UN reports gang-rapes, mass graves in Burundi
The United Nations has reported cases of sexual violence against women by security forces in Burundi after searching the houses of opposition supporters.
In a statement on Friday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said 13 cases of sexual harassment of women have been documented with a pattern of security forces allegedly entering the victims’ houses, separating the women and raping or gang-raping them.
The UN rights office is also analyzing satellite images to investigate witness reports of at least nine mass graves in and around Bujumbura, Mairie Province.
The statement said the mass graves includes one in a military camp that contains more than 100 bodies in total, all of them reportedly killed on December 11, 2015.
“The 11 December attacks against three military camps and the large-scale human rights violations that occurred in their immediate aftermath appear to have triggered new and extremely disturbing patterns of violations,” Zeid said.
“All the alarm signals, including the increasing ethnic dimension of the crisis, are flashing red,” the statement added.
An impoverished and landlocked country in the heart of the troubled Great Lakes region of Central Africa, Burundi plunged into turmoil in late April, when Pierre Nkurunziza first announced his bid to run for a third consecutive five-year term.
Nkurunziza won an outright victory in the presidential election after grabbing 69.41 percent of the votes. His third term has widely been censured as unconstitutional by the country’s opposition.
The decision was denounced by the opposition, which argued the move was contrary to the constitution, which only allows two successive terms, and the 2000 Arusha Agreement that paved the way for ending the civil war in the country.
Some 200 people have been killed in Burundi since the outbreak of violence in April.
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