Across the street from the Obama Phone Store in downtown Bujumbura, a disarmament billboard advertises a young Burundian woman with her hands over her mouth, an AK47 to her head, eyes wide open.
The image is prominent in spots around town, but it tastes uncunningly sarcastic for guns is what’s going around here these days.
Burundi, one of the poorest countries in the world, home to a one-month old peace, forgotten about as a Rwanda without a genocide, is having its most outspoken saviours, a league of few in this tiny vibrant capital on the banks of Lake Tanganyika, silenced; mouths covered like in the poster.
While officialdom glorifies the laying down of arms by the National Liberation Front as a 16-year civil war comes to an end, federal court judges have been kidnapped, civil society members stabbed to death and political-party members shot in the head.
The plasma of the country’s political parties, former rebels used as grassroots organisers, are switching sides with fatal consequences.
The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the circumstances surrounding the murder of anti-corruption activist and civil society pioneer Ernest Manirumva in early April.
Meanwhile, Alexi Sinduhije, a former journalist and poster-child of a new resistance to the government that transcends ethnicity in a land ruined by ethnicity, is accusing the government of pushing false charges on him to put him back in prison before the elections.
The numbers are tiny — five murders since January that local and international watchdogs say are without a doubt politically-motivated.
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1 comment:
A comment sent to the Author of the Article:I hate the pessimism used by Mr. Khron in this article. Burundi has struggled to be where it is and the struggle will go on as long as human beings remain alive. Burundi has issues; however, I would have loved Mr. Khron to mention at least one positive aspect of the Burundian politics. For example the just appointed electoral commission…The war, with all its victims, was a “mal necessaire” (a necessary evil) as we say it in French. But you can’t get it unless you are part of it! Oh, by the way Sinduhije’s party is not a movement for “security” but for “solidarity”…keep up with updates…no wonder you don’t know who to believe, you probably don’t know who to listen to! Burundi has a free press!
Which country on the continent has successfully enacted a gun control policy that satisfies everyone? Burundi just demobilized thousands of ex fighters…tell us how to operate a miracle in less than a mouth…
There were two possibilities out of the conflict in Burundi: The Rwandan style; where a mighty power wins and kicks out everyone who doesn’t share political convictions, or the Burundian way where people struggle for a common ground no matter how hard it is to try. As a Burundian I am pretty comfortable with the latter…because eventually we will overcome all the odds. (In this example, Rwanda is used as a mere example because of its geographic, social and political proximity)
Nkurunziza and his government were not prepared to assume leadership positions; they were prepared to fight in the bush: This is why guerilla forms of governance still haunt them to the state house and the parliament. I grant the fact that they are incompetent and that we should have more qualified leaders in the next election. But we should give them credit for what they have achieved! These are not times for negativity. There are flaws in the justice system (as well as many other aspects of the Burundian political system), but the fact that Burundians in Bujumbura rural, who have not slept in their homes for the past 44 years (Yes from 1965), can now go back to their farms without the fear of being killed, raped or robed is an irresistible fact…
Sinduhije, like many of us feel the injustice, but it is not through negativity that they will change the country; it is though inspiring Burundians to do and be their best. Otherwise they can fall in the same mistake Nkurunziza felt in. Burundi will overcome, it is not a free ride…but I am optimistic, people should be optimistic….
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