V. Settling of Scores: Human Rights Abuses in the Power Struggle between CNDD-FDD and the FNL

“Both sides use the logic of the gun”

—JF, a community worker in Bujumbura, describing CNDD-FDD and FNL using intimidation to gain political power.[31]

The current Burundian government has a history dating back to its election in 2005 of perpetrating human rights violations against suspected Palipehutu-FNL members–including members of their civilian youth league, the Patriotic Hutu Youth (Jeunesse Patriotique Hutu, JPH).[32] Human Rights Watch documented extrajudicial executions, kidnappings, arbitrary arrests, and threats against suspected rebel supporters by Burundian security forces and their proxies, most notably the SNR and former FDD combatants (known as démobilisés, see text box II), in 2005 and 2006.[33] Such incidents diminished after the signing of the September 2006 ceasefire, only to recommence in late 2007 after Palipehutu-FNL returned to the bush. Police were also increasingly responsible for abuses. For example, in a series of events in October 2007 previously documented by Human Rights Watch, police tortured and ill-treated over 20 detainees in a clandestine jail in Muramvya province; many of them were accused of being FNL members.[34]

“Démobilisés” and Partisan Violence in Burundi [35] “Démobilisé” is a French term that refers to any former combatant who has gone through a demobilization program and returned to civilian life. In Burundi, tens of thousands of combatants, from various rebel movements as well as the former army, were demobilized through a World Bank funded program beginning in 2004. The program provided them with start-up materials for small businesses such as hair-cutting and carpentry.   Many démobilisés complained that the funds were insufficient, and others said they never received packages at all. The result: thousands of underemployed or unemployed youth with little education or work experience other than that received on the battlefield, loosely organized into groups, but lacking in purpose.   A substantial number of démobilisés from CNDD-FDD were recruited by the intelligence service (SNR). Some became full-time intelligence agents, but most worked as occasional informants. Some of the latter also received pay to carry out one-off “missions,” including killings and acts of intimidation documented by Human Rights Watch in 2005 and 2006.   Other FDD démobilisés joined the CNDD-FDD youth league, and have recently been accused of carrying out acts of intimidation in this capacity, particularly in the rural areas. Still others have joined the FNL, with the hopes of receiving a second demobilization package.   Many former combatants from all sides in the war did not turn in their weapons. Victims often complain of FDD démobilisés who are armed with pistols, grenades, and occasionally Kalashnikovs.   Many démobilisés returned to civilian life with relative success and are not known to be engaged in any criminal activity. But as a social category démobilisés nonetheless constitute a volatile, easily manipulated group.   The particular démobilisés discussed in this report are members of loosely organized groups of former FDD combatants, who work in an informal capacity with police, intelligence agents, or CNDD-FDD party leaders to carry out acts of violence and repression. This does not exclude the possibility that some acts of violence are carried out on their own initiative, as in personal cases of score-settling.

In January 2008 Human Rights Watch received further reports of collaboration between SNR officials, certain police officers, and démobilisés based in the Bujumbura neighborhoods of Kanyosha, Kinama, and Kamenge. Residents reported that SNR officials were distributing weapons to démobilisés.[36] This was denied by the SNR, but Human Rights Watch found evidence of both SNR and police officials relying heavily on démobilisés to provide information and carry out “arrests” of suspects, and that a number of démobilisés were armed. The relationship between démobilisés and state agents varied in different locations.

One communal administrator, when asked why police had never attempted to disarm the groups, explained, “Because they work together. When they see something, they tell the police, and the police intervene.”[37] An official in a different commune linked the démobilisés to the SNR rather than the police, complaining, “There is a problem here of managing the démobilisés who work with the [SNR].... They are a corps who walks over the police; the police are afraid of them.”[38] 

From January through March of 2008, Palipehutu-FNL and CNDD-FDD partisans faced off in a series of apparent tit-for-tat killings and assaults. Démobilisés were both victims and perpetrators of attacks. Similar patterns emerged, this time in rural Burundi, in December 2008.

The five case studies presented in this chapter document human rights abuses linked to a series of attacks and reprisals by FNL and CNDD-FDD members in and around Bujumbura and in the rural communes of Kayogoro (Makamba province), Nyamurenza (Ngozi province), and Nyabikere (Karusi province). These do not represent the totality of incidents around the country, but these areas were notable for the use of extreme violence in the form of killings and grenade attacks. Human Rights Watch also received reports of the abuse of FNL members— most frequently arbitrary arrests at times accompanied by beatings—and the burning of CNDD-FDD meeting places from several other places.[39]

In all five case studies, FNL members carried out crimes. Most of these took place in territory clearly controlled by government. However, rather than effectively using the justice system to prosecute crimes, state agents generally responded by carrying out human rights violations against suspects.

Case Study 1: Violence in and around Bujumbura, January-March 2008

In late December 2007 rumors circulated that the FNL would attack Bujumbura on January 1, 2008, after the expiration of a deadline set by international facilitators for returning to peace talks. One FNL member was arrested in Bujumbura on January 1 and publicly accused by the police spokesperson of planning military attacks, but these attacks never materialized.[40] Political rhetoric over this period became heated, with the circulation of anonymous written tracts threatening members of both CNDD-FDD and the FNL.  A cycle of individual targeted killings began in and around Bujumbura, involving both CNDD-FDD and FNL supporters (including members of JPH).

While it was unclear the extent to which assailants were acting on superior orders, at a minimum both sides seemed to enjoy impunity. Police rarely pursued CNDD-FDD supporters linked to violence and in some cases protected them. As one Kinama resident explained, “Both groups have started to attack each other. But the démobilisés benefit from the support of the police. When [the démobilisés] see a JPH, they chase them and trap them.”[41]

However, police were equally ineffective in carrying out thorough investigations of FNL members actually suspected of crimes. Due to a combination of fear, incompetence, and lack of will, in most cases they failed to arrest perpetrators. Instead, they often responded with arbitrary arrests and other human rights abuses against FNL members, as documented below.

On January 2, 2008, a Palipehutu-FNL “political mobilizer” named Emmanuel, known as “Papillon,” was killed in Kanyosha just outside Bujumbura.[42] The Burundian human rights organization Ligue Iteka identified the perpetrators as démobilisés. Ligue Iteka reported that the same perpetrators shot and gravely injured another FNL member in a nearby area the following day and on January 6 they unsuccessfully sought a third FNL member.[43]

The following week, a series of attacks took place against CNDD-FDD members in Bujumbura’s northern neighborhoods and rural outskirts, areas in which the FNL enjoys strong support. Between January 15 and 18, 2008, an SNR agent and two local CNDD-FDD officials, one of whom was killed—all of them démobilisés—were shot in the Bujumbura neighborhoods of Kinama and Kamenge.[44] The FNL denied responsibility.[45]

Four people affiliated with the FNL were killed over the following four days (discussed below), with witnesses attributing responsibility to démobilisés affiliated with the police and intelligence service.[46] The FNL then appeared to retaliate. Over the next two weeks, three local CNDD-FDD officials in Bubanza and Bujumbura Rurale provinces were killed. At least one of the officials had a long history of problems with FNL members in his commune, who had beaten him in 2007 when he refused to attend a meeting.[47]

There were subsequent killings and assaults in and near Bujumbura of persons associated with CNDD-FDD. On February 2, 2008, an SNR agent and démobilisé in Kanyosha, Diomède Sindiwenumwe, known as “Rumpu,” was seriously injured in a shooting attributed to the FNL by local officials and Kanyosha residents.[48] In mid-February, three police officers were killed when approximately 50 FNL armed with Kalashnikovs and grenades attacked the home of Philibert Nkundwanabake, the administrator of Rugazi commune in Bubanza.[49]

The Killing of Emmanuel Minani, Jospin Nzeyimana, Timothé Ngendabanka, and Frédiane Niyonkuru by CNDD-FDD Supporters

Two sets of killings in late January 2008 targeted individuals affiliated with the FNL. In the first case, Emmanuel Minani, a nurse and civilian FNL member widely known as “Papa Lolo,” was shot dead in Kinama along with his twelve-year-old son Jospin Nzeyimana.[50] Earlier in the month, neighbors had told Minani they had heard he was on a list of people to be killed.[51] On January 20, LN, a family member, observed young men clad in hats and sunglasses pass by the house several times just before the killing, and recognized among them a police officer from the Presidential guard who is a former FDD combatant. She left the house briefly to walk a guest home, heard gunshots on her way back and found Minani dead and his 12-year-old son mortally wounded. Police arrived a moment later, but did not pursue the perpetrators, who had fled in the direction from which the police arrived.

LN gave an interview to a Burundian radio station, naming the perpetrator she had recognized, but he was never called in for questioning. She was afraid to press charges, believing the police to be complicit.[52]

Two days later, on January 22, Timothé Ngendabanka and Frediane Niyonkuru were killed in Kamenge. Their nephew was a former FNL combatant. A few months prior to the double murder, an SNR agent living in the neighborhood accused Ngendabanka of FNL activity, referring to the compound as “an FNL camp,” and telling him “I’m going to exterminate you.”[53]

The night of the murder, TB, who occupied a house in the same compound, said he watched in terror through the crack under his door as a man in boots and a police uniform approached the house and demanded that the door be opened, and then fired on the door. When Ngendabanka and Niyonkuru finally emerged, the man shot and killed them. Niyonkuru was killed while holding her baby in her arms; the infant was grazed by a bullet. According to TB, a police vehicle came about 25 minutes later. When he told police that the assailant had just left, police said “That’s not our job.”

TB said he recognized the assailant’s voice as that of the SNR agent who had previously threatened Ngendabanka. He said the police never returned to investigate the killing and that he was afraid to file a complaint.[54]

The Killing of Freddy Nkunzwenimana by FNL Members

On March 28, FNL members killed Freddy Nkunzwenimana, a former FNL member who joined CNDD-FDD in late 2007. After leaving the FNL, he had moved into a house occupied by démobilisés in Kinama, who were known for harassment of Palipehutu-FNL members. He was suspected of informing on his former colleagues. The day of the shooting, Nkunzwenimana had in fact met with police authorities in this capacity.[55]

Nkunzwenimana was shot multiple times on a Kinama street in broad daylight and succumbed to his injuries two weeks later. CF, a family member who visited him in the hospital, heard his account of the assault before he died:

When he joined the CNDD-FDD, his friends from Palipehutu-FNL didn’t appreciate it. They started to look for him. ... It was his friends from Palipehutu-FNL who shot him.... Freddy saw [one of these friends] with a gun and said “Why do you want to kill me?” [The friend] shot him three times in the thigh, took his phone, and fled.[56]

In interviews with Human Rights Watch, FNL combatants and JPH members acknowledged that their forces in Kinama had killed Nkunzwenimana.[57] One explained, “The FNL looked for him because he knew many of their secrets. That’s why they shot him.”[58] FNL spokesperson Habimana denied responsibility, and an FNL combatant familiar with the case said that the killers had likely acted on their own initiative to settle scores.[59]

Aftermath: The Killing of Daneck Koriciza by Police, August 2008

On August 24, 2008, police from the 3rd Rapid Mobile Intervention Group (Groupement Mobile d’Intervention Rapide, GMIR) based at Camp Socarti in Bujumbura, shot dead Daneck Koriciza, a suspect in the killing of Freddy Nkunzwenimana. Daneck, an FNL member, had just returned home after joining combatants in the bush several months earlier. Witnesses said that on learning he had returned to Bujumbura, police sought Daneck out and killed him near his uncle’s house in Kinama. In a series of contradictory accounts, the police claimed that Daneck shot first, a claim repudiated by witnesses.[60]

Residents of Kinama and neighboring communes reported that following Koriciza’s death, démobilisés began to hunt JPH and FNL members associated with him. In November, PC, a young man who was close to the JPH, told Human Rights Watch that two of these former combatants, armed with pistols, trapped and attempted to “arrest” him on the street. He was freed when local residents emerged from their homes and demanded his release, but told Human Rights Watch in a subsequent telephone interview that he had gone into hiding, fearing for his life.[61]

Case Study 2: FNL Attacks, Arbitrary Arrests, and Ill-Treatment by the Government in Response

Ceasefire Collapse and Increased Harassment

The number of arrests and cases of ill-treatment of alleged FNL rebels, frequent in late 2005 and early 2006, reduced after the signing of the September 2006 Ceasefire Agreement.[62] The ceasefire created a legal status for the rebels, in effect prohibiting the arrest of individuals on the basis of FNL membership alone.[63] However, this provision was not incorporated into Burundian law, which contributed to confusion on the part of some police and judicial officials, and allowed willful misinterpretation on the part of others. Although after the ceasefire FNL members enjoyed “provisional immunity” for past crimes, some officials, in violation of the ceasefire, treated FNL membership itself as a crime.

Police and local officials arrested more alleged Palipehutu-FNL members in late 2007 after negotiations collapsed, though the ceasefire agreement technically remained valid.[64]Démobilisés were often involved in the beating, arrest, and intimidation of alleged FNL members, particularly in the Bujumbura urban communes of Kinama and Kamenge.

For example, RG, a former child soldier who had left the movement in 2005, told Human Rights Watch how in January 2008 the SNR again began to harass him after several years of leaving him alone. He said, “They started looking for me all the time. My mother said they would come to the house, surround it, and intimidate her and my little brother.” The various SNR agents, police, and démobilisés who came to his house on multiple occasions, at times armed with pistols and grenades, never presented an arrest warrant. RG dropped out of high school after agents searched for him there and eventually fled from his home, staying with friends or sleeping outside near a riverbank. He observed, “I’m living like an animal.”[65] Back in 2005 when he had originally left the FNL, he had been arrested by the SNR and tortured to extract information about rebel activity. He was freed the same year and been able to return to his studies.

BN, an FNL member, told Human Rights Watch that he had abandoned combat, but was detained briefly in March 2008 on charges of FNL activity and subsequently harassed by démobilisés. He said, “I am thinking about going back to the bush and joining the rebels again because I would be safer there. But I made an agreement with my church that I would give up combat.”[66] Human Rights Watch later learned that BN, with other former FNL combatants and civilian supporters, did indeed return to Bujumbura Rurale to resume FNL military activity.

Burundian Criminal Procedure Concerning Arrests[67] The Burundian National Police (Police Nationale du Burundi, PNB) is composed of four main units: the Judicial Police, Internal Security Police, Border Police, and Penitentiary Police. Only judicial police officers (officiers de la police judiciaire, OPJs) are authorized to arrest suspects, except in cases in which suspects are caught in the act of committing a crime. In such cases, any citizen can make an arrest but must be immediately transfer the suspect to police custody.   Most regular National Intelligence Service (SNR) personnel have the status of OPJ. However, SNR agents and informants who lack this status, including the many démobilisés who work officially and unofficially for the SNR, are not authorized to carry out arrests.   Communal administrators have limited policing powers; by law, an administrator can “take any policing measure that he judges necessary to maintain order and public security.” According to government officials consulted by Human Rights Watch, the law is not intended to empower administrators to carry out arrests on their own; rather, administrators, as well as governors, can requisition OPJs to arrest suspects.   Once police have arrested a suspect, they must immediately place him or her in a recognized jail under judicial police custody. Judicial police have seven days to carry out investigations before charging a suspect with a crime; in exceptional cases, they may request a seven-day extension from the prosecutor. At the end of this period, police must either release a suspect or file charges, at which point the detainee should be transferred to a prison and the investigation should be taken over by the Prosecutor’s office. Once a suspect has been charged, she or he must be brought before a judge for an initial hearing within 15 days.

Resumption of Combat and Mass Arrests

As previously described, the FNL briefly resumed open hostilities in April 2008, attacking military posts around Bujumbura with guns, grenades, and mortars. They also launched mortars and rockets at Bujumbura, striking two homes and a university campus.[68] FNL combatants who were concentrated in civilian areas, mostly in Bujumbura Rurale province, also carried out massive looting in the course of hostilities. In at least one case, they were alleged to have burned down houses as they retreated. Local officials and humanitarian aid organizations estimated that over 20,000 civilians were temporarily displaced as a result of combat.[69]

From April through June, the government responded with a campaign of mass arrests which was not limited to those with a direct role in hostilities. Hundreds of Palipehutu-FNL members and suspected civilian supporters were arrested, most of them in late April and early May. Dozens were ill-treated, either at the moment of the arrest or in local jails. For example, TS, a civilian FNL sympathizer, told Human Rights Watch that unknown men in civilian clothing arrested him on the street in Bujumbura on April 29 and beat him over the head with a revolver before turning him over to police.[70] GD, an FNL combatant home visiting his wife, was stopped in the street on April 23 by police together with pistol-wielding démobilisés in civilian clothing. “They all took off their belts and beat me,” he described. He was taken to jail, where in May a Human Rights Watch researcher photographed scars on his head and hands.[71]

MH, a 16-year-old JPH member from Kinama, recounted:

I was arrested on April 21 in Quartier Kanga, around 3 p.m. I was coming from the mosque. I was arrested by démobilisés in civilian clothing, [who] called over the police and said I was FNL. I was beaten badly by the police. They slapped me, there on the road, and then took me to Kanga police post. There they beat me on my arms, hands, and face. One of my arms was dislocated and I had blood running from my nose.... I did not get medical help... While beating me, they said I was FNL.

He was transferred to a local jail where, he said, he was beaten with a baton by a judicial police officer during interrogations over the course of three days. He reported that he suspected financial motives on the part of the men who arrested him, commenting,

The démobilisés are always looking for the JPH. At times they are armed with pistols, grenades, and Kalashnikovs.... They look for us on their own initiative, in order to denounce us and get money from the [SNR].[72]

In Makamba province, untouched by combat, then-Governor Pasteur Bucumi, a CNDD-FDD member, personally arrested five alleged FNL members. They later told BINUB human rights observers that the governor and his police guard had beaten them.[73] The illegal and abusive nature of these arrests spurred the Representative of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Burundi to send a letter to the Minister of Interior, denouncing the governor’s role in the arrests and ill-treatment.[74] The Governor has not been sanctioned for the abuses.

Abusive arrests continued even after the Palipehutu-FNL leadership returned to Bujumbura and signed a ceasefire on May 25, 2008. On May 30 hundreds of Palipehutu-FNL sympathizers poured into Bujumbura to welcome the return of their leader Agathon Rwasa from Tanzania. Among them were fifteen JPH members from Mugina commune in Cibitoke province, who extended their stay in Bujumbura to attend a JPH meeting in Kinama scheduled for May 31. Just after beginning their meeting, they were surrounded by men in civilian clothing armed with Kalashnikovs, pistols, grenades, and bayonets. They were “arrested” and transported to a house known to be occupied by démobilisés.[75] One, VB, recalled,

They took us to [the compound] and put us in the shower room. They started beating us, and then they took off our clothes and beat us more... They said “We are Peter’s soldiers” [an apparent reference to President Nkurunziza] while they were beating us. They accused us of going to join the rebellion. We denied this, and said we were just there for a meeting to talk about food collection, whether it should continue. We were kicked and beaten with batons and with the butts of guns. They took off all our clothes and took our phones and everything.[76]

Another, GN, told Human Rights Watch:

There were nine who came to arrest us, but when we arrived at the house there were others, a big group of them. They had pistols and Kalashnikovs, and some even had bayonets on their Kalashnikovs. They took us into the little house and started to beat us with batons and belts... One sliced me with a bayonet on the stomach, and they also slapped me in the face.

One of the bandits called the Police Commissioner to come and arrest us. Others disagreed. They said “You shouldn’t have called him; we could have done what we normally do, we could have killed these people. Now we have to wait for the police to come.”

The police finally came, took us on foot to the zone, and put us in jail.... We were in jail for three days with no food or water, and then the Chef de Zone gave us 500 Fbu for food [approximately US$0.50]. Two days later, on Friday, [BINUB human rights observers] came to see us and we were freed.[77]

The police held the victims under the purported charge of “FNL membership,” which is not a crime under Burundian law. Victims told Human Rights Watch that police denied them medical care even though they knew they had been beaten. GN said, “The police did nothing to help us. We had the impression that the police work with [the assailants].”[78] Both Human Rights Watch and BINUB documented scars resembling baton markings on the victims’ backs, and a laceration on the stomach of one.[79]

The same démobilisés were involved in the beating of a civilian Palipehutu-FNL member who was set up in an SNR gun sting in June. An acquaintance called the Palipehutu-FNL member and said he had “a gun to give to the party.” The victim agreed to meet his acquaintance at an address in Kinama to pick up the gun. He arrived at the house occupied by the démobilisés and was invited in. He recalled:

In the house were four people, with three Kalashnikovs and one R-4. They arrested me, took my phone and 80,000 Fbu[80], [and] hit me with a steel cable. While they were beating me, they asked why I collaborated with Palipehutu-FNL. I was also beaten with the butt of a gun across my head. I was beaten for about one hour.[81]

After the beating, the men telephoned the SNR. An SNR official then picked up the victim and transported him to the jail at the SNR headquarters in Bujumbura.[82] Human Rights Watch and BINUB officials visited the victim there, when they observed and photographed scars on his back.

Detention as Intimidation    

For several months after the April 2008 FNL attacks, police and other officials in provinces including Bujumbura, Bujumbura Rurale, Cankuzo, Cibitoke, Gitega, Kayanza, Mwaro, Muyinga, and Ngozi explicitly used detention as a preemptive intimidation strategy to deter potential FNL sympathizers from joining combat.[83] Some arrests were carried out by communal and provincial authorities, who had no authority to do so.

In Cibitoke province, where there was no combat, Governor Zéphirin Barutwanayo, a CNDD-FDD member, ordered the arrest of former FNL members, in his words, “to intimidate them into not [taking part in] combat in other areas.” He added, “The administration arrests people when we suspect something, to get information. We question them and they deny everything. We give them time to reflect, then question them again. You’re right that from the point of view of human rights, it’s not legal, but we have to address their political tendencies.”[84]

In June 2008 two JPH members from Kinama, Bujumbura, who had briefly joined the FNL combatants but had left when they discovered that the combatants faced a shortage of food, were pursued by police from Camp Socarti on their return home, even though there was no legal basis for arresting JPH or FNL members who had returned from the battlefield.[85] Police at Camp Socarti also detained two alleged Palipehutu-FNL members for two weeks in mid-July, violating Burundi’s criminal procedure code by not bringing them before a judicial police officer. The detainees were then transferred to the municipal jail, where they spent two more weeks before being released without charge.[86]

By late July 2008, most alleged Palipehutu-FNL members in illegal conditions of detention had been released, but occasional arbitrary arrests continued through April 2009.[87] In Mwaro province, approximately 16 Palipehutu-FNL members were held in a shipping container converted into a clandestine detention cell for two weeks in mid-November, with no access to family members, lawyers, or other visitors. A detainee who had been held in the container for 10 days, before being transferred to an official jail, notified a local human rights association of its existence.[88] Provincial Police Commissioner Fidèle Nsengiyumva denied that they had been detained in this container and refused access to Human Rights Watch, representatives of the local human rights association, and FNL leaders who were authorized by the Joint Verification and Monitoring Mechanism to look into human rights abuses against their members as part of the ceasefire implementation agreement.[89]

FDN Abuses [90] There is a long history of abuses by the army in Burundi. Since the formation of the National Defense Forces (Forces de la Défense Nationale, FDN) in 2004, which integrated government soldiers, gendarmes, and former rebels, the most notorious abuse on record is the killing of 31 civilians in Muyinga in mid-2006. The victims, most or all of them suspected of FNL involvement, were detained in a military camp before being taken out of the camp in a series of convoys, killed, and dumped in the Ruvubu River.   The FDN has since undertaken efforts to discipline soldiers responsible for abuses. Human Rights Watch received only a few reports of conduct of FDN soldiers in the course of hostilities in April and May 2008 inconsistent with human rights principles. However, in some cases soldiers did play a role in unlawful arrests in which people were also subjected to beatings and other ill-treatment. In June 2008 Human Rights Watch encountered two detainees at the municipal jail who said they had been arrested and ill-treated by soldiers.   One of them said he was arrested by a military officer in Bujumbura who recognized him as a one-time combatant, held at a military camp for four days, and beaten by soldiers with batons before being transferred into police custody. He recounted, “I was beaten the day of the arrest and the next day, on my legs, arms, stomach and back. My whole body swelled up.” A Human Rights Watch researcher documented and photographed scars on the body of a second detainee, who said she had been beaten by FDN soldiers.   BINUB human rights officials reported a case of 17 young women, all alleged JPH members, arrested and beaten by FDN troops in Isale commune, Bujumbura Rurale province, on April 29. They were subsequently freed after the intervention of a local official. No FDN soldiers were held accountable for any of the beatings.

Case Study 3: Violence in Kayogoro Commune, Makamba Province, December 2008 to January 2009

On December 4, 2008, the Palipehutu-FNL committed to changing its name in order to be eligible to register as a political party. Leaders agreed to consult with their base in order to choose a new name, while the government agreed to release “political prisoners.” Ironically, at precisely that moment new evidence of political violence and human rights abuses emerged from some of Burundi’s most remote rural communes.

Many of these incidents took place following new FNL activity in provinces far from the capital, areas that have not historically had a strong FNL affiliation.[91] In some cases, local government officials, in association with CNDD-FDD members, responded to FNL activity, some of it criminal, by carrying out human rights violations including beatings and arbitrary arrests.

On the evenings of December 4 and 5, in Kayogoro commune, Makamba province, just a few kilometers from the Tanzanian border, unknown individuals set fire to five thatched-roof structures used as “headquarters” for local-level chapters of the CNDD-FDD. Local administrative and police officials suspected the FNL. They also reported that armed FNL members visited households throughout the commune on the evening of December 5, attempting to intimidate residents into attending an FNL meeting scheduled for December 6.[92]

On the morning of December 6, a Saturday, FNL members blockaded roads in the small population center of Kibirizi. They attempted to force residents to attend their meeting, rather than participating in mandatory “communal work,” a policy instituted by President Nkurunziza but widely boycotted.[93]

About 400 individuals showed up at the meeting, held in a field near Kibirizi. Some FNL members arrived armed with spears, clubs, and machetes. PN, an FNL member, told Human Rights Watch that the weapons were intended to “assure their safety.”[94] Indeed, the stated intentions behind the meeting did not seem malicious; FNL sympathizers wished to discuss the decision to change their movement’s name.[95] However, FNL members at the meeting proceeded to detain and briefly hold hostage SK, a civilian who walked by (they suspected he was a spy) and two police officers who arrived to shut down the meeting. A third police officer escaped to seek reinforcements. When they arrived, participants fled in all directions.[96]

Back in Kibirizi center, police attempted to identify those who had been at the meeting. They rounded up 20 men and temporarily detained them in an unfinished house guarded by two police officers. A crowd of local citizens who opposed the FNL’s acts of intimidation formed around the house. Led by the communal and provincial CNDD-FDD representatives, a group of démobilisés pulled the detainees out of the house, beat them, and tied their arms behind their backs.[97]

A number of victims and witnesses reported that the Communal Administrator (a CNDD-FDD member), the police chief, and the two other police officers stood by and watched as the detainees were beaten. The detainees were eventually loaded into a police truck and transferred to a local jail.[98] Both officials denied the accusations, claiming they had arrived to find “the population” beating the detainees, and that it was their intervention that put an end to it.[99] However, the two officials provided Human Rights Watch with entirely contradictory versions of events that failed to clarify their whereabouts during the assaults.[100]

Police opened investigations into the alleged FNL members’ activities, but released them after several weeks. On the urging of Avocats Sans Frontières, police also opened an investigation into the ill-treatment of the detainees. The provincial and communal presidents of CNDD-FDD were interrogated, but not arrested. The investigation is currently ongoing.[101]

On January 11 a Burundian radio station reported that a group of armed ex-FDD combatants in Kayogoro had begun “nighttime patrols” in mid-December, visiting houses and threatening residents who were not CNDD-FDD members.[102] Human Rights Watch received subsequent reports that participants were armed with guns and grenades and carried out illegal arrests of suspects, who were detained in Bigina zone—not an official jail—before being freed or transferred to police custody.[103]

On January 18 unidentified assailants attacked the house of the Kayogoro Communal Administrator with grenades and gunshots.[104] He was the second CNDD-FDD administrator to be attacked in the course of a week (see also Case Study 4, below).[105]

Case Study 4: Violence in Nyamurenza Commune, Ngozi Province, January 2009

On the night of December 19, 2008, 19 thatched-roof structures used as meeting places by CNDD-FDD were burned in six different provinces throughout the country.[106] These simultaneous acts of symbolic violence raised local-level tensions between the CNDD-FDD and the FNL, who like in the earlier arson attacks were suspected to be responsible.[107]

On December 25 FNL members held a meeting in Nyamurenza.[108] According to the Communal Administrator, the purpose of the meeting was to discuss organizing a larger meeting to consult on the changing of the name Palipehutu-FNL.[109] However, the meeting was held at night—against the law in Burundi—and no local authorities were notified.

The Communal Administrator (a CNDD-FDD member) and the local police chief (a former FDD combatant)—interviewed separately—told Human Rights Watch that “the population” proceeded to arrest FNL members present at the meeting, which according to the police chief took place in a coffee field, and according to the administrator, took place at a private residence. Both claimed that when they arrived at the location where the meeting had allegedly taken place, they found the suspected FNL members had already been beaten and tied up by a large group of local residents.[110] The administrator and police chief took most of them to jail in the communal vehicle, though at least one victim, YI, was released because of the seriousness of his injuries: his head had been split open by a piece of wood.[111] Others were treated for their injuries at a local clinic in the morning.[112]

As in Kayogoro, the Administrator and police chief claimed to have intervened to stop the violence of the mob. According to an internal BINUB report, the police chief told BINUB investigators the beatings were so serious that had he not intervened, “local officials might have committed the irreparable.”[113]

Victims, all of whom were released from jail between December 26 and January 14, told a different story. Several said they were arrested by police along with the chef de colline and the local level head of the CNDD-FDD. They said they were taken to the Kinyovu police post, and beaten by local CNDD-FDD representatives, a local school director who is a member of CNDD-FDD, the Communal Administrator, and the police chief. According to DM, one of the victims, the beatings became so severe that at one point, “The police told the Communal Administrator to stop beating people. They said ‘If you kill people at our post, we’re the ones who will pay for it.’”[114]

The police chief, who denied being present during the beatings, did acknowledge that when he arrived, the local CNDD-FDD representatives and the school director were present among the “crowd” that had carried out the arrests. He said he took no steps to identify or arrest the individuals who had beaten the detainees, claiming he was “new” to his job and unprepared to carry out on-the-spot investigations. However, he had been in his current position for a year and had been a police officer since 2005.[115]

A local government official not implicated in the incident told a representative of the Burundian human rights organization APRODH that he had evidence supporting the victims’ version, according to which CNDD-FDD representatives, the Communal Administrator, and the police chief were all responsible for the beatings. The local official told APRODH he could not speak out publicly for fear that he would lose his post.[116]

Following the arrests, rumors began to circulate that the FNL had threatened to kill the communal CNDD-FDD president and vice-president, the Communal Administrator, the chef de colline, and the police chief in revenge for the brutal arrests. According to the Communal Administrator, on January 5, an FNL leader, CN, personally threatened communal CNDD-FDD vice-president Anthère Ntarundenga, named by victims as having played a key role in the beatings.[117] On January 7 while returning home from a meeting in Ngozi on a motorcycle Ntarundenga was shot four times outside his gate and died on the spot.[118]

Four suspects in the murder were arrested on January 9, some of them affiliated with the FNL. Two were released and two remained in custody at Ngozi jail for investigations as of this writing; two additional suspects were arrested on January 17 and detained in Nyamurenza.[119] FNL leaders in Bujumbura promised to cooperate with local authorities in identifying and turning over the perpetrators, if they are in fact FNL members.[120]

When contacted by Human Rights Watch, CN, the FNL leader cited by the Communal Administrator denied personal involvement in the case. He said he did not know the victim and had not been in Nyamurenza for a long time.[121]

Case Study 5: Violence in Nyabikere commune, Karusi Province, March 2008 and January 2009

On March 7, 2008, Libère Ntawukirumwansi, a JPH member, was killed at his home in Nyabikere commune, Karusi province. Witnesses said that in previous months the Communal Administrator, a CNDD-FDD member, had publicly stated that FNL members in the commune, including Libère who was mentioned by name, should be “put down” and “decapitated.”[122]

AR, a neighbor, told Human Rights Watch that the day before the killing, an unidentified man on a motorcycle asked her to identify Libère’s house. She did so; minutes later, the man returned with the Administrator and pointed out the house to him.[123]

According to the victim’s father,

The day of the killing, my son came home at 7 p.m. He said people had assaulted him on the way home. He fought them. One had on a police uniform. He didn’t know them. At 9 p.m., after he ate, he went to bed. Then [someone] threw a grenade over the wall into his room... When I heard the grenade, I went into my son’s room to see what happened. I found my son with his legs completely cut off.[124]

Two friends of Ntawukirumwansi provided interviews to a Bujumbura radio station after the killing, accusing the Communal Administrator of having ordered it.[125] Approached by Human Rights Watch, the Administrator refused to discuss the incident, saying, “There are no problems in Nyabikere.”[126] Police identified the Administrator as the primary suspect and transferred the case to the Gitega Prosecutor’s Office for further investigations.[127] The Administrator was not arrested, however.

According to a Nyabikere resident, in July 2008 several JPH members fled to join FNL members in the Kibira forest after continued threats from the Administrator.[128]

On December 19 unknown assailants set fire to CNDD-FDD meeting houses in Nyabikere commune, part of the series of simultaneous attacks throughout the country.[129]

On January 11, 2009, the Governor of Karusi, a CNDD-FDD member, held a meeting in Nyabikere in which he echoed the Administrator’s threats against FNL members, again citing names. Two days later, unknown individuals threw grenades at the homes of two FNL members. The following day, grenades were thrown at the CNDD-FDD Administrator’s house, injuring him and four other people. Meanwhile, the house of another FNL member was also attacked, though no one was injured.[130]

On the night of January 14 and the morning of January 15, 2009, five young men, three of them FNL members on “leave”[131], were arrested in conjunction with the attack on the Administrator’s house. The Governor and his police bodyguards carried out the arrests, even though they had no legal authority to do so. Two of the detainees were those who spoke to a radio station about their friend’s death in March 2008, and at least three of them were among those whose names had been cited by the Governor.[132] The detainees told Human Rights Watch they were beaten and tied up by the Governor and his police guard before being transferred to Karusi jail and then Gitega prison. According to one, the Governor told his police guard, “Give these imbeciles a good beating.”  Another detainee said he was spitting up blood and had difficulty seeing through his right eye.[133] At the time of writing, the Karusi prosecutor was investigating the attacks on the Administrator’s house, and the suspects arrested in relation to the attack on the Administrator remained in detention. The prosecutor did not investigate the attacks on the FNL members’ houses.[134] 

BINUB human rights officers carried out investigations in Nyabikere and largely confirmed the detainees’ version of events, although one official source told them the Governor arrested FNL members who were “in a clandestine meeting.”[135] However, the detainees said two were stopped at a vehicle checkpoint, while others were arrested at their workplaces.[136] In any case, the arrests were illegal as they were carried out by the Governor and others with no authority to do so.