Burundi’s Main Opposition Party Says About 200 Members Detained
Burundi’s Main Opposition Party Says About 200 Members Detained
Burundi’s opposition National Congress for Freedom party said security agencies are holding about 200 of its leaders and members amid escalating violence ahead of elections next year.
Vandals destroyed party headquarters and 50 of its offices across the East African nation, according to Simeon Bizimungu, secretary general for the party known by the French acronym CNL and led by former rebel leader Agathon Rwasa. In the past few days party officials around the country have been arrested arbitrarily, beaten and even killed, he said in an interview without giving details.
Last weekend, three people were killed by armed men in a bar in the commercial capital Bujumbura, police spokesman Moise Nkurunziza said Sunday on national radio. An opposition official was shot dead on Tuesday in the northern Kayanza Province by unknown people, banned civil society organization FORSC Burundi said on Twitter.
Intimidation of suspected opposition supporters has been rife since a constitutional referendum in May last year and the abuses have increased since CNL was registered in February, according to Human Rights Watch.
“The alarming violence is fueled by the impunity that prevails in Burundi, and the cases we documented are likely only the tip of the iceberg,” HRW Central Africa Director Lewis Mudge said in a report published in June.
Local administrators and members of a youth league associated with the ruling party have been “terrorizing the population with almost no scrutiny, due to the absence of independent media and civil society,” he said.
President Pierre Nkurunziza is expected to step down having initially intended to stand for re-election in a move that sparked a crisis in which as many as 1,200 people were killed, according to rights groups, and led to European Union sanctions.
To contact the reporter on this story: Desire Nimubona in Bujumbura at dnimubona@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Malingha at dmalingha@bloomberg.net, Helen Nyambura, Hilton Shone
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