The East African Legislative Assembly has strongly recommended an independent inquiry into alleged human-rights violations by the Burundi government and its security forces.

After a public hearing where all parties were summoned before the EALA Regional Affairs and Conflict Resolution Committee (RACR), the members said the committee holds that there are serious and sufficient grounds to believe that gross human-rights violations have taken place and continue unabated in Burundi.

“The petitioners and other parties that appeared before the committee, including from the government delegation, all agree on this fact. They only disagree on the magnitude, responsibility and how to end the violations,” RACR chairman Abdullah Mwinyi said in a report.

As result, the assembly proposed that the EAC Council of Ministers request the EAC Heads of State Summit to facilitate and support the establishment of a credible panel of inquiry to investigate all human-rights violations in Burundi.

The United Nations says at least 439 people have been killed since April 25 when President Pierre Nkurunziza, in power since 2005, announced he would run for a third term. The plan was dismissed as anti-constitutional by civil society, the opposition, the Catholic Church and even some of his own supporters.

Despite the protests, President Nkurunziza was re-elected in July in polls boycotted by the opposition, triggering the political crisis. Daily clashes under the cover of darkness ensued between security forces and dissidents in opposition areas in the capital Bujumbura, where weapons proliferate. 

Late in the year, the Pan-African Lawyers Union (PALU) and the East African Civil Society Organisations Forum (Eacsof) petitioned EALA to call upon the EAC Heads of State Summit to take concrete steps to prevent the country from descending into genocide or mass atrocities.

Condemn violations

The petition cited numerous reports of assassinations, extrajudicial and arbitrary killings of more than 130 people and wanted EALA to condemn these and what it termed inordinate use of force by the police, security officials and members of a youth militia group, the Imbonerakure.

EALA also supports the work of the Summit and the office of the mediator, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, to bring lasting peace to Burundi in the shortest time possible.