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In Burundi, President Pierre Nkurunziza’s Push for Power Is Marked by Bloodshed
Marc Santora, New York Times
20 July 2015
Image: Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
BUJUMBURA, Burundi — The rebel fighter lay grievously wounded in the mud along a river in central Burundi.
With enemy soldiers bearing down, he thought it was the end.
But then crocodiles set upon the advancing soldiers. He was saved. It was divine will, he would later say.
It is a story the rebel, Pierre Nkurunziza, has told often since that day in 2001, to explain how he knew he was the one who could save this country after years of ethnic strife and civil war.
Despite being sentenced to death in absentia for abuses by a Burundian court, Mr. Nkurunziza indeed went on to become president after the war ended. But now, after 10 years in office, diplomats, critics and protesters say his single-minded drive to hold on to power is setting his country on a path toward tyranny and more bloodshed.
As the presidential election on Tuesday neared, there were few rallies and stump speeches. There were no campaign posters on the roadsides and no debates.’
Instead, the lead up to the vote has been marked by scores of deaths, street protests that were violently shut down, the silencing of independent news media, a failed coup attempt, nightly shootings and grenade attacks and, last week, another threat of rebellion from military leaders who broke with the president.
CreditTyler Hicks/The New York Times
What happens in Burundi can quickly draw in the countries in Africa’s Great Lakes region. Many experts fear that the violence could escalate swiftly, setting off a chain of events that could ripple across Rwanda and other neighboring countries.
Burundi has a similar ethnic makeup as Rwanda, and the civil war pitting Hutus against Tutsis here was intertwined with the genocide that left more than 800,000 people dead in Rwanda, most killed in a burst of violence in 1994.
Mr. Nkurunziza’s opponents accuse him of disregarding the term limits established in Burundi’s Constitution and the peace agreement that ended the civil war, which claimed about 300,000 lives in this country.
The president fires back that his opponents know they cannot win an election, so they have turned to the gun.
Speaking before hundreds of loyal supporters on Friday, he said that “the international community has been misled by people who have used lies” to try to prevent these elections.
They have failed, he said, rallying his supporters to vote in an election that has been boycotted by every major opposition group.
With other African leaders facing term limits themselves, many are closely watching how things play out here.
On Monday, the police patrolled opposition neighborhoods in shows of force, dismantling hastily erected roadblocks and sending a clear message that dissent would not be tolerated. The presidential security force made rounds of its own, making sure the police were following orders.
Since April, about 170,000 people have fled Burundi to neighboring countries. United Nations monitors found that they were escaping “precise and targeted campaigns of intimidation and terror.”
“What the people of Burundi are telling us is that they fear their country is on the brink of devastating violence,” Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights, recently told a gathering of the Security Council.
The violence plays out in the shadows, after nightfall in tin and mud homes in neighborhoods across the city.
“Every night there is shooting,” said Amissi, 45, who declined to give his last name for fear of retaliation. He described how people in police uniforms came to his neighborhood last week and killed two men without giving a reason.
In another neighborhood, two brothers who residents said were known protest organizers were found shot dead, their hands bound.
Not far away, a crowd gathered last week to see the remains of a man whose arms had been blown off by a grenade. He was killed at midnight, witnesses said, but his body was on the street until the middle of the morning.
The American government has joined the European Union, the United Nations and the African Union in condemning the governing party, saying it is acting in defiance of the peace accord that ended the war. They have also warned the opposition against trying to take power by force.
Mr. Nkurunziza (pronounced (n)koo-roon-ZEE-zah) seems to be betting that if he can get through the elections — whose results are not in doubt — he will be in a position of strength as international attention fades.
While the current struggle is largely about power and governance, a cause that has united many protesters across ethnic lines, the gravest fear is that the opposing sides will again manipulate old resentments and plunge the region back into conflict.
The failure of the West to stem the bloodshed decades ago was cited byPresident Obama when he declared in 2011 that “preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.”
The turmoil in Burundi is testing that resolve.
Mr. Obama established the Atrocities Prevention Board, and one of the first items on its agenda was the escalating tension in Burundi as early signs of the crisis were already coming into focus.
The United States dedicated $7 million to the purpose. An adviser was sent to the American Embassy in Burundi to monitor “early warning signals of violence” and engage local leaders. But critics have said the administration’s efforts have been halfhearted and confused.
“The atrocity prevention panel seems to me to be the type of thing done for appearances,” said Nicholas Hanlon, a regional expert at the Center for Security Policy. “Burundi tells us that the administration was clearly not engaged.”
There have been endless rounds of negotiations, and part of the problem, observers say, is that the opposition is disorganized and has contributed to the tensions.
Last week, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda came to Burundi’s capital to lead a last-ditch effort to find a compromise.
The trip was poisoned from the start when Mr. Museveni chose to go to the Rwandan capital before driving to Bujumbura. The Burundi government contends that Rwanda is working for its downfall.
Then Mr. Museveni arrived in a heavily armored caravan and had a brief photo op with Mr. Nkurunziza before meeting opposition leaders.
Despite governing for nearly three decades and getting rid of term limits in his own country, the Ugandan leader lectured all the parties on the dangers of chasing power.
He left without a resolution. On Sunday, Burundi government officials did not show up for a new round of talks.
Mr. Nkurunziza made his intention to hold on to power clear from the start. When citizens took to the streets to demonstrate against another term, they were met with police gunfire.
About 100 people have been killed, according to local human rights activists.
In May, the former head of the country’s intelligence service, Gen. Godefroid Niyombare, attempted to topple the government but failed. Last week, one of his co-conspirators, Gen. Leonard Ngendakumana, accused the government of stoking ethnic tensions. He threatened a rebellion to protect the country.
“This situation can lead to a genocide,” he was quoted as saying, perhaps hoping to rally other nations to action by invoking the specter of mass slaughter.
Willy Nyamitwe, a senior adviser to the president, blamed the opposition for the recent unrest, and he defended stopping the protests.
“When people come and break the rules and are burning cars and burning houses, it is just to go and secure those areas,” he said.
The crackdown seems to have worked. In recent weeks there have been virtually no street protests. Mr. Nkurunziza, meanwhile, has continued to offer himself as a champion of the common man.
Nearly every day, he can be found in the early evening playing soccer, often with his favored Hallelujah F.C. team.
Western officials said they had made little headway with Mr. Nkurunziza.
“You can be talking directly to him and he will just be looking away, like you are not there,” one Western official said, discussing the negotiations on the condition of anonymity.
While interviews with dozens of citizens over the past month seem to confirm the opinion of experts that Burundi has come a long way in healing ethnic divisions, the traumas of the past are not forgotten.
Mr. Nkurunziza, like many of those in power and in the opposition, was directly shaped by the country’s troubles.
He was only a schoolboy when his father, a prominent Hutu politician, was murdered in a 1972 massacre. So many people currently ruling the country lost relatives during that period that they are often referred to as “the orphans of ’72.”
Mr. Nkurunziza’s campaign is infused with religious imagery, and his official biography says he is “an accomplished ‘born again’ Christian.” Supporters often compare him to the biblical character David, the giant slayer who became king.
As a young man, Mr. Nkurunziza had aspirations of joining the army, but his options were limited because of ethnic quotas in the army. Instead, he studied sport and physical education.
After civil war enveloped his country in 1993, he narrowly escaped death twice — first when the university where he was teaching was attacked and later as a rebel soldier.
During the war, he was accused of leading men who ambushed and killed Tutsi civilians and was sentenced to death in absentia by a Burundian court.
As part of the peace agreement, the one now under threat, he was granted immunity.
Copyright 2015 New York Times
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