World must act on Burundi unrest: Activist

Press TV has conducted an interview with Jan Oberg, the founder of transnational.org in Lund, Sweden, to discuss the ongoing political unrest in Burundi.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Jan Oberg, I am looking at your blog, if I am correct to categorize it as such, you had some interesting comments made there on Burundi. Now we have a human crisis at our hands. At the same time what are your thoughts about the current president and the way that his politics are received in this country? Should he step down? Are you for or against him?   

Oberg: I do not think I have any power of that but I have been in and out of the country and worked with peace issues and education in Burundi and have been an advisor also to a former foreign minister, so I know the country through 13 years and I must say this is a very wrong step by the president, who I actually also have met rather quickly after he became president, and he did a lot of good things in the beginning but now power has gone to his head, in my view.

There is nobody international who supports his idea that he should have a third term and he has had ten years to show that he could help or his body and his leadership could help Burundi to be in a better social economic situation and that has also not been the case. So five more years with him against the constitution is going to create havoc. I do not know what will be left of Burundi if that happens.

Secondly, it is a very, very authoritarian response to popular democratic protest by civil society. It really grieves my heart to see.

Press TV: It is interesting one of the statements he made in one of the entries that I saw there was the fact that Rwanda gets mentioned a hundred times but then Burundi did not get mentioned that many times in the news. It is like all of a sudden Burundi came on to the scene. What do you think that is?

Oberg: It is a thing I have been saying for 12 years. This is outrageous that Rwanda has gotten all the books, the Hollywood movies, the investments etc. whereas Burundi showed good progress towards reconciliation among Hutus and Tutsis.  

Secondly, there has absolutely never been living up to the pledges made for development aid by the international community. The only organization that has really done something good with very small resources in Burundi has been the various UN missions. I am impressed by what they have done but they have been very small and the government never liked them to be there.

But what is really, really I think appalling at this moment is to see internationals, diplomats and others living Burundi but the international community is doing absolutely nothing to prevent what could become a new civil war or even worse, a genocide again. We know this is a place where these things can happen, there is no excuse for not acting. Everybody is bringing their hands, everybody is saying that urge the parties to show restraint etc.

It is bla bla bla by the international community because this country does not have oil or gas or something like that. In that case, there would have been a humanitarian intervention already.

AHK/NN

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