Burundi crisis neglected but hardship continues
Thursday June 29 2017
Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza announced his intention to seek a disputed third term more than two years ago, spawning a period of unrest marked by extrajudicial killings, a failed coup, and ethnic division.
Given repeated assurances from government officials and the dearth of media coverage, you would be forgiven for thinking that period ended some time ago. It did not.
The country’s population continues to face armed violence, civil and human rights abuses, while food insecurity and economic hardship persist. People are still fleeing to neighbouring countries: The UN predicts the number of Burundian refugees will top 500,000 by the end of the year.
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On June 14, the Commission of Enquiry on Burundi set up by the UN Human Rights Council reported that violations such as the excessive use of force, disappearances, and arbitrary detention by security services — which all surged amid street protests in the weeks after Nkurunziza’s April 2015 announcement — have been continuing.
According to government figures, some 720 people have lost their lives since the start of the crisis — many during the heavy-handed crackdown around a failed coup attempt in May 2015. Human-rights workers put the number at around 1,200.
The level of violence has subsided but there continue to be sporadic killings from gunshots and grenades, which the police often attribute to criminal activity.
Fatsah Ouguergouz, who chairs the commission of enquiry, told the Human Rights Council that testimony collected in refugee camps “shows that since late 2016, human-rights violations are often committed in a more clandestine, but equally brutal, manner” than in 2015.
“For example, a victim told us that in 2016, a police commander threatened him in the following terms: ‘I can kill you. I can bury you and no one will know,’” Ouguergouz said, explaining that his team had not been given permission to carry out investigations inside Burundi itself.
“There are continuing reports of disappearances. Dead bodies are also still regularly discovered,” he added. “According to several testimonies, it is often difficult to identify the bodies. The modus operandi seems to be the same: The victims have their arms tied behind their backs and sometimes their bodies are weighed down with stones to make them sink once they are thrown into a river.”
READ: Burundi forces still torturing, killing opponents -UN
First-hand accounts
In Bujumbura, residents gave IRIN first-hand accounts of loved ones going missing.
“My husband received a phone call from people he doubtless knew. He left in our car with a friend and never came back. Even the car was never found,” said the wife of a man close to the government who asked not to be named.
“I contacted his old friends — the police, the army, the intelligence services — to no avail. I’m losing hope, and what [bothers] me the most is that some of his old friends in the police and army don’t answer my calls.”
Another woman in the capital told IRIN about her brother, who had been a policeman for a long time. “He was arrested as he came home from work, after meeting some relatives,” she said. “Up to now, I have no information about where he went. I don’t know what to do. We haven’t even been allowed to conduct customary mourning rituals. We are crying in secret.”
The commission said refugees had told its investigators of torture sessions carried out by the National Intelligence Service and the police, sometimes assisted by the Imbonerakure — the ruling party’s youth wing. The testimony was graphic.
The commission also noted that those in exile included many journalists as well as the leaders of most opposition parties, one of which, the Movement for Solidarity and Democracy, was slapped with a six-month suspension in April.
Severe food security
Dwindling food supplies have left more than a quarter of Burundi’s population, 2.56 million people, in a state of severe food insecurity. Some three million Burundians require humanitarian assistance.
In April, four people died of starvation in Muyange II, an area close to the capital, according to local leader Augustin Ntirandekura. Asked to explain the lack of doors and windows on some of the houses in Muyange II, one resident said they had been sold to pay for food.
Yields from the first of the country’s two annual agricultural seasons were down an average of 25 per cent, but experts at the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system say this only partly explains the widespread food insecurity.
“The current socio-economic crisis characterised by inflation, shortage of jobs, the depreciation of the Burundian franc and a shortage of foreign currency, aggravated by a malaria epidemic and the displacement of populations are factors that influence the level of food insecurity and create a need for a co-ordinated multi-sectoral approach,” the latest IPC bulletin says.
Market prices of basic foods are between 30 and 50 per cent higher than in the same period last year, according to the IPC, which did, however, project much better yields from 2017’s (just beginning) second harvest.
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More supply can’t come a moment too soon. At food stalls in the capital, IRIN found maize selling for BIF1,200 ($0.70) per kilogramme, against BIF400 ($0.23) less than two years ago, while green beans were up from BIF700 ($0.41) to BIF1,200 ($0.7) over the same period.
“When the current crisis started, the expatriate family I had been working for since 2010 left the country and my husband lost his job because his boss said he didn’t have enough money to pay him,” said Nicelate Ngayabosha, who lives in the northern Bujumbura district of Kamenge.
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