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Geneva : human rights violations on the ascending line in Burundi

Since June 18, the United Nations Human Rights Council has held its 56th session. It will end on July 12. Last week, Burundi was on the agenda and the UN rapporteur bitterly noted an incessant regression of human rights in this country. He pleads for the release of journalists and activists. For its part, the permanent representation of Burundi at the UN rejects all these allegations.

INFO SOS Médias Burundi

The UN diplomat has struck again. During his oral presentation last Thursday, Fortuné Gaétan Zongo painted a dark picture of human rights in the small East African nation.

“The situation in Burundi is marked by a volatile security context, widespread impunity maintained by the judicial system, and tolerance towards human rights violations, particularly those committed by the ruling party militia (Imbonerakure),” he insisted.

“Sometimes, these young people replace security forces in certain localities to carry out arrests, kidnappings and terrorize the population, without forgetting worrying actions of the police and intelligence agents,” he insisted Thursday in Geneva at headquarters of the UN Human Rights Council.

The UN special rapporteur on Burundi also criticized the political space which, according to his oral report, “is closed and does not allow the expression of opposing voices”.

Regarding the press, Fortuné Gaétan Zongo sympathizes.

“Several journalists and representatives of the civil society are subject to arrests, arbitrary detention, harassment and intimidation,” he maintains.

The Burkinabe diplomat recalled emblematic cases such as those of Floriane Irangabiye and Sandra Umuhoza as an illustration.

“These are two women arbitrarily detained for crimes that they did not commit, but fabricated : attacks on State security and ethnic aversion,” he points out before pleading for their immediate and unconditional release.

Expensive life…

On the socio-economic side, Mr. Zongo regrets “a difficult economic context marked by high inflation, a strong depreciation of the currency,… which considerably limit the purchasing power of households”.

“Added to this are difficulties of shortages of fuel, sugar and water, not to mention recurring power cuts,” he explains.

On the left, Fortuné Gaétan Zongo, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Burundi whose term has been renewed

However, he welcomes efforts at international openness, which are not without their tasks.

“Burundi seems open but is not yet cooperating with the rapporteur, nor is there any openness internally or with its direct neighbors,” he adds.

While Burundi was elected to chair the 3rd Committee of the UN General Assembly for the period 2024-2026, the rapporteur on the smallEast African country has only one wish :

“That this position allows it to better comply with international standards for the protection of human rights and above all by displaying a real political will for the protection of the rights of Burundians and to take adequate measures to limit crime in the forthcoming elections which promise to be locked.

Response from the shepherd to the shepherdess…

As usual, the Burundi ambassador in Geneva could not miss the opportunity to counter an accusatory oral report.

“Burundi is outraged by a biased report with false allegations, which despises Burundians, and based on slander and infamy against state authorities and an entire population,” Elisa Nkerabirori vigorously denounced.

“In reality it is to deliberately suffocate democratic republican institutions for interests which are none other than geopolitical,” she says.

The permanent representative of Burundi in Geneva jumps on the trip of Gaétan Zongo to Rwanda which lasted ten days where he went to the Burundian refugee camp of Mahama in the east of this country.

“First of all, the report at the end of this visit entitled ‘Maintaining Hope’ is cynical,” she says.

“How can we speak of hope when evoking a sinister situation, the precarious living conditions of refugees while they have been kept in camps and taken hostage for ten long years despite their recurring demands to return to their country of origin in vain?,” she said.

For Gitega, the Mahama camp is a recruiting ground for rebels.

“An enrollment of refugees in the Red-Tabara terrorist movement whose command is assumed by the mastermind of the failed putsch of 2015, hosted to the astonishment of Burundi by Rwanda in violation of international law,” suggested Ms. Nkerabirori.

In this camp, she says, “refugees enrolled as terrorists receive training and are financed and armed by this same country to be used in terrorist attacks which indiscriminately target innocent civilian populations, mainly made up of women and children.

Imbonerakure, SNR agents and police try to force a door of a house belonging to an opponent suspected of possessing weapons illegally in the north of the commercial city Bujumbura, Jean Pierre Aimé Harerimana

Ambassador Elisa Nkerabirori raises her voice while the UN rapporteur affirmed that Burundi has problems with some of its neighbors including Rwanda. “No sir, it’s just one country that you yourself cited,” she seemed to reframe the Burkinabè diplomat.

And Ambassador Elisa Nkerabirori calls on the international community to instead support Burundi in its economic and social development projects.

“My country is embarking on a vast project to reduce inequalities, offer equal opportunity and social protection to its population. Burundi deserves support from the international community and not these incessant reports which, in their substance, aspire to divide us. And even more serious, they give us bad press,” she pleads before concluding : “By despising us, you make us even more determined and united.”

During such sessions, human rights activists in countries on the agenda also speak out.

Lawyer Armel Niyongere, president of ACAT-Burundi, operating in exile, expressed « his deep concern over the kidnappings, forced disappearances, torture and repression of the press in Burundi » and demanded « the protection of human rights before the 2025 elections.

The national independent human rights commission in Burundi, CNIDH, has, for its part, demonstrated its neutrality and impartiality, pleading for the decision to downgrade it to B status should not be effective in 2025, “otherwise, it is the United Nations that will have sacrificed these rights.”

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Elisa Nkerabirori, Ambassador of Burundi in Geneva