March 17 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Amnesty International (AI), Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Burundi Human Rights Initiative (BHRI) have jointly called for the release of five prominent Burundian humanitarian activists detained this week “arbitrarily and baselessly”, amid of what NGOs alert as a progressive deterioration of the Human Rights situation in the African country.
The five activists –Sonia Ndikumasabo, Prosper Runyange, Sylvana Inamahoro, Audace Havyarimana and Marie Emerusabe–, arrested last Tuesday, are part of two major national humanitarian groups, such as the Burundi Association of Women Lawyers (AFJB). and the Association for Peace and the Promotion of Human Rights (APDH), and are accused of a crime of rebellion for their links with a foreign international organization, according to the charge sheet collected by the NGOs.
Burundian legislation, since 2017, has imposed severe restrictions on the activities of these groups in the country and some NGOs have decided to suspend their operations after denouncing a regulation that, among other aspects, forced them to disclose the ethnic group to which their cooperators belonged. Burundians despite the climate of intercommunal violence that pervades the country.
The Burundian government, and specifically its Security Minister, Martin Niterese, has defended the law as an instrument against the possible arrival of funds for terrorist groups in the country through these organizations.
Within their petition, the NGOs express their doubts about the openness expressed by the current Burundian president, Evariste Ndayishimiye, successor in 2020 of more than 15 years of unopposed government of Pierre Nkurunziza. Despite the president’s promises, “the government’s hostility towards what was at the time a thriving civil and informational society is still perceived,” they lamented.
The NGOs specify that these arrests represent a step back from the expectations of freedom unleashed with the release, in December, of former activist and lawyer Tony Germain Nkina after more than two years in prison for alleged collaboration with an armed group, a charge never proven. .
“The arrests of these activists, as well as the seriousness of the charges brought against them, point to a deteriorating climate for Burundi’s independent civil society,” said HRW Africa researcher Clémentine de Montjoye. “As (the government) begins to persecute collaboration with international groups as a crime and a threat to the security of the state, the little space left for civil society in Burundi will end up completely restricted,” she warned.
