Burundi Update: Voices From Burundi

Voices From Burundi: Share Your Experiences

26 June 2015

 

Image: In May, Burundi’s army held back protesters in the capital, Bujumbura, during a demonstration against the president’s bid for a third term.CreditJennifer Huxta/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Burundians describe lives under siege: self-imposed curfews, a local news media blackout, fears of being jailed or shot, and worries that their country, haunted by memories of a devastating civil war, is veering towardeconomic collapse.

Nearly 70 people have died and hundreds have been injured since President Pierre Nkurunziza’s announcement on April 25 that he would run for a third term. Months of protests and a failed coup attempt have led more than 127,000 people to flee to neighboring countries.

With legislative elections scheduled for Monday and presidential elections for July 15, The New York Times has been asking Burundians how the upheaval is affecting them. The following is a selection of experiences, edited and condensed for clarity.

Ketty Nivyabandi, 36, a poet, led an all-female street movement in the capital, Bujumbura, after Mr. Nkurunziza announced his plans to run for a third term.

“I was worried that the protests would take a violent turn, and as women we could bring something more peaceful and much more powerful,” she said.

But on May 13, just before the coup attempt, the police attacked her group using tear gas and water cannons, she said.

Ms. Nivyabandi and other activists turned off their phones out of fear that the government was monitoring them. Mobile access to social networks like WhatsApp and Facebook was temporarily blocked. Ms. Nivyabandi said the protesters were in danger of being branded coup supporters.

Ms. Nivyabandi also fled Burundi in 1993, when civil war erupted after soldiers from the country’s Tutsi minority assassinated the first president elected from the Hutu majority. That bloody struggle led to some 300,000 deaths before a new Constitution was adopted in 2005. Ms. Nivyabandi is worried that the government is exploiting ethnic tensions, especially among young people.

“You very much feel like you are in a war zone,” she said, describing the difficulty of getting to work and school amid a plummeting economy. “There is a wave blowing across Africa where a new generation demands greatness. We want excellence. We want leaders who deliver, and we want our laws to be upholded.”

Dennis Karera, 33, is the head of the Imbonerakure, the governing party’s youth wing, which has been accused of much of the brutality surrounding the crisis.

“So many things are said about us, but no one verifies the information,” Mr. Karera said after returning from the funeral of a member of his group. He said the member was killed by protesters when they put a burning tire around his neck. “If Imbonerakure had weapons, they would have defended themselves,” Mr. Karera said.

Imbonerakure means “those who see far” in Kirundi. Its members are mostly men ages 18 to 35, including demobilized soldiers. Human rights groups have accused them of abuses including intimidation, beatings and unlawful killings.

Mr. Karera rejected these allegations. “If an Imbonerakure is found guilty of wrongdoing, he should be held accountable according to the law,” he said. But he questioned how anyone could tell whether it was Imbonerakure members who carried out attacks, saying they had no distinguishing features. Protesters say that members of the Imbonerakure have conducted brutal attacks while dressed as police officers.

Mr. Karera called the group’s members “agents of development” and expressed confidence that free and fair elections would take place.

 

Image: This week alone, there were grenade attacks in the capital, Bujumbura; the vice president defected to Belgium;, and roughly 200 students sought refuge by crawling under the gates and scaling the walls of the United States Embassy.CreditMarco Longari/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Peter Nsengigumva, 27, is a student protester at the University of Burundi in Bujumbura, where he says the number of demonstrators has dwindled because of fear of police brutality.

Life for students of all ages has come to a standstill. “We have fear during day and during night,” he said, mentioning stories of protesters’ being shot and jailed. “If you are protesting and if you meet the police, automatically, he will shoot you.”

Mr. Nsengigumva said this was his first time speaking against the president, whose quest for a third term he calls unconstitutional. Supporters of the president, by contrast, argue that Mr. Nkurunziza’s first term does not count toward the constitutional limit because he was installed by Parliament, not by a general election.

Like many other protesters, Mr. Nsengigumva does not believe that ethnic tensions are the root of the violence. “We have a solidarity in demonstrating,” he said.

His family is seeking a way out but cannot get the necessary papers to leave the country. He fears a massacre will take place during elections.

“The population has expressed its emotions through protests,” he said, “so it’s an evolution in the country even if we are going to fail politically.”

Teddy Mazina, 43, is a freelance journalist and photographer documenting human rights violations in Burundi.

“We know what we are facing,” he said. “It’s about our freedom and democracy.” He added, “If we leave, we’ll abandon the country.”

Mr. Mazina described the situation as “very scary” and said he was living in a “local blackout.” “We have government militias that can chase journalists and civil society members, whoever is not with them,” he said. By his estimate, about 70 percent of local journalists have fled. (The Voice of America correspondent Diane Nininahazwe told the Committee to Protect Journalists that a grenade was thrown at her home in the capital on Wednesday, a day after she received an anonymous death threat.)

“My biggest frustration is that I can’t go in the field where people are demonstrating or being arrested, because I’m a target as well,” Mr. Mazina said. He pieces together information from a network of people. Like Ms. Nivyabandi, he feels that the government is exploiting ethnic tensions. “Demonstrators are mixed,” he said. “They live together, they eat together, they die together.”

“It is very hard for us to stay neutral when you see people die,” he admitted.

Mr. Mazina returned to Burundi from Belgium in 2007 to help rebuild the country after the civil war. “Having an independent radios and media for 10 years have educated people about their dignity and rights,” he said.

Like many people who oppose the president’s decision to seek a third term, Mr. Mazina mentioned the Arusha peace agreement of 2000, mediated by the former South African president Nelson Mandela to end the civil war. “We cannot accept the last act of Nelson Mandela to be kidnapped by a small group of people and the president, who wants to only remain in power for himself,” he said.

A young woman working at a development organization based in the capital spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared retribution for publicly criticizing the government. She described self-imposed neighborhood curfews and an economic paralysis that is affecting her family’s ability to buy food and continue working.

“We are emotionally drained,” she said in a phone interview from the capital. “We don’t even know tomorrow if we’ll still be alive.”

After the coup attempt, she said, “there was no other choice but to stay home.” Commuting to work became too difficult, and food had to be bought a week or two in advance.

Supporters of Mr. Nkurunziza shut down private broadcasters in the capital that were a source of independent news for much of the population. Information about the protests was pieced together from international news outlets and social media. When the government blocked the Internet, the woman used VPN to circumvent it. But she was nervous about how she communicated online because, she said, intimidation by government supporters was widespread. She knew of friends who had been beaten by forces allied with the president for posting unfavorable messages on Twitter and WhatsApp.

“How do we survive in such an atmosphere?” she asked.

The young woman only recently returned to Burundi, where she has lived on and off with her mother, who lost her entire family in the Rwandan genocide. Her family, she said, has been discreetly giving food to the protesters but has not become involved directly for fear of reprisal by government supporters.

When asked if she would flee again, she replied, “How do you survive in Rwanda, and for how long?” Like many others, she said she felt abandoned by the international community, but she welcomed the decision by Belgium, Burundi’s biggest donor, to cut off aid.

 

Copyright 2015 New York Times


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