Recent events suggest Pierre Nkurunziza cherishes his ambition more than the blood of the Burundians. His desire to desperately cling on to power as the country’s president has left hundreds dead. In what seems like a cover up for several atrocities that have been committed in this regard, the Nkurunziza-led government has now refused and barred United Nations (UN) investigators from the country. Could it be that the president is nervous about the fact that these investigations would eventually find him guilty?
In a letter signed by Burundi’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Alain Aime Nyamitwe, on Monday, he said three UN investigators including Pablo de Greiff of Colombia, Christof Heyns of South Africa, and Maya Sahli-Fadel of Algeria were no longer welcome in the country.
Pablo de Greiff is UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence; Christof Heyns is a former UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions (Chair) and Maya Sahli-Fadel is a Special Rapporteur on Refugees, Asylum-seekers, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons, African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
On September 20, 2016, the three investigators compiled a report and urged the United Nations to take strong action in the light of gross, widespread and systemic human rights violations in Burundi. The report was later presented by the experts of the UN Independent Investigation on Burundi to the Human Rights Council on September 27.
Efforts by the United Nations to monitor the security situation in Burundi have been met with resistance by the government. In August, the Security Council of the United Nations requested that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon establish a United Nations police component in Burundi. However, the Burundian government continues to fail to comply with the council’s resolution.
Apparently perturbed by the interest of international bodies in investigating the ugly incidents that have resulted from Nkurunziza’s refusal to leave office, Burundi’s Vice-President Gaston Sindimwo announced last week that the country is planning to pull out of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The threat to withdraw from the ICC comes barely six months after the court’s prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda opened a preliminary examination into the situation in Burundi. Bensouda said her office had reviewed reports “detailing acts of killing, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, as well as cases of enforced disappearances.”
So far, about 500 Burundians have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced as a result of the crisis. Even with that, the government has not expressed willingness to address the causes. Rather, Nkurunziza’s government has continued to be hostile to investigators of his ambition-motivated human rights abuses.
Since the Burundian government think those allegations by the UN Human Rights investigators are false, then, it needs not bar them from the country. Instead, the country should come out boldly to publicly refute those claims with superior evidence.
