The election of a new government in Burundi has not brought an end to human rights violations by all sides in the country’s brutal civil war, Human Rights Watch said today.
Human Rights Watch has documented torture and summary executions in the ongoing war in a new report, “Burundi: Missteps at a Crucial Moment.”
“The armed conflict in Burundi is no excuse for torture and summary execution,” said Alison Des Forges, senior adviser to the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch. “The government and the rebels alike must abide by their obligations under international law to treat anyone in their custody humanely.”
The report documents cases where Burundian soldiers summarily executed five civilians and tortured others whom they suspected of being collaborators with the last active rebel group, the National Liberation Forces (FNL).
Human Rights Watch also describes cases where agents of the intelligence service, known as the Documentation Nationale, detained more than fifty civilians without regard for legal procedures and tortured some of them while they were in custody. Intelligence agents apprehended civilians and suspected rebels in Kinama, an area where the FNL is sometimes active and where candidates from the Front for Democracy in Burundi (Frodebu) recently defeated contenders from the National Council for the Defense of Democracy—Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) in local elections. Four of the detained are recently elected Frodebu officials or their spouses. Witnesses in Kinama report that demobilized FDD combatants are now armed and acting as informants for the Documentation Nationale.
The CNDD-FDD won local and national elections in many areas of Burundi and dominates the government, installed in August. The newly elected president, Pierre Nkurunziza, is a member of the CNDD-FDD, and General Adolphe Nshimirimana, director of the intelligence service, was formerly a FDD combatant.
Armed hostilities continue between the rebel FNL and the new government, with skirmishes occurring around the capital of Bujumbura. The report documents FNL killings of four civilians who held government posts or who were thought by rebels to be otherwise tied to the authorities. Two of the victims were decapitated and a third had his arm cut off, mutilations occasionally practiced by the FNL on their victims.
Human Rights Watch called on the international community, particularly members of the United Nations Security Council who are traveling to the region today, to urge the Burundian government to follow both Burundian and international law and to ensure U.N. human rights monitors access to detainees suspected of FNL collaboration.
“When the new government took power in August, it promised to protect human rights,” said Des Forges. “But in some parts of the country it is not delivering on that promise.”
