Burundi's descent into hell

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said Burundi's brutal regime has set the small central African country on a "descent into hell", warning of the risk of genocide.

In a 200-page report, the FIDH documented how state-sponsored violence and opposing rebel groups have perpetuated a cycle of violence. More than 1,000 people have died and up to 800 are missing. Some 8,000 are being held for political reasons and more than 300,000 people have fled the country

"The crackdown by the security services and the (ruling party's youth wing) Imbonerakure... aims primarily at retaining power through any and all means," the report said. "All the criteria and conditions for the perpetrating of genocide are in place," the report said, listing "ideology, intent, security institutions... identifying populations to be eliminated, and the using of historical justifications."

Anschaire Nikoyagize, of the rights group, ITEKA League,said in a statement: "The crimes of the regime have become systematic... Crimes against humanity are occurring and there is a risk of genocide."

Burundi suffered a brutal civil war from 1993 until 2006 between majority Hutus and minority Tutsis, which claimed an estimated 300,000 lives.

A failed coup in May 2015 was the "breaking point" after which the authorities adopted a "logic of systematic repression", the report said. After Nkurunziza's re-election in July 2015, the repression deepened, it said, citing targeted killings and massive arbitrary detentions. In addition, ethnic Hutus in power "have sought to turn a political crisis into an ethnic one, equating 'opponents' and 'rebels' with Tutsis," the report warned.

Election Day Notes From 'Burundi Diary'

BUJUMBURA, 21 July 2015 (IRIN) - The presidential election finally took place today. Across the country, according to state radio and other stations still on the air, things are fine. For me, what’s important isn’t so much this election. I am more worried about people’s security. I wonder about people who can’t sleep well because they have fled or because strangers come into their homes. Last night I heard grenades going off and gunshots in several parts of Bujumbura, including Kamenge, an area which had been calm up to now. One resident there told me, “We also heard the music at night.” It made me realise that people have become so used to gunfire.
There are few independent or private media journalists left in this country. It’s hard to find reliable information. After the explosions, the place was abuzz with text messages and phone calls: “What’s happening? Who is shooting? Why?" Some people think journalists know everything about what’s going on. We don’t, even if information often comes first from us and is later confirmed by the authorities. The police have yet to explain the who and why of the shooting.
This morning I woke up as normal. I called a colleague from the Iwacu Press Group, the only private media company still functioning since the attacks on the press that followed an aborted coup against President Pierre Nkurunziza in May. We’re to work together, which is great; otherwise there’s a risk of being kidnapped, and then who would tell our family? That’s how it is now. 
I didn’t see a lot of people voting today while visiting polling stations in the Bujumbura districts of Taba, Kamenge, Gihosa, Rohero and Nyakabiga. Outside the capital, according to media reports, turnout was quite high. But in the city, according to the chairman of the electoral commission, voters only turned up in dribs and drabs. This was no surprise: turnout for the parliamentary elections held on 29 June was below 30 percent.
In some polling stations I visited, I saw voters trying to remove the indelible ink from their finger with lemon juice. Others put oil on their finger before voting so that when the ink was applied, it came off easily. It seems they didn't want to be clearly identified as having voted.

This morning there was a spate of criticism of the election. Belgium, our former colonial power, and the United States, both said the polls lacked credibility and shouldn’t be held.
We’ve heard all this before. People deplore the closure of political space, and then what? I wouldn’t give my life to a politician but I believe in the future of this country and its youth. I believe if you give people a chance they will do better. What I and other young people miss now is a chance for stability. We’ve had problems for a long time. We’ve been burying our loved ones for a long time. We don’t really know those who have bereaved us because there have been no credible investigations.
I am not going to have more than I had before because of these elections.
Burundians like me expected stability from credible elections. Whatever happens, we need stability. That’s all. For now, this stability is absent. Can you conceive of 161,000 refugees? It’s shocking to call family members in the province of Nyanza Lac and find their phones switched off. Why? They’ve fled the country, school children included. They finished the school year but missed their exams and left for camps in Tanzania. Tanzania has become another home for many in my family. I don’t know if these elections will bring them back or other Burundians suffering in camps in Congo and Rwanda.

from here and for previous diary entries, see here 

As Burundi Goes To The Polls, Journalism Is A High Risk Job

For the families of journalists like me in Burundi, life has been hell these past few weeks, especially since street protests began in April against the president’s plans to run for a third term.

Children haven’t been to school since then. Every day my son asks me when he do will do his homework. He remembers that the demonstrations started as he come home one Friday with a homework assignment. One day I had to ask his headmaster to open the school gates for a few minutes just so he could go in and feel some relief. It didn’t work.

The official discourse is reassuring, but the economic, political and social decline continues. Our families don’t understand how we can choose this career. “This job is death,” my sister told me recently.

“Papa, did they shoot at your computer,” my son asked me once. My boy likes computers. Many journalists had their computers riddled with bullets after private media houses were attacked in the wake of a failed coup bid in May.

“Son, it’s time to do something else. I’m afraid for you,” said my mother in a tearful phone conversation recently.

For journalists working for private or foreign media, it’s as if our work has become a crime.

But think the whole community is under threat. Today it’s journalists; tomorrow it could be shopkeepers, or doctors.

As a journalist and citizen I had always hoped that what’s happening now would not come to pass in Burundi. Events seem to evoke the old demons of destruction and violence. (Civil war ravaged Burundi between 1993 and 2005.)  Even before today’s legislative polls, the elections had already claimed victims: tens of thousands of people have fled the country and many have also taken flight inside.

Ever since the coup bid, reporters have gone into hiding, including myself as well as colleagues from both private and state media.  I personally chose not to leave Burundi for a neighbouring country, but around 50 journalists have fled and some are living in refugee camps.

The closure of private media “is a major setback for freedom of expression, because there are no more voices that contradict those of the government, no more independent sources about what is happening now,” Jean Regis Nduwimana, a professor of communications, told me.

He added that he feared the country was at risk of falling prey to “a quasi-totalitarian regime which only wants to hear its own voice heard on state media.”

These days moving around with recording devices, laptops or smart phones is very risky. Staying at home all the time is impossible but travel has to be done with great caution. Many journalists say they are followed. Some have had their houses attacked. The most recent case of this was of Voice of America reporter Dianne Nininahazwe, who was also followed.

We journalists expected private media to be reopened before polling began. But it seems we are going to have to wait for that, nobody knows for how long.

Over the past week I saw men lying on the ground bleeding after grenades were thrown from car windows. Being a journalist now is to live the pain of others and to forget one’s own. We have all lost loved ones in the past but the wheels of history in Burundi are still turning and the same mistakes are being made. We continue to shed tears for our friends and family. People are still burying their loved ones.

Our country’s greatest curse is that people never try to walk in others’ shoes.

I’ve heard government officials describe those protesting as bringers of bad luck. This has gradually become a conflict although the government says 99.9 percent of the country is calm. But it’s not normal for people to flee a country when elections come around. Can you imagine more than 100,000 refugees? Children separated from their parents, not going to school, who can no longer sleep, who are in camps, at risk of cholera and malnutrition?

About 10 days after the failed coup, journalists working for foreign media and visiting correspondents were summoned by the National Communications Council. I arrived late. I had considered not showing up at all; I thought I might find myself behind bars. This place makes you paranoid. At the meeting, we were warned, accused of only covering the demonstrations when the ruling party was in full campaigning mode, of encouraging the protestors, of only talking to refugees when 10 million people had remained in Burundi.

Once when I tried to interview a witness to an attack he refused to talk to me, saying he didn’t want to die.

Gunfire and grenade blasts rang out in parts of Bujumbura on Saturday night, and again on Sunday night. For hours, we had no idea who was shooting or why. State radio announced three people had been killed on Saturday night. The police spokesman was mysteriously unreachable.

All this makes for a fearful climate. I can see no cause for calm. Burundi’s former partners have pulled out, as have election observers.

Gunfire in a country the government says is calm and the withdrawal of the opposition from the race, and widespread calls from the international community to delay the polls are signs that we are on a slippery slope and that that the return will be hard.

by Désiré Nimubona from here

The Burundi Debacle

Burundi is facing its worst turmoil since the 12-year civil war ended in 2005. Over 100,000 have left Burundi in recent weeks, escaping violence sparked by President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to run for a third term. The biggest concern now is that the decade of peace Burundi has enjoyed could unravel, prompting fresh waves of refugees and spreading conflict to neighbouring countries. “The stakes for Burundi but also for the wider region are high,” Sarah Jackson, deputy regional director of Amnesty International, told the seminar.

Cholera has infected about 3,000 people in Tanzania, the UN has said, where many Burundians have fled seeking refuge from their country's unrest. Up to 400 new cases are being seen each day, the UN's refugee agency said. The epidemic has killed 31 people - two locals and 29 Burundian refugees, the UN's statement said.

A UN spokesman called the cholera outbreak a "new, worrying, and growing additional complication".

The UN described the cramped, dirty conditions in Tanzania's lakeside Kagunga area, where many of the migrants are staying, as "dire". It is trying to evacuate refugees from the region but warns the situation may get worse before it gets better. 20,000 are waiting on the Tanzanian island of Kagunga for transport across Lake Tanganyika to a camp at Nyarangusu. Conditions on the island are deplorable, “with village leaders expressing concerns regarding increasing tension and potential friction between the local population and asylum-seekers, according to UNHCR. The majority of those fleeing Burundi are women and children, including a large number of unaccompanied children, spokesman Adrian Edwards said. The refugee agency predicts that the number of people fleeing Burundi could double in the next six months. UNHCR is now contemplating a worst-case scenario that could see 300,000 flee. Tanzania has played host to vast numbers of refugees for decades and recently granted many citizenship. But recent years have seen its welcoming stance wane. In 2012, it ended the refugee status of almost 40,000 Burundians – on the grounds that their country was peaceful – and obliged them to return.

Rwanda’s president has asserted that fighters from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu rebel group based in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have crossed into Burundi “and might get involved directly” in the unrest there. Remarks by Kagame critical of his Burundian counterpart’s handling of the situation have been interpreted as a veiled threat to send troops across the border.

“The last thing we want to see is for the Burundi crisis to develop to the point where the Rwandan government feels it has the need or the legitimacy to intervene,” said Jolanda Bouka, an analyst at Institute for Security Studies (ISS).

Writing in Kenya’s Nation newspaper, Nic Cheeseman, a specialist in sub-Saharan African politics at Oxford University, warned that “the memory of civil war and how to mount effective rebellions against the state is still fresh. This combination is a recipe for political disorder and, worse, a resumption of civil conflict."

The New York-based think tank Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect said the situation in Burundi remained very volatile and spoke of “catastrophic consequences” if the power vacuum wasn’t resolved soon.

“Paramount among these is the risk that any further escalation or militarisation of the current crisis could result in the commission of mass atrocity crimes against vulnerable civilians. Immediate steps must therefore be taken by all sides to de-escalate tensions, stabilise the country and protect the gains of more than a decade of peacebuilding,” it said.

http://www.irinnews.org/report/101497/what-now-for-burundi-five-key-risks

Burundi About to Boil Over?

"There's no shortage of fear around here," said Pierre-Claver Mbonimpa Burundi’s leading rights activist. In May, Mbonimpa was thrown in jail for broadcasting widespread allegations that the government was distributing weapons to youths and training a faction in the badlands of nearby eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Gentle-mannered and close to retirement, Mbonimpa said it was only an international outcry and prison illness that freed him, and he's not allowed to leave the capital.

Marauding members of the Imbonerakure - a youth wing allied to Burundi's ruling CNDD-FDD party are accused of beating, extorting and killing civilians. Benefiting from complete impunity, some armed and militarised elements within the most popular youth party have become a weapon that the state can wield as it cracks down on critics ahead of elections in May. Rights activists say leaders only quelled violence because of international donors who raised the alarm over rights reports in a country that relies heavily on foreign aid. New rules banning people from jogging or meeting in unauthorised groups - even at the central market where people used to gossip on benches - show levels of state paranoia. People are not keen to talk amid reports of Imbonerakure beating police and taking over local governments in some areas. The few people accused of violent crimes have also been released from custody within weeks to seek revenge on victims who denounced them. Burundi's Interior Minister Edouard Nduwimana dismissed a leaked UN cable documenting a case of two military men distributing arms and uniforms to the Imbonerakure youth militia and former soldiers as the work of an unsteady employee.

Despite having a plethora of opposition parties, they are seen as weak and disorganised in a country where politics is viewed as a gravy train and public policy an afterthought. The irony of the current crackdown is that many say the CNDD-FDD would easily win next year's elections, despite rights groups crying foul over President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to run for a third term, claiming it violates the constitution.

Last week, the UN scaled down its operation in Burundi. "The UN got pushed out because it actually did its job," said a leading journalist who requested anonymity to protect himself from reprisals - rare praise in a region where peacekeepers are often accused of selling civilian protection down the river to save themselves from official backlashes.

In a region where police states or rebellions cause enormous and expensive international headaches, Burundi benefits from neighbours and backers keen on maintaining a semi-stable status quo. "There's the reasoning that you should favour stability to avoid a return to chaos and violence that will make us invest more to lift the country out of strife," said one diplomat. He added: "That means you're comforting a government in its authoritarian practices to control the country". He warned if "manipulating" the ballot box doesn't work, the government will "play all its cards" to win this election by activating "this new tool; these youths that they've trained as killers".

"Everything here has been bought; land, votes and the people's conscience," said Gabriel Rufyiri, who heads Burundi's main anti-corruption organisation. His predecessor was killed in 2009, and the government refused the US FBI's help to investigate. Rufyiri said one-third of Burundi's budget goes into individuals' pockets. The success of army generals accused of trafficking minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo or officials allowing friends to have tax benefits through kickbacks is visible on the prettiest hillsides. Next year, Burundi's elite "are going to use everything they've got" to maintain their grip on the purse strings, Rufyiri said.

Activists talk of "an invisible circle" of army generals who call the shots. The diplomat said this cabal has organised and trained youths to take orders that Burundi's state security forces would refuse. "The police can stop the opposition demonstrations, but you can't ask them to go and kill people," he said.  "If the state's in control of the army, why has it recruited, armed and secretly trained youths? It's to make them do what the other security organs can't."

Now, in one of the world's most densely populated countries, 80 percent of local court cases are over land. Stunting from malnutrition affects, almost 60 percent of the population and corruption keeps them poor. With a pressure cooker of local tensions, disputes easily turn deadly.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/12/burundi-no-shortage-fear-around-here-2014122371044747308.html

Planning Violations, Not Natural Disaster, Cause Of Deaths In Burundi

Building and planning code violations were largely to blame for the deaths - amid torrential rain earlier this month - of dozens of people in Burundi’s capital, and the destruction there of 3,500 homes, according to a leading urban planning expert who noted that numerous reports had warned of just such an eventuality.

Children accounted for most of the 68 deaths on 10 February in a city that is surrounded by very steep hills. Some 15,000 people have been left homeless and are now staying in five centres around the city where the government and Red Cross are providing food and other essentials.

“Most of the victims had built their homes in the beds of major water courses, whereas construction is forbidden in these locations,” Bernard Sindayihebura, a professor at the University of Bujumbura, told IRIN. Much of the recent construction in the city was haphazard and did not follow regulations, he said.

And while quarry businesses have since 1993 been obliged by law to rehabilitate areas worked, including by planting trees, the professor noted that the once-forested hillsides around the capital are bare, exploited anarchically with no effort made to fill holes dug.

Another problem he noted was that some drains become narrower rather than wider as they descend the steep hillsides and this, coupled with maintenance failures, led to catastrophic overflows into inhabited areas when there was heavy rain.

Deputy Mayor of Bujumbura Remy Barampama said the drains had been badly designed, in some places resembling funnels which were “incapable of coping with all the water from the mountains and households of the city”.

Some of the destroyed houses had been built on “loose soil mainly composed of deposits left by streams or previous floods”, which was washed away during the latest heavy rains, taking the houses with it, explained Sindayihebura.

“With these kinds of slopes, no habitation, no building or settlement should be at the bottom [of the hill]. If there is a settlement we are inviting death at times of heavy rain,” he said.

“If there are floods today, landslides are possible tomorrow,” he added, explaining that floodwaters had gouged out ravines and that further flooding should be expected in Bujumbura, notably near the shores of Lake Tanganyika, the depth of which, he said, had increased by a full two metres since 2005.

from here

 Yet another 'natural disaster' exacerbated by poor planning and official disregard for violations of regulations. Rich world, poor world - similar stories continue to be told and it always seems to be connected to someone, somewhere making a profit, legally or illegally.
JS

 

Food Waste in the UK

Britain is throwing away half of all the food produced on farms .

About 20 million tons of food is thrown out each year: equivalent to half of the food import needs for the whole of Africa.

Last week Japan pledged more than 300 million yen in food aid for Burundi, in Africa, where malnutrition runs at 44 per cent. The food thrown away in the UK last year would meet the equivalent of Burundi's shortages more than 40 times over.

The United Nation's World Food Programme has admitted it might have to ration food aid in response to rocketing global food prices that have soared by more than 75 per cent since their lows of 2000, jumping by more than a fifth last year alone, prompting riots in some countries.

Tim Lang, food policy professor at City University, said: "Waste is a fundamental part of the food economy and it will be hard to get rid of. I do not see how simply appealing to morals will do it."

The need for profit takes precedence over the peoples need for food .