Protests over leader’s third-term bid continue
BUJUMBURA: Small groups of protesters shouted slogans against Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza and his bid for a third term in office yesterday, resuming street demonstrations days after he survived an attempted coup.
The atmosphere was tense as soldiers deployed in the east African nation’s capital, Bujumbura, where more than 20 people were killed in nearly three weeks of unrest before last week’s failed putsch, an eyewitness said.
Residents reported heavy overnight gunfire in some parts of the city, and one body was found in the morning, although it was not immediately clear who was involved.
The police, reviled by the protesters as pro-Nkurunziza, were mostly absent, leaving internal security in the hands of the army.
Nkurunziza’s bid for another five years in power – which both the generals who announced the coup last Wednesday and the protesters say is unconstitutional – has plunged Burundi into its worst crisis since an ethnically-charged civil war ended in 2005.
More than 100 000 refugees have fled to neighbouring Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania, fearing ethnic tensions could escalate and engulf the region, as happened after the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
Demonstrators said they were still determined to see Nkurunziza back down. “This protest will not end until he himself says that he is not vying for a third term,” Gentil Shokomba said.
“We want peace in Burundi, and we are tired of war.”
Although Nkurunziza’s position appears to be stronger after the rump of the army rallied round him, the bid for power by sacked former intelligence chief Godefroid Niyombare, who is now behind bars, has done nothing to resolve the political dispute.
Divisions in the military, the central pillar of post-war unity and reconstruction, have heightened fears of descent into ethnic conflict between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority.
Yesterday, Kenya called for the presidential elections scheduled for June 26 to be postponed to allow for a “conducive environment”, but said they still had to be held before the end of August, when Nkurunziza’s term officially ends.
On Sunday, at his first public appearance since the coup attempt, Nkurunziza made no reference to the political crisis, saying instead that he was “preoccupied” by the threat from Somali militant group al-Shabaab. – Reuters