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We're honoured today to have an expert on the human rights situation in Burundi with us. I will briefly introduce Ketty, and then I'll leave the rest of our intervention to her.
Good afternoon, and thank you for this opportunity to address the Subcommittee on International Human Rights, as part of its study on the human rights situation in Burundi.
Following a period of overt repression in the second half of 2015, associated with the discovery of dead bodies in the streets of Bujumbura on a near-daily basis, the crisis in Burundi has moved into a new, less overtly violent phase, with a climate of fear taking hold in the capital and elsewhere in the country.
With serious human rights violations ongoing, Amnesty International calls on Canada to maintain and strengthen its scrutiny of the situation in Burundi.
We are honoured today to have Burundian women's human rights defender, former journalist, and poet Ketty Nivyabandi present today to speak on behalf of Amnesty International. Ketty recently arrived in Canada as a refugee. She is now living here with her daughters in Ottawa, and she can speak first-hand about the human rights situation in Burundi and about its particular impacts on women and girls.
I'll pass this over to you, Ketty.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, for this opportunity to address the committee on a very serious matter and that is Burundi.
I'll start with an overview of the human rights situation.
Amnesty International continues to receive regular reports of serious human rights violations, including targeted killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, unlawful detention, torture, and other ill treatment. People are continuing to flee Burundi, with more than 300,000 refugees now seeking protection in neighbouring countries.
As the Office of the High Commission for Human Rights has reported, there has been a considerable increase in the use of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatments or punishment in Burundi in connection with the current political crisis.
Amnesty International has documented acts of torture and other ill-treatments perpetrated by the national intelligence services and the police, as well as abuses committed by members of the Imbonerakure, which is the youth wing of the ruling party. Methods documented have included verbal abuse; beating with branches, iron bars, and police batons; stamping on victims; hanging weights from their testicles; making them sit in acid; threatening them with death; and denying medical care. Victims have also described the use of electric shocks and having water poured into their ears.
The Imbonerakure continue to carry out serious abuses, and Amnesty International still receives testimony of the Imbonerakure's presence during arrests, as well as of campaigns of intimidation carried out by them against those who refuse to join the ruling party, beatings, killings, and attempted killings. Refugees report that the Imbonerakure have beaten people fleeing from Burundi into Tanzania. Many refugees who Amnesty International has spoken with have cited fear of, and intimidation by, the Imbonerakure among their reasons for leaving the country.
Civil society and the independent media, once counterweights to government, have been decimated and continue to come under attack. Over the last few months, Burundian journalists, members of social media groups, and schoolchildren have been arrested for exercising their right to freedom of expression. Even those outside the country continue to be targeted for reprisals. In July, a Burundian prosecutor requested that four lawyers who contributed to the civil society report to the UN committee against torture in advance of its review of Burundi be struck off the professional register.
I have experienced this crackdown on peaceful civil society activism. In May 2015, I led hundreds of women into the streets of Bujumbura in a peaceful march against the president’s third term. Women, young and old, walked peacefully with white handkerchiefs in hand presenting no threat and exercising our constitutional and human right to assemble freely. The national police used tear gas and water cannons—ordinarily reserved for massive, violent crowds—against us. Some of the women were injured and collapsed on the street as the police continued to harass us for hours.
Shortly after the march, when the police began to systematically arrest and silence all leading dissenting voices, I was forced to go into hiding and flee Burundi. Many of the women I peacefully protested with were not as fortunate. Christa Bénigne Irakoze, mother of a five-year-old boy, has been missing since December 29. She was last seen being arrested in Bujumbura by a member of the armed forces. Although her whereabouts remain unknown, witness accounts report that she was detained and endured torture, including rape, and then executed. Women and girls continue to be subjected to abductions and sexual violence, including gang rapes, both in Burundi and as they flee the country.
Victims of human rights violations in Burundi continue to face serious challenges in accessing justice. The journalist Esdras Ndikumana was detained for several hours and tortured in August 2015 after he was arrested at the scene of the killing of General Adolphe Nshimirimana where he had gone to report. Despite a press release from the president's office promising an investigation, there has been little progress in the case.
In October 2015, Esdras Ndikumana introduced a formal complaint at the supreme court against unnamed intelligence service agents, but the prosecutor asked him to provide the names of those who beat him before starting the investigation.
Esdras Ndikumana's case is illustrative of the obstacles to obtaining justice for torture in Burundi, even where the victim is proactively seeking justice and has stated commitments from the highest level of government.
In this context of a lack of truth, justice, and reparation for serious human rights violations, monitoring and public reporting by international and regional observers is essential. In addition to ongoing monitoring by the UN and African Union observers, of which roughly one-third of the agreed 200 human rights monitors and military experts are so far in place, several other investigative missions have taken place. These include the recent UN independent investigation on Burundi and the fact-finding mission of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights that visited the country in December 2015. These initiatives are important and must be built upon.
Measures taken to date unfortunately appear to have displaced, rather than deterred, the commission of human rights violations. This is illustrated clearly by the disturbing new trend of enforced disappearance building on extrajudicial killings and the associated regular discovery of bodies in the streets. A strengthened response is required to confront the current trend of violations. This should include increased documentation capacity on the ground with a view to ensuring justice for victims. Last week's UN Human Rights Council adoption of a resolution creating a commission of inquiry to investigate human rights abuses in Burundi since April 2015, with all necessary resources—including ballistics, forensics, sexual violence, and gender-based violence expertise—is a concrete example of the initiatives needed as part of a strengthened response to human rights violations in Burundi.
I'll now just conclude with a few recommendations from Amnesty.
As the subcommittee moves forward with its study of the human rights situation in Burundi, Amnesty International urges Canada to press the following recommendations with Burundian authorities: respect the rights to freedom of expression, assembly, and association; ratify and fully implement the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance; implement the optional protocol to the convention against torture, including establishment of an independent, effective, and well-resourced national mechanism to prevent torture; conduct impartial and independent investigations into all incidents of targeted killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, unlawful detention, torture, and other ill-treatment, and ensure that those found responsible for these acts are held to account in fair trials; and co-operate fully with the commission of inquiry, which will thoroughly investigate human rights violations in Burundi since April 2015, allowing its members full and unhindered access.
Finally, we encourage Canada to work with other governments to ensure the rights of peaceful civil society activists in Burundi are respected, protected, and fulfilled. That should include providing active support to civil society, including publicly when activists request it; seeking access to prisons; monitoring trials; providing financial support to human rights defenders; and responding quickly when activists require urgent evacuation from the country.
Measures taken should include strong support for activities of particularly marginalized activists, including women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex rights defenders.
Thank you for your interest in addressing the grave human rights situation in Burundi.
First, I want to thank the members of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights for inviting me to appear before them. I also want to thank you for taking the time to focus on the human rights situation in Burundi. I think the initiative is very worthwhile and it may help resolve the current crisis in Burundi.
First, the human rights situation in Burundi is a major concern. Nevertheless, before I start speaking at length about the current situation, I think it's very important—in order to give the committee an in-depth understanding of the situation and information to make it easier to read—to provide context.
Since becoming independent in 1962, Burundi has faced cyclical crises that have resulted in widespread and systematic human rights violations. This was the case in 1965, 1969, 1972, 1988, 1993 and during the years that followed. Some of these episodes were characterized by crimes so serious that certain authorities described them as crimes against humanity, genocide or war crimes. The negotiators of the Arusha peace accords reached that conclusion, and I had the honour of being one of the negotiators at the time.
All these episodes resulted in victims from both major segments of the Burundi population, the Hutus and the Tutsis. However, it's widely accepted that most victims of the various atrocities, which reached a climax in 1972, were Hutus. Despite the extensive human rights violations in Burundi during the various episodes listed earlier, it should be noted that the crimes remain completely unpunished. The victims have never received justice, and their resentment, grief and frustration have never been appeased. The reason is that, essentially, the institutions responsible for protecting human rights abandoned their mission and were exploited by those in power.
It's important to note that, up until today, this impunity for past crimes has become an incentive to commit crimes. The perpetrators know they won't need to worry about facing justice. It's therefore very important to keep the impunity phenomenon in perspective. I think it constitutes a major determining factor that justifies what is happening right now, despite, of course, the reporting and condemnation of the crimes being committed.
In August 2000, the political protagonists adopted the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi. The agreement served to establish shared power between the major segments of the population, the Hutus and the Tutsis. However, it should also be noted that the agreement established the principle of inclusion for groups that had been marginalized, namely, women and the Batwa community. In addition, the agreement set the stage for transitional injustice that would have enabled those responsible for past crimes to be held accountable. Unfortunately, it's apparent that the transitional justice system is broken and is moving slowly.
As a result of the agreement and other agreements subsequently signed with the armed groups, elections were organized in 2005 and again in 2010. In addition, the security organs have been reformed and restructured based on the terms of the Arusha agreement, and each ethnic group is represented equally. Also, balance has been established at the administration level. Hutus hold 60% of positions, and Tutsis hold 40% of positions. That balance is being mostly maintained today, although the current government wants to challenge the Arusha agreement as it stands. So, what is the current situation?
As I said, it is very worrisome. Several corroborating sources, including Amnesty International, other intergovernmental organizations such as the African Union, particularly the African Commission on Human Rights and Peoples, and the United Nations, conducted investigations that have led to the same conclusion. Serious and systematic violations of human rights are happening today. People are summarily executed without any semblance of justice. They are tortured—Ms. Nivyabandi has already talked about this at great length. People are abducted and disappear.
At the same time, we must go beyond the issue of civil and political rights to also look at the issue of socio-economic rights. Socio-economic rights are non-existent. For example, recently, almost 80,000 schoolchildren were expelled from the education system because they failed the test to move up to the next level of basic education. They don’t have the opportunity to repeat the year. This is a significant violation of those children’s right to education.
It is important to note that the current human rights situation is actually the result of people challenging the third term of the President of the Republic, Pierre Nkurunziza. As soon as his candidacy was announced in April 2015, people, mainly in Bujumbura, the capital, took to the streets to protest against that decision. In response to this sudden and certainly unusual uprising regarding democratic learning in Burundi, the police sometimes used excessive force against the protesters. Some of the protesters’ actions and blunders can also be denounced.
Furthermore, things basically got complicated on May 13, 2015, with the attempted coup that failed. From then on, the government took a tougher stand and began to suppress all those involved in some way in the protests. It conflated the failed coup with the protests that had taken place before. The government cleverly tried to demonstrate that there was actually a connection between the protests and the failed coup, but the connection has not been established, in my opinion.
The government's approach—as in the case of most governments acting in that way—is to use the paradigm of law and order to go after the protesters. They were treated like insurgents or terrorists. This is very important because the government provided a sort of legal justification to take action against those people. Sometimes, the government does not hesitate to give the example of what happens elsewhere, saying that even elsewhere, extreme measures against terrorists are justified.
However, on closer examination, the manhunt was essentially targeting political opponents and members of civil society, who were openly opposed to the third term plan.
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There are two dialogue efforts that are ongoing in Burundi. One is the internally led effort to bring all the parties together, including the government, the members of the opposition—most of whom are in exile—civil society, women, youth, and basically the whole spectrum of the Burundian society, to begin to talk and find a common solution to this issue. Of course, this is with the challenge of dealing with a government that has no intention to do so or shows no intention to do so.
This initiative is being led by the African Union, and it was happening in Arusha with the leadership of the President of Uganda and the former president of Tanzania. It has stalled because the government is not showing enough determination to go forward with the process.
At the same time, a parallel intra-Burundian dialogue is happening that is led by the government. It is, I would say, a semblance of a dialogue. It is happening within Burundi, and it brings in actors that are supposed to be representing various groups in Burundi, but in reality they are mostly government supporters. It is, I am afraid, a masquerade.
I believe efforts should be made to continue to support the internationally led initiative and put pressure on the Government of Burundi to go forward with these talks as an internationally led dialogue. It's very critical. In the event that this doesn't work, what we are looking at is a civil war.
As I am sure you are already aware, there are groups that are beginning to arm themselves. The other thing is that we cannot watch our people being killed every day without reacting. There are various groups that are amorphous. They are still not well organized, but they are there. We are watching a civil war that's coming and that's in the making if we do not act now.
Unfortunately, what is happening in Burundi is a crisis of enormous proportions. The kind of torture that is happening right now, as is documented in the UN reports, is very vicious and very targeted. It keeps increasing in its cruelty. We're seeing an evolution from the beginning, where people would be incarcerated and beaten, to now very vicious forms of torture, including sexual and gender-based abuse.
I think Canada has a very important role to play in ensuring that human rights violations remain a top priority. Just speaking as a human being, really, it seems as though our tolerance for violence has risen. This tolerance is becoming intolerable. I think a lot more can be done in terms of leading global efforts toward holding people accountable. One of the reasons this torture keeps taking deeper and more vicious forms is that the perpetrators are very much aware that they are in power and they have total impunity.
I think Canada needs to join OPCAT to urge Burundi to implement the torture prevention treaty. Amnesty—my colleague from Amnesty is here—welcomes Minister Dion's commitment to join OPCAT, and we look forward to updates.
You're very right that it's a very crucial and important matter.
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Thank you for the question.
The Burundian government shows no intention of changing things. Therein lies the danger. The government uses the state apparatus to oppress the people. This apparatus includes, as you just mentioned, the ministry of the interior and public security, starting with the minister of the interior himself, who is responsible for the national police, whose abuses are well documented. There are also the abuses of the national intelligence service. People are often abducted by the officers from that service. It is usually in those rooms that people are tortured or they disappear and never return. We see vans with the plates of the national intelligence service abduct people in broad daylight, and we never see them again.
The serious part is that bodies are no longer found in the streets like before, because there was a lot of pressure from the international community, which suggests that people are often buried in mass graves, for instance.
There are the national police and the national intelligence service. The ministry of justice does not bring those responsible to justice and is often in cahoots with the Burundian government. As I said earlier, the prosecutor general asked that four lawyers who are against torture be eliminated. There is also the president's office and communications service. Basically, those are the major institutions that are involved.
You must understand that there is total control over the entire state apparatus. Even those who initially do not agree are basically forced to follow the government's instructions out of fear of being repudiated or of reprisals. This trend applies right across the government.
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As I said, the issue of impunity is really a key factor that explains what is happening today. We refer to impunity in relation to crimes committed in the past. I have listed the major events that were actually recorded as having the most serious crimes, including crimes against humanity, war crimes and even crimes of genocide.
All those crimes have gone unpunished because the judiciary, which is embedded in the executive, did not fulfill its mission. The same situation can be applied today. Today's judiciary is like the one of yesterday. There have not really been any substantial changes. That is why—and I must stress this—there is an inherent relationship between the current crisis and previous crises. We cannot resolve the current crisis without looking at past crises.
Of course, the current crisis is very worrisome. Of course, it is urgent to stop the bleeding, as they say, but at the same time, finding a solution to the current crisis would be only a partial solution. If we want to solve the problem of impunity once and for all, we must also develop the solution with the previous crises in mind.
That is why I'm asking Canada to look at how it could become more involved from the outset in determining the mandate of the commission of inquiry that has just been set up by the United Nations. It should not be involved only in determining the mandate of the commission, but also in its operations, while keeping in mind, of course, the inherent and close relationship between the crisis of today and those of the past.
Thank you.