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Burundi: Death Squad in Country - an Embarrassing Issue
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Burundi Réalités (Bujumbura)
5 March 2008
Posted to the web 5 March 2008
Bujumbura
The leader of Charles Mukasi's wing of Uprona, Sinarinzi Gabriel, has reiterated his demand for the set of the International Criminal Tribunal for Burundi.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Burundi remains the sole way the get out of the mess that the country is plunged into," said Gabriel Sinarinzi in a press conference that he held today to react to the letter that forty-six members of the parliament wrote to the UN Secretary-General last week.
The letter witnessed the state of dilapidation of the Arusha false process", Sinarinzi said and added that â-šUprona party is very sensitive to such alert to international community but deplores that the demand concerns only security and political assistance while the signatories are part of a major coalition on the power."
Many Burundians have considered the Uprona wing of Charles Mukasi to assume a hardline position. This wing has always rejected the Arusha peace process that has brought about the current government on the grounds that former President Pierre Buyoya should not have negotiated with people who had conceived and executed a genocide targeting mainly Tutsis. Many parties have combated this idea. However, crimes that the ruling party has committed over the last two years or so which have remained unpunished have started to give credibility to Mukasi's wing of Uprona which preaches the rule of law and the eradication of impunity, although they failed to practice them during its past years in power. Many analysts agree that the 1993 crisis has roots in the wrongs committed since independence which Uprona failed to correct accordingly.
Last week, forty-six members of the parliament wrote a letter to the UN Secretary-General requesting political and security assistance after various sources revealed the existence of a death squad that the CNDD-FDD led government has set up to silence and eliminate political opponents.
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The government and ruling party has denied that such a death squad exists. In the wake of the letter to the UN Secretary-General, Ms Hafsa Mossi, the spokesperson for the government, said that â-š the government has no plan to eliminate political opponents" and added that â-šwe are in a democracy: we cannot refute the existence of the opposition", inviting them to bring the case to justice.
In early January 2008, with the surge of violence in the capital city of Bujumbura, rumours spread that the ruling party has set up a pro-government militia. The leader of Movement for Security and Development, Alexis Sinduhije, offered his help in tracking down members of the militia. The situation took a turn for the worse when Hon Basabose revealed that the ruling party is planning to eliminate him along with Alice Nzomukunda, Frodebu and CNDD political opponents.
While Uprona fears that Burundi may fall under the UN administration as a response to the worries of the forty-six MP's, the existence of the death squad has become a source of embarrassment for the ruling party and the government which have run short of ways to handle this situation which has started to backfire.
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