Bring back our soldiers, Burundian activist begs

 Arusha. A Burundi activist wants the country’s troops on a peace-keeping mission in Somalia and other countries to be repatriated in order to maintain peace at home.

“Soldiers must be repartiated to protect their own country,” Mr Vital Nshimirimana told a public hearing on the Burundi petition before the East African Legislative Assembly (Eala).

He said it’s a pity that the country was bleeding at a time some of its capable soldiers were on peacekeep­ing missions outside.

He added that the soldiers had a much more important task at home than outside.

Burundi troops are also among the international peace-keeping force in the Central African Republic (CAR).

Mr Nshimirimana took an hour detailing how Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza’s extension of ten­ure for another five-year term had plunged the country into a bloody chaos.

He broke down and sobbed when narrating the extra-judicial killings through video at the Eala plenary chambers where the petition filed by six human rights groups in the region is being heard since Wednesday.

Mr Nshimirimana said he does not see an ethnic divide between the Hutu and Tutsi as the main problem facing Burundi today as was the case in the past.

“The problem lay with how some people have exploited the situation to break the tenets of the Arusha Accord”, he said, noting that it was unfortunate many opposition politi­cians and civil society members have been associated the coup attempt against the sitting government on May 13th last year.

For some minutes, the Eala cham­bers fell silent when Mr Nshmirimana was forced to stop his narration of the brutal killings mainly in the streets of the capital Bujumbura as tears rolled down his cheeks. Most of the vic­tims, according to the video displays, had their hands and legs tied and are believed to have been eliminated through extra-judicial killings blamed on the security forces and militia associated with the rulling party.