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Burundi: Demobilised Combatants Demonstrate Before the Office of the RPA
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Burundi Réalités (Bujumbura)
12 February 2008
Posted to the web 12 February 2008
Bujumbura
About 26 people from Kanyosha, including five demobilised combatants and their families, demonstrated before the office of the Radio Publique Africaine (African Public Radio) station this morning. They claim that this station has endangered their lives by giving their names in its reports about the distribution of weapons to demobilised combatants.
These demonstrators initially said that they are jobless, but later acknowledged that they work in security sector in the city of Bujumbura. The chief of security in Bujumbura, Col. Yengayenge, seems to admit this as he acknowledged that these combatants work as his informants. The demonstrators, who had refused to yield to the orders of the police, agreed to return back when the prosecutor of the city of Bujumbura, Stanislas Nimpagaritse, arrived.
The director of RPA station, Mr. Emmanuel Nsabimana, says that this demonstration comes as part of a campaign of intimidation against journalists in general and RPA in particular. Mr Nsabimana says this campaign aims at silencing the station after it investigated the involvement of men in uniforms and the presidential police in the growing trend of violence. He adds that on 4th February those who demonstrated filed a charge against RPA with the National Council for Communication. Carbon copies of the charge were addressed to the head of state, the defence minister, the information minister and the General Public Prosecutor.
RPA radio station recently aired a report on agents of the National Intelligence services who distributed weapons to a number of demobilised combatants living in Kanyosha commune. According to the report, the aim of this rearmament was to hunt down FNL combatants and political opponents of the ruling party. RPA gave the names of those that the national intelligence services have rearmed.
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In many quarters of the city demobilised combatants work as informants for the National Intelligence Services. The police make use of their help in various roundups that they recently carried out in Kinama urban commune.
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