to resolve any disputes that might arise during the peace negotiations.


title: Burundi

text: The UN has attempted to evaluate the impact of its peace-building initiatives. In the early 2010s, the UN peacekeeping mission in Burundi sought to assess the success of its Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration program by counting the number of arms that had been collected, given the prevalence of arms in the country. However, these evaluations failed to include date from local populations, which are significant in impact evaluations of peacebuilding initiatives.


title: Burundi

text: As of 2012, Burundi was participating in African Union peacekeeping missions, including the mission to Somalia against Al-Shabaab militants. In 2014, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established, initially for four years and then extended for another four in 2018.


title: Burundi

text: In April 2015 protests broke out after the ruling party announced President Pierre Nkurunziza would seek a third term in office. Protestors claimed Nkurunziza could not run for a third term in office but the country's constitutional court agreed with Nkurunziza (although some of its members had fled the country at the time of its vote).


title: Burundi

text: Despite calls by the United Nations, the African Union, the United States, France, South Africa, Belgium, and various other governments, the ruling party held parliamentary elections on 29 June, but these were boycotted by the opposition.


title: Burundi

text: On 30 September 2016, the United Nations Human Rights Council established the Commission of Inquiry on Burundi through resolution 33/24. Its mandate is to "conduct a thorough investigation into human rights violations and abuses committed in Burundi since April 2015, to identify alleged perpetrators and to formulate recommendations." On 29 September 2017 the Commission of Inquiry on Burundi called on Burundian government to put an end to serious human rights violations. It further stressed that, "The Burundian government has so far refused to cooperate with the Commission of Inquiry, despite the Commission's repeated requests and initiatives." The violations the Commission documented include arbitrary arrests and detentions, acts of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, rape and other forms of sexual violence."


title: Burundi

text: In a constitutional referendum in May 2018, Burundians voted by 79.08% to approve an amended constitution that ensured that Nkurunziza could remain in power until 2034. However, much to the surprise of most observers, Nkurunziza later announced that he did not intend to serve another term, paving the way for a new president to be elected in the 2020 general election.


title: Burundi

text: On 20 May 2020, Evariste Ndayishimiye, a candidate who was hand-picked as Nkurunziza's successor by the CNDD-FDD, won the election with 71.45% of the vote. Shortly after, on 9 June 2020, Nkurunziza died of a cardiac arrest, at the age of 55. There was some speculation that his death was COVID-19 related, though this is unconfirmed. As per the constitution, Pascal Nyabenda, the president of the national assembly, led the government until Ndayishimiye's inauguration on 18 June 2020.


title: Burundi

text: Currently, Burundi remains as one of the poorest nations on Earth, based on a Gross National Income (GNI) of $270 per capita.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi's political system is that of a presidential representative democratic republic based upon a multi-party state. The president of Burundi is the head of state and head of government. There are currently 21 registered parties in Burundi. On 13 March 1992, Tutsi coup leader Pierre Buyoya established a constitution, which provided for a multi-party political process and reflected multi-party competition. Six years later, on 6 June 1998, the constitution was changed, broadening National Assembly's seats and making provisions for two vice-presidents. Because of the Arusha Accord, Burundi enacted a transitional government in 2000.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi's legislative branch is a bicameral assembly, consisting of the Transitional National Assembly and the Transitional Senate. , the Transitional National Assembly consisted of 170 members, with the Front for Democracy in Burundi holding 38% of seats, and 10% of the assembly controlled by UPRONA. Fifty-two seats were controlled by other parties. Burundi's constitution mandates representation in the Transitional National Assembly to be consistent with 60% Hutu, 40% Tutsi, and 30% female members, as well as three Batwa members. Members of the National Assembly are elected by popular vote and serve five-year terms.


title: Burundi

text: The Transitional Senate has fifty-one members, and three seats are reserved for former presidents. Due to stipulations in Burundi's constitution, 30% of Senate members must be female. Members of the Senate are elected by electoral colleges, which consist of members from each of Burundi's provinces and communes. For each of Burundi's eighteen provinces, one Hutu and one Tutsi senator are chosen. One term for the Transitional Senate is five years.


title: Burundi

text: Together, Burundi's legislative branch elect the president to a five-year term. Burundi's president appoints officials to his Council of Ministers, which is also part of the executive branch. The president can also pick fourteen members of the Transitional Senate to serve on the Council of Ministers. Members of the Council of Ministers must be approved by two-thirds of Burundi's legislature. The president also chooses two vice-presidents. Following the 2015 election, the president of Burundi was Pierre Nkurunziza. The first vice-president was Therence Sinunguruza, and the Second Vice-president was Gervais Rufyikiri.


title: Burundi

text: On 20 May 2020, Evariste Ndayishimiye, a candidate who was hand-picked as Nkurunziza's successor by the CNDD-FDD, won the election with 71.45% of the vote. Shortly after, on 9 June 2020, Nkurunziza died of a cardiac arrest, at the age of 55. As per the constitution, Pascal Nyabenda, the president of the national assembly, led the government until Ndayishimiye's inauguration on 18 June 2020.


title: Burundi

text: The "Cour Suprême" (Supreme Court) is Burundi's highest court. There are three Courts of Appeals directly below the Supreme Court. Tribunals of First Instance are used as judicial courts in each of Burundi's provinces as well as 123 local tribunals.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi's government has been repeatedly criticised by human rights organisations including Human Rights Watch for the multiple arrests and trials of journalist Jean-Claude Kavumbagu for issues related to his reporting. Amnesty International (AI) named him a prisoner of conscience and called for his "immediate and unconditional release."


title: Burundi

text: In April 2009, the government of Burundi changed the law to criminalise homosexuality. Persons found guilty of consensual same-sex relations risk two to three years in prison and a fine of 50,000 to 100,000 Burundian francs. Amnesty International has condemned the action, calling it a violation of Burundi's obligations under international and regional human rights law, and against the constitution, which guarantees the right to privacy.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi officially left the International Criminal Court (ICC) on 27 October 2017, the first country in the world to do so. The move came after the UN accused the country of various crimes and human rights violations, such as extrajudicial killings, torture and sexual violence, in a September 2017 report. The ICC announced on 9 November 2017 that human rights violations from the time Burundi was a member would still be prosecuted.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi is divided into 18 provinces, 119 communes, and 2,638 collines (hills). Provincial governments are structured upon these boundaries.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi’s provinces and communes were created on Christmas Day in 1959 by a Belgian colonial decree. They replaced the pre-existing system of chieftains.


title: Burundi

text: In 2000, the province encompassing Bujumbura was separated into two provinces, Bujumbura Rural and Bujumbura Mairie. The newest province, Rumonge, was created on 26 March 2015 from portions of Bujumbura Rural and Bururi.


title: Burundi

text: In July 2022, the government of Burundi announced a complete overhaul of the country’s territorial subdivisions. The proposed change would reduce the amounts of provinces from 18 to 5, and reduce the amount of communes from 119 to 42. The change needs the approval of the parliament of Burundi to take effect.


title: Burundi

text: One of the smallest countries in Africa, Burundi is landlocked and has an equatorial climate. Burundi is a part of the Albertine Rift, the western extension of the East African Rift. The country lies on a rolling plateau in the centre of Africa. Burundi is bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and southeast, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. It lies within the Albertine Rift montane forests, Central Zambezian miombo woodlands, and Victoria Basin forest-savanna mosaic ecoregions.


title: Burundi

text: The average elevation of the central plateau is , with lower elevations at the borders. The highest peak, Mount Heha at , lies to the southeast of the largest city and economic capital, Bujumbura. The source of the Nile River is in Bururi province, and is linked from Lake Victoria to its headwaters via the Ruvyironza River. Lake Victoria is also an important water source, which serves as a fork to the Kagera River. Another major lake is Lake Tanganyika, located in much of Burundi's southwestern corner.


title: Burundi

text: There are two national parks: Kibira National Park to the northwest (a small region of rainforest, adjacent to Nyungwe Forest National Park in Rwanda), and Ruvubu National Park to the northeast (along the Rurubu River, also known as Ruvubu or Ruvuvu). Both were established in 1982 to conserve wildlife populations.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi is a landlocked, resource-poor country with an underdeveloped manufacturing sector. The economy is predominantly agricultural, accounting for 50% of GDP in 2017 and employing more than 90% of the population. Subsistence agriculture accounts for 90% of agriculture. Burundi's primary exports are coffee and tea, which account for 90% of foreign exchange earnings, though exports are a relatively small share of GDP. Other agricultural products include cotton, tea, maize, sorghum, sweet potatoes, bananas, manioc (tapioca); beef, milk and hides. Even though subsistence farming is highly relied upon, many people do not have the resources to sustain themselves. This is due to large population growth and no coherent policies governing land ownership. In 2014, the average farm size was about one acre.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi is one of the world's poorest countries, owing in part to its landlocked geography, lack of access to education and the proliferation of HIV/AIDS. Approximately 80% of Burundi's population lives in poverty. Famines and food shortages have occurred throughout Burundi, most notably in the 20th century, and according to the World Food Programme, 56.8% of children under age five suffer from chronic malnutrition. Burundi's export earnings – and its ability to pay for imports – rests primarily on weather conditions and international coffee and tea prices.


title: Burundi

text: The purchasing power of most Burundians has decreased as wage increases have not kept up with inflation. As a result of deepening poverty, Burundi will remain heavily dependent on aid from bilateral and multilateral donors. Foreign aid represents 42% of Burundis national income, the second highest rate in Sub-Saharan Africa. Burundi joined the East African Community in 2009, which should boost its regional trade ties, and also in 2009 received $700 million in debt relief. Government corruption is hindering the development of a healthy private sector as companies seek to navigate an environment with ever-changing rules.


title: Burundi

text: Studies since 2007 have shown Burundians to have extremely poor levels of satisfaction with life; the World Happiness Report 2018 rated them the world's least happy in 2018.


title: Burundi

text: Some of Burundi's natural resources include uranium, nickel, cobalt, copper and platinum. Besides agriculture, other industries include: assembly of imported components; public works construction; food processing and light consumer goods such as blankets, shoes and soap.


title: Burundi

text: In regards to telecommunications infrastructure, Burundi is ranked second to last in the World Economic Forum's Network Readiness Index (NRI) – an indicator for determining the development level of a country's information and communication technologies. Burundi ranked number 147 overall in the 2014 NRI ranking, down from 144 in 2013.


title: Burundi

text: Lack of access to financial services is a serious problem for the majority of the population, particularly in the densely populated rural areas: only 2% of the total population holds bank accounts, and fewer than 0.5% use bank lending services. Microfinance, however, plays a larger role, with 4% of Burundians being members of microfinance institutions – a larger share of the population than that reached by banking and postal services combined. 26 licensed microfinance institutions (MFIs) offer savings, deposits and short- to medium-term credit. Dependence of the sector on donor assistance is limited.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi is part of the East African Community and a potential member of the planned East African Federation. Economic growth in Burundi is relatively steady but Burundi is still behind neighbouring countries.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi's currency is the Burundian franc (ISO 4217 code BIF). It is nominally subdivided into 100 centimes, though coins have never been issued in centimes in independent Burundi; centime coins were circulated only when Burundi used the Belgian Congo franc.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi's transport network is limited and underdeveloped. According to a 2012 "DHL Global Connectedness Index", Burundi is the least globalised of 140 surveyed countries. Bujumbura International Airport is the only airport with a paved runway and as of May 2017 it was serviced by four airlines (Brussels Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines, Kenya Airways and RwandAir). Kigali is the city with the most daily flight connections to Bujumbura. The country has a road network but less than 10% of the country's roads were paved and private bus companies were the main operators of buses on the international route to Kigali; however, there were no bus connections to the other neighbouring countries (Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo). Bujumbura is connected by a passenger and cargo ferry (the MV Mwongozo) to Kigoma in Tanzania. There is a long-term plan to link the country via rail to Kigali and then onward to Kampala and Kenya.


title: Burundi

text: As of October 2021, Burundi was estimated by the United Nations to have a population of 12,346,893 people, compared to only 2,456,000 in 1950. The population growth rate is 2.5 percent per year, more than double the average global pace, and a Burundian woman has on average 5.10 children, more than double the international fertility rate. Burundi had the tenth highest total fertility rate in the world, just behind Somalia, in 2021.


title: Burundi

text: Many Burundians have migrated to other countries as a result of the civil war. In 2006, the United States accepted approximately 10,000 Burundian refugees.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi remains an overwhelmingly rural society, with just 13% of the population living in urban areas in 2013. The population density of around 315 people per square kilometre (753 per sq mi) is the second highest in Sub-Saharan Africa. Roughly 85% of the population are of Hutu ethnic origin, 15% are Tutsi and fewer than 1% are indigenous Twa.


title: Burundi

text: The official languages of Burundi are Kirundi, French, and English, the latter having been made an additional official language in 2014.


title: Burundi

text: Sources estimate the Christian population at 80–90%, with Roman Catholics representing the largest group at 60–65%. Protestant and Anglican practitioners constitute the remaining 15–25%. An estimated 5% of the population adheres to traditional indigenous religious beliefs. Muslims constitute 2–5%, the majority of whom are Sunnis and live in urban areas.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi has the worst hunger and malnourishment rates of all 120 countries ranked in the Global Hunger Index. The civil war in 1962 put a stop on the medical advancements in the country. Burundi, again, went into a violent cycle in 2015, jeopardising the citizens of Burundi's medical care. Like many Sub-Saharan Africa countries, Burundi uses indigenous medicine in addition to biomedicine. In the 1980s Burundi's health authorities asked the United Nations Development Program for support to develop quality control and begin new research on pharmaceuticals from medicinal plants. At the same time, the Burundi Association of Traditional Practitioners (ATRADIBU) was founded, which teamed up with the governments agency to set up the Centre for Research and Promotion of Traditional Medicine in Burundi (CRPMT). The recent influx of international aid has supported the work of biomedical health systems in Burundi. However, international aid workers have traditionally stayed away from indigenous medicine in Burundi. As of 2015, roughly 1 out of 10 children in Burundi die before the age of 5 from preventable and treatable illnesses such as pneumonia, diarrhoea, and malaria. The current violence in Burundi has limited the country's access to medication and hospital equipment. Burundi's life expectancy, as of 2015, was 60.1 years. In 2013, Burundi spent 8% of their GDP on healthcare. While Burundi's fertility rate is 6.1 children per women, the country's mortality rate is 61.9 deaths for every 1,000 live births. According to the WHO, the average life expectancy in the country is 58/62 years. Common diseases in Burundi include malaria and typhoid fever.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi's culture is based on local tradition and the influence of neighbouring countries, though cultural prominence has been hindered by civil unrest. Since farming is the main industry, a typical Burundian meal consists of sweet potatoes, corn, rice and peas. Due to the expense, meat is eaten only a few times per month.


title: Burundi

text: When several Burundians of close acquaintance meet for a gathering they drink "impeke", a beer, together from a large container to symbolise unity.


title: Burundi

text: Notable Burundians include the footballer Mohammed Tchité and singer Jean-Pierre Nimbona, popularly known as Kidumu (who is based in Nairobi, Kenya).


title: Burundi

text: Crafts are an important art form in Burundi and are attractive gifts to many tourists. Basket weaving is a popular craft for local artisans. Other crafts such as masks, shields, statues and pottery are made in Burundi.


title: Burundi

text: Drumming is an important part of the cultural heritage. The world-famous Royal Drummers of Burundi, who have performed for over 40 years, are noted for traditional drumming using the karyenda, amashako, ibishikiso and ikiranya drums. Dance often accompanies drumming performance, which is frequently seen in celebrations and family gatherings. The abatimbo, which is performed at official ceremonies and rituals and the fast-paced abanyagasimbo are some famous Burundian dances. Some musical instruments of note are the flute, zither, ikembe, indonongo, umuduri, inanga and the inyagara.


title: Burundi

text: The country's oral tradition is strong, relaying history and life lessons through storytelling, poetry and song. Imigani, indirimbo, amazina and ivyivugo are literary genres in Burundi.


title: Burundi

text: Basketball and track and field are noted sports. Martial arts are popular, as well. There are five major judo clubs: Club Judo de l'Entente Sportive, in Downtown, and four others throughout the city. Association football is a popular pastime throughout the country, as are mancala games.


title: Burundi

text: Most Christian holidays are celebrated, with Christmas being the largest. Burundian Independence Day is celebrated annually on 1 July. In 2005, the Burundian government declared Eid al-Fitr, an Islamic holiday, to be a public holiday.


title: Burundi

text: In 2009, the adult literacy rate in Burundi was estimated to be 67% (73% male and 61% female), with a literacy rate of 77% and 76%, respectively, for men and women between the ages of 15 to 24. By 2015, this had increased to 85.6% (88.2% male and 83.1% female). Literacy among adult women has increased by 17% since 2002. Burundi's literacy rate is relatively low due to low school attendance and because literacy in Kirundi only provides access to materials printed in that language, though it is higher than many other African countries. Ten percent of Burundian boys are allowed a secondary education.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi has one public university, University of Burundi. There are museums in the cities, such as the Burundi Geological Museum in Bujumbura and the Burundi National Museum and the Burundi Museum of Life in Gitega.


title: Burundi

text: In 2010 a new elementary school was opened in the small village of Rwoga that is funded by the pupils of Westwood High School, Quebec, Canada.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi's "Strategic Plan for Science, Technology, Research and Innovation" (2013) covers the following areas: food technology; medical sciences; energy, mining and transportation; water; desertification; environmental biotechnology and indigenous knowledge; materials science; engineering and industry; ICTs; space sciences; mathematical sciences; and social and human sciences.


title: Burundi

text: With regard to material sciences, Burundi's publication intensity doubled from 0.6 to 1.2 articles per million inhabitants between 2012 and 2019, placing it in the top 15 for sub-Saharan Africa for this strategic technology.


title: Burundi

text: Medical sciences remain the main focus of research: medical researchers accounted for 4% of the country's scientists in 2018 but 41% of scientific publications between 2011 and 2019.


title: Burundi

text: The focus of the "Strategic Plan for Science, Technology, Research and Innovation" (2013) has been on developing an institutional framework and infrastructure, fostering greater regional and international co-operation and placing science in society. In October 2014, the EAC Secretariat designated the National Institute of Public Health a centre of excellence. Data are unavailable on output on nutritional sciences, the institute's area of specialization, but between 2011 and 2019, Burundi scientists produced seven articles on each of HIV and tropical communicable diseases and a further five on tuberculosis, all focus areas for the Sustainable Development Goals.


title: Burundi

text: The "Strategic Plan" has also focused on training researchers. Researcher density (in head counts) grew from 40 to 55 researchers per million inhabitants between 2011 and 2018. The amount of funding available to each researcher more than doubled from PPP$14,310 (constant 2005 values) to PPP$22,480, since the domestic research effort has also risen since 2012, from 0.11% to 0.21% of GDP.


title: Burundi

text: Burundi has almost tripled its scientific output since 2011 but the pace has not picked up since the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. With six scientific publications per million inhabitants, Burundi still has one of the lowest publication rate in Central and East Africa. Some 97.5% of publications involved foreign co-authorship between 2017 and 2019, with Ugandans figuring among the top five partners.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The Iranian Revolution (, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution (), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and the replacement of his government with an Islamic republic under the rule of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a leader of one of the factions in the revolt. The revolution was supported by various leftist and Islamist organizations.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: After the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, Pahlavi had aligned with the United States and the Western Bloc to rule more firmly as an authoritarian monarch. He relied heavily on support from the United States to hold on to power which he held for a further 26 years. This led to the 1963 White Revolution and the arrest and exile of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1964. Amidst massive tensions between Khomeini and the Shah, demonstrations began in October 1977, developing into a campaign of civil resistance that included both secular and religious elements. The protests rapidly intensified in 1978 as a result of the burning of Rex Cinema which was seen as the trigger of the revolution, and between August and December that year, strikes and demonstrations paralyzed the country.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: On 16 January 1979, the Shah left Iran and went into exile as the last Persian monarch, leaving his duties to a regency council and Shapour Bakhtiar, who was an opposition-based prime minister. Ayatollah Khomeini was invited back to Iran by the government, and returned to Tehran to a greeting by several thousand Iranians. The royal reign collapsed shortly after, on 11 February, when guerrillas and rebel troops overwhelmed troops loyal to the Shah in armed street fighting, bringing Khomeini to official power. Iranian people voted in a national referendum to become an Islamic republic on 1 April 1979 and to formulate and approve a new theocratic-republican constitution whereby Khomeini became supreme leader of the country in December 1979.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The revolution was unusual for the surprise it created throughout the world. It lacked many of the customary causes of revolution (defeat in war, a financial crisis, peasant rebellion, or disgruntled military); occurred in a nation that was experiencing relative prosperity; produced profound change at great speed; was massively popular; resulted in the exile of many Iranians; and replaced a pro-Western secular authoritarian monarchy with an anti-Western Islamist theocracy based on the concept of "velayat-e faqih" (or Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists) straddling between authoritarianism and totalitarianism. In addition to these, the revolution sought a region-wide Shia revival, and an uprooting of the existent dominant Arab Sunni hegemony in the Middle East; this has brought Iran into conflict with Saudi Arabia, and the two countries are fighting a proxy conflict for influence in the Middle East and the wider Muslim world.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Reasons advanced for the revolution and its populist, nationalist, and later Shia Islamic character include:


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The Shah's regime was seen as an oppressive, brutal, corrupt and lavish regime by some of the society's classes at that time. It also suffered from some basic functional failures that brought economic bottlenecks, shortages, and inflation. The Shah was perceived by many as beholden to—if not a puppet of—a non-Muslim Western power (i.e., the United States) whose culture was affecting that of Iran. At the same time, support for the Shah may have waned among Western politicians and media—especially under the administration of U.S. President Jimmy Carter—as a result of the Shah's support for OPEC petroleum price increases earlier in the decade. When President Carter enacted a human-rights policy which said that countries guilty of human-rights violations would be deprived of American arms or aid, this helped give some Iranians the courage to post open letters and petitions in the hope that the repression by the government might subside.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The revolution that substituted the monarchy of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi with Islam and Khomeini is credited in part to the spread of the Shi'a version of the Islamic revival. It resisted westernization and saw Ayatollah Khomeini as following in the footsteps of the Shi'a Imam Husayn ibn Ali, with the Shah playing the role of Husayn's foe, the hated tyrant Yazid I. Other factors include the underestimation of Khomeini's Islamist movement by both the Shah's reign—who considered them a minor threat compared to the Marxists and Islamic socialists—and by the secularist opponents of the government—who thought the Khomeinists could be sidelined.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: At the end of the 19th century, the Shi'a clergy ("ulama") had a significant influence on Iranian society. The clergy first showed itself to be a powerful political force in opposition to the monarchy with the 1891 Tobacco Protest. On 20 March 1890, the long-standing Iranian monarch Nasir al-Din Shah granted a concession to British Major G. F. Talbot for a full monopoly over the production, sale, and export of tobacco for 50 years.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: At the time, the Persian tobacco industry employed over 200,000 people, so the concession represented a major blow to Persian farmers and bazaaris whose livelihoods were largely dependent on the lucrative tobacco business. The boycotts and protests against it were widespread and extensive as result of Mirza Hasan Shirazi's "fatwa" (judicial decree). Within 2 years, Nasir al-Din Shah found himself powerless to stop the popular movement and cancelled the concession.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The Tobacco Protest was the first significant Iranian resistance against the Shah and foreign interests, revealing the power of the people and the "ulama" influence among them.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The growing dissatisfaction continued until the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1911. The revolution led to the establishment of a parliament, the National Consultative Assembly (also known as the "Majlis"), and approval of the first constitution. Although the constitutional revolution was successful in weakening the autocracy of the Qajar regime, it failed to provide a powerful alternative government. Therefore, in the decades following the establishment of the new parliament, a number of critical events took place. Many of these events can be viewed as a continuation of the struggle between the constitutionalists and the Shahs of Persia, many of whom were backed by foreign powers against the parliament.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Insecurity and chaos created after the Constitutional Revolution led to the rise of General Reza Khan, the commander of the elite Persian Cossack Brigade who seized power in a "coup d'état" in February 1921. He established a constitutional monarchy, deposing the last Qajar Shah, Ahmed Shah, in 1925 and being designated monarch by the National Assembly, to be known thenceforth as Reza Shah, founder of the Pahlavi dynasty.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: There were widespread social, economic, and political reforms introduced during his reign, a number of which led to public discontent that would provide the circumstances for the Iranian Revolution. Particularly controversial was the replacement of Islamic laws with Western ones and the forbidding of traditional Islamic clothing, separation of the sexes, and veiling of women's faces with the niqab. Police forcibly removed and tore chadors off women who resisted his ban on the public hijab.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: In 1935, dozens were killed and hundreds injured in the Goharshad Mosque rebellion. On the other hand, during the early rise of Reza Shah, Abdul-Karim Ha'eri Yazdi founded the Qom Seminary and created important changes in seminaries. However, he would avoid entering into political issues, as did other religious leaders who followed him. Hence, no widespread anti-government attempts were organized by clergy during the rule of Reza Shah. However, the future Ayatollah Khomeini was a student of Sheikh Abdul Karim Ha'eri.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: From 1901 on, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1931), a British oil company, enjoyed a monopoly on sale and production of Iranian oil. It was the most profitable British business in the world. Most Iranians lived in poverty while the wealth generated from Iranian oil played a decisive role in maintaining Britain at the top of the world. In 1951, Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh pledged to throw the company out of Iran, reclaim the petroleum reserves and free Iran from foreign powers.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: In 1952, Mosaddegh nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and became a national hero. The British, however, were outraged and accused him of stealing. The British unsuccessfully sought punishment from the World Court and the United Nations, sent warships to the Persian Gulf, and finally imposed a crushing embargo. Mosaddegh was unmoved by Britain's campaign against him. One European newspaper, the "Frankfurter Neue Presse", reported that Mosaddegh "would rather be fried in Persian oil than make the slightest concession to the British." The British considered an armed invasion, but UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill decided on a coup after being refused American military support by U.S. President Harry S. Truman, who sympathized with nationalist movements like Mosaddegh's and had nothing but contempt for old-style imperialists like those who ran the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Mosaddegh, however, learned of Churchill's plans and ordered the British embassy to be closed in October 1952, forcing all British diplomats and agents to leave the country.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Although the British were initially turned down in their request for American support by President Truman, the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower as U.S. president in November 1952 changed the American stance toward the conflict. On 20 January 1953, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, C.I.A. Director Allen Dulles, told their British counterparts that they were ready to move against Mosaddegh. In their eyes, any country not decisively allied with the United States was a potential enemy. Iran had immense oil wealth, a long border with the Soviet Union, and a nationalist prime minister. The prospect of a fall into communism and a "second China" (after Mao Zedong won the Chinese Civil War) terrified the Dulles brothers. Operation Ajax was born, in which the only democratic government Iran ever had was deposed.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: In 1941, an invasion of allied British and Soviet troops deposed Reza Shah, who was considered friendly to Nazi Germany, and installed his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as Shah. In 1953, following the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry by the democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, American and British forces instituted a highly effective embargo of Iranian oil, and covertly destabilized the legislature and helped return control to their ally, Pahlavi. The American ""Operation Ajax"", orchestrated by the CIA, was aided by the British MI6 in organizing a military coup d'état to oust Mossadegh. The Shah fled to Italy when the initial coup attempt on August 15 failed, but returned after a successful second attempt on August 19.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Pahlavi maintained a close relationship with the U.S. government, as both regimes shared opposition to the expansion of the Soviet Union, Iran's powerful northern neighbor. Like his father, the Shah's government was known for its autocracy, its focus on modernization and Westernization, and for its disregard for religious and democratic measures in Iran's constitution. Leftist and Islamist groups attacked his government (often from outside Iran as they were suppressed within) for violating the Iranian constitution, political corruption, and the political oppression, torture, and killings, by the SAVAK secret police.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The White Revolution was a far-reaching series of reforms in Iran launched in 1963 by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and lasted until 1978. Mohammad Reza Shah's reform program was built especially to weaken those classes that supported the traditional system. It consisted of several elements including land reform; sales of some state-owned factories to finance the land reform; the enfranchisement of women; nationalization of forests and pastures; formation of a literacy corps; and the institution of profit-sharing schemes for workers in industry.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The Shah advertised the White Revolution as a step towards westernization, and it was a way for him to legitimize the Pahlavi dynasty. Part of the reason for launching the White Revolution was that the Shah hoped to get rid of the influence of landlords and to create a new base of support among the peasants and working class. Thus, the White Revolution in Iran was an attempt to introduce reform from above and preserve traditional power patterns. Through land reform, the essence of the White Revolution, the Shah hoped to ally himself with the peasantry in the countryside, and hoped to sever their ties with the aristocracy in the city.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: What the Shah did not expect, however, was that the White Revolution led to new social tensions that helped create many of the problems the Shah had been trying to avoid. The Shah's reforms more than quadrupled the combined size of the two classes that had posed the most challenges to his monarchy in the past—the intelligentsia and the urban working class. Their resentment towards the Shah also grew as they were now stripped of organizations that had represented them in the past, such as political parties, professional associations, trade unions, and independent newspapers. The land reform, instead of allying the peasants with the government, produced large numbers of independent farmers and landless laborers who became loose political cannons, with no feeling of loyalty to the Shah. Many of the masses felt resentment towards the increasingly corrupt government; their loyalty to the clergy, who were seen as more concerned with the fate of the populace, remained consistent or increased. As Ervand Abrahamian pointed out: "The White Revolution had been designed to preempt a Red Revolution. Instead, it paved the way for an Islamic Revolution." The White Revolution's economic "trickle-down" strategy also did not work as intended. In theory, oil money funneled to the elite was supposed to be used to create jobs and factories, eventually distributing the money, but instead the wealth tended to get stuck at the top and concentrated in the hands of the very few.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The post-revolutionary leader—Shia cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini—first came to political prominence in 1963 when he led opposition to the Shah and his White Revolution. Khomeini was arrested in 1963 after declaring the Shah a "wretched miserable man" who had "embarked on the [path toward] destruction of Islam in Iran." Three days of major riots throughout Iran followed, with 15,000 dead from police fire as reported by opposition sources. However, anti-revolutionary sources conjectured that just 32 were killed.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Khomeini was released after eight months of house arrest and continued his agitation, condemning Iran's close cooperation with Israel and its capitulations, or extension of diplomatic immunity, to American government personnel in Iran. In November 1964, Khomeini was re-arrested and sent into exile where he remained for 15 years (mostly in Najaf, Iraq), until the revolution.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: In this interim period of "disaffected calm," the budding Iranian revival began to undermine the idea of Westernization as progress that was the basis of the Shah's secular reign, and to form the ideology of the 1979 revolution: Jalal Al-e-Ahmad's idea of "Gharbzadegi"—that Western culture was a plague or an intoxication to be eliminated; Ali Shariati's vision of Islam as the one true liberator of the Third World from oppressive colonialism, neo-colonialism, and capitalism; and Morteza Motahhari's popularized retellings of the Shia faith all spread and gained listeners, readers and supporters.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Most importantly, Khomeini preached that revolt, and especially martyrdom, against injustice and tyranny was part of Shia Islam, and that Muslims should reject the influence of both liberal capitalism and communism, ideas that inspired the revolutionary slogan "Neither East, nor West – Islamic Republic!"


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Away from public view, Khomeini developed the ideology of "" (guardianship of the jurist) as government, that Muslims—in fact everyone—required "guardianship," in the form of rule or supervision by the leading Islamic jurist or jurists. Such rule was ultimately "more necessary even than prayer and fasting" in Islam, as it would protect Islam from deviation from traditional "sharia" law and in so doing eliminate poverty, injustice, and the "plundering" of Muslim land by foreign non-believers.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: This idea of rule by Islamic jurists was spread through his book "", mosque sermons, and smuggled cassette speeches by Khomeini among his opposition network of students ("talabeh"), ex-students (able clerics such as Morteza Motahhari, Mohammad Beheshti, Mohammad-Javad Bahonar, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Mohammad Mofatteh), and traditional businessmen ("bazaari") inside Iran.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Other opposition groups included constitutionalist liberals—the democratic, reformist Islamic Freedom Movement of Iran, headed by Mehdi Bazargan, and the more secular National Front. They were based in the urban middle class, and wanted the Shah to adhere to the Iranian Constitution of 1906 rather than to replace him with a theocracy, but lacked the cohesion and organization of Khomeini's forces.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Communist groups—primarily the Tudeh Party of Iran and the Fedaian guerrillas—had been weakened considerably by government repression. Despite this the guerrillas did help play an important part in the final February 1979 overthrow delivering "the regime its coup de grace." The most powerful guerrilla group—the People's Mujahedin—was leftist Islamist and opposed the influence of the clergy as reactionary.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Some important clergy did not follow Khomeini's lead. Popular ayatollah Mahmoud Taleghani supported the left, while perhaps the most senior and influential ayatollah in Iran—Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari—first remained aloof from politics and then came out in support of a democratic revolution.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Khomeini worked to unite this opposition behind him (except for the unwanted 'atheistic Marxists'), focusing on the socio-economic problems of the Shah's government (corruption and unequal income and development), while avoiding specifics among the public that might divide the factions—particularly his plan for , which he believed most Iranians had become prejudiced against as a result of propaganda campaign by Western imperialists.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: In the post-Shah era, some revolutionaries who clashed with his theocracy and were suppressed by his movement complained of deception, but in the meantime anti-Shah unity was maintained.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The 1971 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire at Persepolis, organized by the government, was attacked for its extravagance. "As the foreigners reveled on drink forbidden by Islam, Iranians were not only excluded from the festivities, some were starving." Five years later, the Shah angered pious Iranian Muslims by changing the first year of the Iranian solar calendar from the Islamic "hijri" to the ascension to the throne by Cyrus the Great. "Iran jumped overnight from the Muslim year 1355 to the royalist year 2535."


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The oil boom of the 1970s produced an "alarming" increase in inflation, waste and an "accelerating gap" between the rich and poor, the city and the country, along with the presence of tens of thousands of unpopular skilled foreign workers. Many Iranians were also angered by the fact that the Shah's family was the foremost beneficiary of the income generated by oil, and the line between state earnings and family earnings blurred. By 1976, the Shah had accumulated upward of $1 billion from oil revenue; his family – including 63 princes and princesses had accumulated between $5 and $20 billion; and the family foundation controlled approximately $3 billion. By mid-1977 economic austerity measures to fight inflation disproportionately affected the thousands of poor and unskilled male migrants settling in the cities working in the construction industry. Culturally and religiously conservative, many went on to form the core of the revolution's demonstrators and "martyrs".


title: Iranian Revolution

text: All Iranians were required to join and pay dues to a new political party, the "Ḥezb-e Rastakhiz" party—all other parties were banned. That party's attempt to fight inflation with populist "anti-profiteering" campaigns—fining and jailing merchants for high prices – angered and politicized merchants while fueling black markets.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: In 1977 the Shah responded to the "polite reminder" of the importance of political rights by the new American president, Jimmy Carter, by granting amnesty to some prisoners and allowing the Red Cross to visit prisons. Through 1977 liberal opposition formed organizations and issued open letters denouncing the government. Against this background a first crucial manifestation of public expression of social discontent and political protest against the regime took place in October 1977, when the German-Iranian Cultural Association in Tehran hosted a series of literature reading sessions, organized by the newly revived Iranian Writers Association and the German Goethe-Institute. In these "Ten Nights" (Dah Shab) 57 of Iran's most prominent poets and writers read their works to thousands of listeners. They demanded the end of censorship and claimed the freedom of expression.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Also in 1977, the popular and influential modernist Islamist theorist Ali Shariati died under mysterious circumstances. This both angered his followers, who considered him a martyr at the hands of SAVAK, and removed a potential revolutionary rival to Khomeini. Finally, in October Khomeini's son Mostafa died of an alleged heart attack, and his death was also blamed on SAVAK. A subsequent memorial service for Mostafa in Tehran put Khomeini back in the spotlight.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: By 1977, the Shah's policy of political liberalization was underway. Secular opponents of the Shah began to meet in secret to denounce the government. Led by the leftist intellectual Saeed Soltanpour, the Iranian Writers Association met at the Goethe Institute in Tehran to read anti-government poetry. Ali Shariati's death in the United Kingdom shortly after led to another public demonstration, with the opposition accusing the Shah of murdering him.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The chain of events began with the death of Mostafa Khomeini, chief aide and eldest son of Ruhollah Khomeini. He mysteriously died at midnight on 23 October 1977 in Najaf, Iraq. SAVAK and the Iraqi government declared heart attack as the cause of death, though many believed his death was attributed to SAVAK. Khomeini remained silent after the incident, while in Iran with the spread of the news came a wave of protest and mourning ceremonies in several cities. The mourning of Mostafa was given a political cast by Khomeini's political credentials, their enduring opposition to the monarchy and their exile. This dimension of the ceremonies went beyond the religious credentials of the family.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: On 7 January 1978, an article titled "Iran and Red and Black Colonization" appeared in the national daily "Ettela'at" newspaper. Written under a pseudonym by a government agent, it denounced Khomeini as a "British agent" and a "mad Indian poet" conspiring to sell out Iran to neo-colonialists and communists.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Upon the publishing of the article, religious seminary students in the city of Qom, angered over the insult to Khomeini, clashed with police. According to the government, 2 were killed in the clash; according to the opposition, 70 were killed and over 500 were injured. Likewise, there are discrepancies between casualty figures in different sources.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: According to the Shi'ite customs, memorial services ("chehelom") are held 40 days after a person's death. Encouraged by Khomeini (who declared that the blood of martyrs must water the "tree of Islam"), radicals pressured the mosques and moderate clergy to commemorate the deaths of the students, and used the occasion to generate protests. The informal network of mosques and bazaars, which for years had been used to carry out religious events, increasingly became consolidated as a coordinated protest organization.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: On 18 February, 40 days after the Qom protests, demonstrations broke out in various different cities. The largest was in Tabriz, which descended into a full-scale riot. "Western" and government symbols such as cinemas, bars, state-owned banks, and police stations were set ablaze. Units of Imperial Iranian Army were deployed to the city to restore order, and the death toll, according to government was 6, while Khomeini claimed hundreds were "martyred."


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Forty days later, on 29 March, demonstrations were organized in at least 55 cities, including Tehran. In an increasingly predictable pattern, deadly riots broke out in major cities, and again 40 days later, on 10 May. It led to an incident in which army commandos opened fire on Ayatollah Shariatmadari's house, killing one of his students. Shariatmadari immediately made a public announcement declaring his support for a "constitutional government," and a return to the policies of the 1906 Constitution.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The Shah was taken completely by surprise by the protests and, to make matters worse, he often became indecisive during times of crisis; virtually every major decision he would make backfired on his government and further inflamed the revolutionaries.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The Shah decided to continue on his plan of liberalization and to negotiate rather than to use force against the still-nascent protest movement: he promised that fully democratic elections for the Majlis would be held in 1979; censorship was relaxed; a resolution was drafted to help reduce corruption within the royal family and the government; and protesters were tried in civilian courts rather than by military court-martials and were quickly released.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Iran's security forces had not received any riot-control training nor equipment since 1963. As result, police forces were unable to control demonstrations, thus the army was frequently deployed. Soldiers were instructed not to use deadly force, yet there were instances of inexperienced soldiers reacting excessively, inflaming the violence without cowing the opposition, and receiving official condemnation from the Shah. The Carter administration in the US also refused to sell non-lethal tear gas and rubber bullets to Iran.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: As early as the February riots in Tabriz, the Shah fired all SAVAK officials in the city as a concession to the opposition, and soon began to dismiss civil servants and government officials whom he felt the public blamed. In the first national concession, he replaced the hardline SAVAK chief General Nematollah Nassiri with the more moderate General Nasser Moghaddam. The government also negotiated with moderate religious leaders such as Shariatmadari, apologizing to him for the raid on his house.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: By summer, the protests had stagnated, remaining at a steady rate for four months, with about 10,000 participants in each major city—with the exception of Isfahan, where protests were larger, and Tehran, where they were smaller—protesting every 40 days. This amounted to a small minority of the more than 15 million adults in Iran.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Against the wishes of Khomeini, Shariatmadari called for 17 June mourning protests to be carried out as a one-day stay. Although tensions remained in the milieu, the Shah's policy appeared to have worked, leading Amuzegar to declare that "the crisis is over." A CIA analysis in August concluded that Iran "is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation." These and later events in Iran are frequently cited as one of the most consequential strategic surprises that the United States has experienced since the CIA was established in 1947.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: As a sign of easing of government restrictions, three prominent opposition leaders from the secular National Front—Karim Sanjabi, Shahpour Bakhtiar, and Dariush Forouhar—were allowed to pen an open letter to the Shah demanding that he reign according to the constitution of Iran.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: By August, the protests had "kick[ed]…into high gear," and the number of demonstrators mushroomed to hundreds of thousands. In an attempt to dampen inflation, the Amuzegar administration cut spending and reduced business. However, the cutbacks led to a sharp rise in layoffs—particularly among young, unskilled, male workers living in the working-class districts. By summer 1978, the working class joined the street protests in massive numbers. In addition, it was the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, bringing a sense of increased religiosity among many people.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: A series of escalating protests broke out in major cities, and deadly riots broke out in Isfahan where protesters fought for the release of Ayatollah Jalaluddin Taheri. Martial law was declared in the city on 11 August as symbols of Western culture and government buildings were burned, and a bus full of American workers was bombed. Due to his failure to stop the protests, Prime Minister Amuzegar offered his resignation.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The Shah increasingly felt that he was losing control of the situation and hoped to regain it through complete appeasement. He decided to appoint Jafar Sharif-Emami to the post of prime minister, himself a veteran prime minister. Emami was chosen due to his family ties to the clergy, although he had a reputation of corruption during his previous premiership.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Under the Shah's guidance, Sharif-Emami effectively began a policy of "appeasing the opposition's demands before they even made them." The government abolished the Rastakhiz Party, legalized all political parties and released political prisoners, increased freedom of expression, curtailed SAVAK's authority and dismissed 34 of its commanders, closed down casinos and nightclubs, and abolished the imperial calendar. The government also began to prosecute corrupt government and royal family members. Sharif-Emami entered into negotiations with Ayatollah Shariatmadari and National Front leader Karim Sanjabi in order to help organize future elections. Censorship was effectively terminated, and the newspapers began reporting heavily on demonstrations, often highly critically and negatively of the Shah. The Majlis (Parliament) also began issuing resolutions against the government.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: On 19 August, in the southwestern city of Abadan, four arsonists barred the door of the Cinema Rex movie theatre and set it on fire. In what would be the largest terrorist attack in history prior to the September 11 attacks in the US in 2001, 422 people inside the theatre were burned to death. Khomeini immediately blamed the Shah and SAVAK for setting the fire, and, due to the pervasive revolutionary atmosphere, the public also blamed the Shah for starting the fire, despite the government's insistence that they were uninvolved. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets shouting "Burn the Shah!" and "The Shah is the guilty one!"


title: Iranian Revolution

text: After the revolution, many claimed that Islamist militants had started the fire. After the Islamic Republic government executed a police officer for the act, a man claiming to be the lone surviving arsonist claimed he was responsible for starting the fire. After forcing the resignation of the presiding judges in an attempt to hamper the investigation, the new government finally executed Hossein Talakhzadeh for "setting the fire on the Shah's orders," despite his insistence that he did it on his own accord as an ultimate sacrifice for the revolutionary cause.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The 4th of September marked Eid al-Fitr, the holiday celebrating the end of the month of Ramadan. A permit for an open-air prayer was granted, in which 200,000–500,000 people attended. Instead, the clergy directed the crowd on a large march through the center of Tehran, whilst the Shah reportedly watched the march from his helicopter, unnerved, and confused. A few days later, even larger protests took place, and, for the first time, protesters called for Khomeini's return and the establishment of an Islamic republic.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: At midnight on 8 September, the Shah declared martial law in Tehran and 11 other major cities throughout the country. All street demonstrations were banned, and a night-time curfew was established. Tehran's martial law commander was General Gholam-Ali Oveissi, who was known for his severity against opponents. However, the Shah made clear that once martial law was lifted, he intended to continue with the liberalization. He retained Sharif-Emami's civilian government, hoping that protesters would avoid taking the streets.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: However, 5,000 protesters took to the streets, either in defiance or because they had missed hearing the declaration, and faced off with soldiers at Jaleh Square. After the firing of warning shots failed to disperse the crowd, troops fired directly into the mob, killing 64, while General Oveissi claimed that 30 soldiers were killed by armed snipers in surrounding buildings. Additional clashes throughout the day, which would be called Black Friday by the opposition, brought the opposition death toll to 89.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The deaths shocked the country and damaged any attempt at reconciliation between the Shah and the opposition. Khomeini immediately declared that "4,000 innocent protesters were massacred by Zionists," which gave him a pretext to reject any further compromise with the government.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The Shah himself was horrified by the events of Black Friday, and harshly criticized the events, though this did little to sway public perception of him as being responsible for the shooting. While martial law officially remained in effect, the government decided not to break up any more demonstrations or strikes (in effect, "martial law without there exactly being martial law," according to Sharif-Emami), instead continuing to negotiate with protest leaders. Consequently, protest gatherings often took place without any serious intervention by soldiers.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: On 9 September, 700 workers at Tehran's main oil refinery went on strike, and on 11 September, the same occurred at refineries in five other cities. On 13 September, central government workers in Tehran simultaneously went on strike.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: By late October, a nationwide general strike was declared, with workers in virtually all major industries walking off their jobs, most damagingly in the oil industry and the print media. Special "strike committees" were set up throughout major industries to organize and coordinate the activities.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: The Shah did not attempt to crack down on strikers, but instead gave them generous wage increases, and allowed strikers who lived in government housing to remain in their homes. By the beginning of November, many important officials in the Shah's government were demanding from the Shah forceful measures to bring the strikers back to work.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Hoping to break Khomeini's contacts with the opposition, the Shah pressured the Iraqi government to expel him from Najaf. Khomeini left Iraq, instead moving to a house bought by Iranian exiles in Neauphle-le-Château, a village near Paris, France. The Shah hoped that Khomeini would be cut off from the mosques of Najaf and be cut off from the protest movement. Instead, the plan backfired badly. With superior French telephone and postal connections (compared to Iraqi ones), Khomeini's supporters flooded Iran with tapes and recordings of his sermons.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: Worse for the Shah was that the Western media, especially the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), immediately put Khomeini into the spotlight. Khomeini rapidly became a household name in the West, portraying himself as an "Eastern mystic" who did not seek power, but instead sought to "free" his people from "oppression." Many western media outlets, usually critical of such claims, became one of Khomeini's most powerful tools.


title: Iranian Revolution

text: In addition, the media coverage eroded the influence of other, more moderate clergy such as Ayatollah Shariatmadari and Ayatollah Taleghani. The BBC itself later issued a statement admitting to having a "critical" disposition to the Shah, saying that its broadcasts helped to "change the collective perception of the population."