UN accuses leaders of humanity crimes
GENEVA: For more than two years, critics of President Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi and independent activists have fallen victim to homicide, have disappeared into secret detention centres or have escaped to neighbouring countries, recounting torture and rape at the hands of the military and the police.
Now, United Nations human rights investigators say they believe Burundi’s top leaders and state security agencies committed crimes against humanity.
A panel of investigators set up by the UN Human Rights Council a year ago said on Monday that it delivered a list of suspects to the UN High Commissioner for human rights and was giving the Security Council another list of people it said should face sanctions. It urged the International Criminal Court to open an inquiry.
As the panel prepares to present its findings this month to the 47-member Human Rights Council, which includes Burundi, its report also raises questions about whether the country should be allowed to remain on the council.
“We were struck by the scale and the brutality of the violations,” Fatsah Ouguergouz, an Algerian jurist who led the three-person panel, said in a statement. The panel interviewed more than 500 witnesses over several months.
Mr Ouguergouz did not name Mr Nkurunziza as a suspect, but the panel attributed the crimes to “the highest levels of the state”. It also described a parallel system of government in which major decisions, including some that led to severe human rights violations, were made by the president and a small entourage of people close to him.
“The president is the spider in the centre of this parallel system web,” Francoise Hampson, a member of the panel, said in an interview. Mr Nkurunziza also controlled the state intelligence agency and other government organisations, and was therefore responsible for their conduct, she added.
The panel focused on events since April 2015, when Mr Nkurunziza announced his intention to run for a third term — a violation of Burundi’s Constitution — leading to political unrest and a failed coup the next month.
It also resulted in a ferocious crackdown by security forces on anyone suspected of opposition, causing what the panel called a pervasive climate of fear. Mr Ouguergouz said it was not possible to assess the number of victims, but the panel believes that hundreds of people were executed, thousands were detained and more than 400,000 Burundians fled the country.
The panel found that the abuses “were frequently of an extremely cruel nature”, and in many instances inflicted serious physical and psychological trauma on victims, most of whom were young men suspected of anti-government activities or opposition sympathies.
Perpetrators identified by the panel include high-level officials of the country’s National Intelligence Services and the national police force, military officials and members of Imbonerakure, the ruling party’s youth league.