By Staff Writer
21:09:2021

The United Nation’s Commission of Inquiry on Burundi, released on September 16, has accused the government of worsening its repression of opposition figures, rebel fighters and NGOs since President Edariste Ndayishimiye’s accession to power in May 2020. 

Forced disappearances, torture, and regular extrajudicial killings have been alleged. Many of the victims were dumped into the Rusizi River, demarcating Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

“Members of opposition parties… are still regularly targeted by abusive restrictions and are subject to grave human rights violations such as disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detentions and torture,” the report alleges. These perpetrators, the report states, have acted with impunity and without fear of reprisals and arrest.  

Speaking to Radio Islam International, Lewis Mudge, Human Right’s Watch’s Central Africa Director, supported these allegations, citing a report published by Human Rights Watch, which spent a year interviewing journalists inside Burundi. 

In one instance, the report documented the case of Elie Ngomirakiza, a representative of the National Congress for Freedom (Congrès national pour la liberté, CNL), an opposition party, who “was detained in Ntahangwa commune, in Bujumbura Mairie province, on July 9. 

In another case, according to two sources present at the time, armed men dressed in military clothes took Amauri Kwizera — a driver also known as Babu — from outside his house in Bujumbura on July 16, 2021, and drove him away in a white pickup truck with tinted windows and no number plate. Ngomirakiza’s whereabouts have not been revealed, although family members have made multiple requests and attempted to locate him. 

Mudge argued that “what we’re seeing is even though there’s been a change after the death of the former president, we still see the same factors carried out, and these practices are the most serious human rights abuses. This is killings with impunity, for political purposes.” 

Mudge worryingly noted that the role of the Imbonerakure, a youth militia of the ruling CNDD-FDD Party, number in the hundreds of thousands and had been involved in the violence. The militia has boasted about committing rape, torture and extortion, with Hutu genocidal ideology, which alleges the Tutsi control the country in the 1970s, backed by international forces. 

This conspiracy has been instrumentalised to ensure support and compliance. They very often carry out the ruling Party’s dirty work. They work in conjunction with the national intelligence services and the police.” 

Of genuine concern is the increased impunity noted, aside from political killings, these militias are involved in targeted economic assassinations, with victims dumped into the Rusizi River. The coronavirus crisis has worsened this, which has seen land borders between Burundi and the DRC closed, with traders and fishermen being forced to travel through the river. 

Burundi has been plunged into crisis since 2015 when former President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a third term in office in a poll boycotted by most opposition. The subsequent violence led to the deaths of over 1200 and displacement of over 400 thousand. 

In the following years, tens of thousands were arrested, and Nkurunziza ended his mandate in 2020 before handing power to Ndayishimiye, his hand-picked successor. Nkurunziza died in May that year; however, little has since changed. 

The government has denied most of these accusations but notably closed UN Offices in the country and has worked to stunt the work of human rights institutions. Nkurunziza even successfully staved off an African Union decision to deploy 5000 troops to the government to quell the violence in 2015.