Burundi set to withdraw from ICC
Move comes after UN report on atrocities, warning of ‘genocide’ PRAYER FOR PROTECTION
ARICAN NEWS AGENCY
THE Burundian Ambassador to South Africa, Isaie Ntirizoshira, yesterday said that his country would be informing the UN shortly of its withdrawal from the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“The steps to withdraw from the ICC are already under way. President Pierre Nkurunziza signed legislation on Tuesday which will allow the Republic of Burundi to withdraw from the Rome statute, the ICC’s founding treaty,” Ntirizoshira said in an interview yesterday.
On October 12, Burundian parliamentarians voted overwhelmingly in favour of the move in defiance of the international community, following the release of a highly critical UN report in September detailing atrocities amid a warning of “genocide”.
In April, the ICC opened a preliminary investigation into Burundi, focusing on killings, imprison- ment, torture, rape and other sexual violence, as well as enforced disappearances.
“The UN and several international human rights organisations, including Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW), have also made false allegations against Burundi,” said Ntirizoshira.
“Their accusations are baseless and politically motivated. This is the reason why we are withdrawing from the ICC,” the ambassador said.
According to the UN’s report last month, at least 564 people were executed in Burundi after violence broke out across the country in April 2015, following Nkurunziza’s announcement he would seek a third term in office.
Human rights organisations have suggested that the figure is possibly higher – approaching 1 000 people killed.
The UN report further accused Bujumbura of widespread and systemic patterns of violations, suggesting that they were deliberate and the result of conscious decisions, before adding that the government had the power to stop them.
However, Ntirizoshira slammed the UN report stating that Burundi’s military forces had been involved in legitimate military operations.
“Armed gunmen who refused to accept Burundi’s democratically elected government tried to violently overthrow it in an attempted coup,” he said.
“When the army fought back to restore law and order, these gunmen, and the groups backing them – having failed in their coup attempt – then went and made false accusations to various Western organisations.”
Withdrawing from the ICC is a lengthy and bureaucratic process which will take approximately a year, making Burundi the first government ever to withdraw from the international court.
Some member states of have accused the ICC of being biased against the continent and targeting Africa disproportionately while ignoring abuses elsewhere on the globe.
Nine out of 10 cases under investigation by ICC prosecutors are African. BEIJING: Two Chinese astronauts arrived, entered and saluted the folks back home from the Tiangong-2 space laboratory, a state media broadcast showed yesterday.
The Shenzhou-11 spacecraft docked with Tiangong-2 on Tuesday at an altitude of 393km after blasting off on Monday from the Jiuquan space centre, a militaryoperated facility on the edge of the Gobi Desert.
Astronauts Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong will spend the next 30 days conducting experiments before returning to Earth around November 14. – dpa