Burundi president sticks to third term bid despite protests

Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza won’t back down on his bid for a third term in power, a spokesman said Tuesday, dismissing calls by protesters who have clashed with police for three days.
At least five people have died since clashes broke out Sunday after the ruling CNDD-FDD party, which has been accused of intimidating opponents, designated Nkurunziza its candidate for the presidential election to be held in the central African nation on June 26.
                                 
“We won’t back down, that is out of the question,” presidential communications chief Willy Nyamitwe told AFP, blaming demonstrators for the violence and accusing some of them of carrying guns.

With “this path of violence they have chosen, we recall the darkest years of our history”, he said.

Amid international concern, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday dispatched his envoy Said Djinnit to Burundi, urging “all sides to reject violence and avoid using inflammatory language or hate speech”.

Opposition figures and rights groups say Nkurunziza’s attempt to stay in power goes against the constitution as well as the peace deal that ended a civil war in 2006.

Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in the 13-year conflict, which divided the country along ethnic lines, between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority.

The government has banned all protests and deployed large numbers of police and troops onto the streets, firing live ammunition, tear gas and water cannons, with hundreds of stone-throwing protesters arrested.

Some of those killed were shot at close range, while the police said at least 37 officers have been wounded.

Police brought more reinforcements on to the streets on Tuesday, but the demonstrators remained defiant—although most were contained in side streets and blocked from the capital’s centre.

“We wanted to demonstrate peacefully in the city centre, but police prevented us,” said Fidele, one of those who took to the streets. “So we erected barricades to prevent the police from coming into the neighbourhood.”

Police chief Andre Ndayambaje appealed for people not to turn “protests into a rebellion.”

The main independent radio station has been shut down.

“We are protesting because they are shutting down news stations, they are arresting journalists. The country is falling apart!” one protestor testified.

But senior opposition leader Charles Nditije said the protest action would continue until President Nkurunziza agrees not to run for re-election.

“He will have no other choice than to give it up because we are determined to go all the way,” he said.