Burundi: Thousands Flee To Rwanda As Protests Grip Capital Before June Poll

More than 22,000 Burundians flee to Rwanda in a month amid violence provoked by President Pierre Nkurunziza’s bid for third term as president.

Thousands of people have crossed from Burundi into neighbouring Rwanda over the past week, fleeing intimidation by youth militia who are reportedly targeting rural areas as protests grip the capital, Bujumbura, over the president’s decision to stand for a third term in June’s presidential elections.

According to reports, the authorities have cut mobile access to social media services such as WhatsApp and Facebook. Private radio stations have been shut down and youth militia are marking the homes of those opposed to the president. With protests in the capital ongoing, many fear more violence in a country that endured vicious ethnic violence during its 12-year civil war.

The protests have also raised fears that future violence could cause ripples in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where armed groups still prey on vulnerable communities in the resource-rich east bordering Burundi.

On Saturday, President Pierre Nkurunziza was nominated to stand again by his ruling CNDD-FDD party. Furious at what they perceived as a breach of the constitution and of the peace accord that ended the civil war, protesters took to the streets of Bujumbura and clashed with police. The protests have continued this week.

Demonstrators burned tyres, built roadblocks and threw rocks at security forces, who responded with tear gas, water cannon and live bullets, according to Human Rights Watch. Burundi’s Red Cross said at least six people had been killed in Bujumbura.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, sent his special envoy for the Great Lakes region, Said Djinnit, to Burundi, while the US assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labour, Tom Malinowski, travelled to the country on Wednesday to “urge all actors to reject violence to safeguard the gains Burundi and its people have achieved since 2005”.

Britain has urged its citizens to avoid all but the most essential travel to the country, with some areas designated no-go zones, including Cibitoke and Bubanza provinces, north of Bujumbura.

Britain’s Foreign Office called for Burundi’s government to allow private radio stations to resume broadcasts, and to let citizens protest peacefully.

Nkurunziza’s supporters argue that his first term, which started in 2005, does not count because he was appointed by parliament rather than elected. His opponents say another term would be in breach of the constitution and the peace deal to end the 1993-2005 civil war, in which 300,000 people were killed.

Nkurunziza is not alone among African leaders in seeking to extend his term of office by changing or ignoring constitutional limits. When Blaise Compaoré, the former president of Burkina Faso, tried to end term limits and extend his 27-year rule in 2014, he was forced to resign after massive street protests.

In Burundi, violence – and intimidation by the pro-government youth militia, the feared Imbonerakure youth wing of the CNDD-FDD party – has driven thousands of people from their homes. Up to 5,000 people crossed into Rwanda over the weekend, although the number crossing daily has dropped slightly since then. On Tuesday, 1,281 people crossed.

More than 22,000 people, mainly women and children, have fled into Rwanda since the beginning of April, according to the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. Nearly 4,000 people have crossed from Burundi into the DRC.

Martina Pomeroy, a spokeswoman for the UNHCR in Rwanda, said most of those fleeing came from the northern province of Kirundo, adding that there had been obstacles to people crossing in recent days, with reports that some were having to pay bribes on the Burundi side.

“Mostly what we hear is that people were feeling threatened. We haven’t encountered people who were victims of violence themselves, but they were threatened by youth militia, who support the current regime … people said they used different intimidation tactics, like they would mark your house and say, ‘We are coming for you tonight’,” Pomeroy said.

“People would go and sleep in the bush and then come to Rwanda on foot. There are also some reports of people saying that people they knew had disappeared,” she said, adding that those fleeing said they were targeted because of their perceived opposition to the government and president.

The UNHCR’s two main reception centres near the border have been completely overwhelmed, Pomeroy said, prompting the agency to move up to 1,500 Burundians a day to a new refugee camp in Mahama, in south-east Rwanda.

Stephan Klingebiel, head of department at the German Development Institute, said the political crisis was exacerbating frustrations caused by extreme poverty and a perception that a small elite was benefiting from an expected “peace dividend” in a country where democracy is but a “fragile facade”.

Klingebiel, who is carrying out research in Rwanda, said he had heard the youth militia were very active in rural areas.

“Burundi was never a very peaceful and stable place but over the last couple of months it really has accumulated, and everyone was expecting that if Nkurunziza ran for a third term, things would get worse. There is a high risk that we are at the brink of a severe and difficult situation.”

He noted that there was also an ethnic dimension to the tensions, with ethnicity still seen as a factor in economic and political success.

During the civil war, Nkurunziza was among the mainly Hutu rebels fighting the army, which was then dominated by the Tutsi minority.

Burundi is one of the world’s poorest countries and most of its population of nearly 10 million people are subsistence farmers. It is heavily dependent on aid, with just under half its planned budget for 2015 due to be funded by international donors, according to a plan approved by parliament.