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Abuses by Government Forces Under the New Government

Since the installation of the new government, the conduct of military and police forces towards civilians has improved in those areas of the country where the CNDD-FDD has won political control, but not in regions where the FNL is active or where Frodebu continues to show political strength.

In Ruyigi province, where the CNDD-FDD won by a large margin, local residents told Human Rights Watch researchers that killings of civilians have declined, but that soldiers and police still commit such abuses as rape and armed robbery.²¹ They remark, however, that military officials have taken such abuses more seriously than before. In one case they quickly located and arrested two of three armed men who in September robbed the office of a government microfinance project in Nyabitsinda commune; the two, who were FDN soldiers, are currently awaiting trial in Gitega prison.²²

In another case in October, a father who found a police officer raping his four-year-old daughter was helped by the Office of the Judicial Police to get medical attention for his child. The perpetrator was jailed, although he managed to escape shortly after, allegedly with assistance from a guard.²³ Police then imprisoned that guard. The Brigade Commander, angry at the escape, told Human Rights Watch researchers that he was seeking the assistance of officials throughout the region to apprehend the man.²⁴

In Bubanza province and other regions where some residents support the FNL, authorities are less quick to respond to complaints of abuses by soldiers and police. In Gihanga commune, a woman was dragged from her house during the night of September 13 and raped by a uniformed police officer, who had forced her husband to the ground at gun point.²⁵ With the belt he left behind as evidence and knowing his name and service number, she complained to the local judicial police, but the perpetrator has not been arrested and is still seen in the neighborhood. Officials told her husband that he should “make peace and reconcile.”²⁶

In Nyabiraba commune, Bujumbura-rurale, drunken soldiers shot and killed two civilians for no apparent reason on October 7. A witness who saw the two soldiers walking uphill returning to their post from a bar told a Human Rights Watch researcher: 

I heard a lot of shooting suddenly. The rebels never come here because it is too close to the military position. But when I saw the soldiers, I realized that they were drunk. The bullets were only coming in one direction. They must have just been shooting into the air as they walked up the hill.²⁷

Families of the two victims have written letters of complaint to judicial authorities but with no result to date. A local administrative official commented on the case:

Human rights are not respected here. Some of the problems with the war have ended and the situation was better for a while, but now it’s getting worse again. There have been a lot of deaths recently. . . People complain about the soldiers a lot but the soldiers don’t understand that they cannot mistreat the population. People complain to the judicial authorities, but the case drags on and nothing happens. I don’t think that they have ever investigated a case brought against the soldiers here.²⁸

Abuses by government soldiers against suspected FNL collaborators

In parts of Bujumbura and Bujumbura-rurale, the FNL frequently coerce local people to supply them with food, money, and other goods.²⁹ Government soldiers generally regard all who provide such support as being FNL collaborators, regardless of whether the contribution was voluntary or coerced. They often assume that those who have given support also hide FNL combatants or assist them in other ways. 

On October 1, FDN forces on patrol from several posts in Kanyosha commune, including Kanyosha, Nyamaboko and Kibazo, caught a man they suspected of being an FNL combatant. Apparently relying on information he provided, soldiers forcibly entered one household. Some took away the father of the family, who was detained at Kanyosha brigade overnight, and was severely beaten.³⁰ Other soldiers took twenty-three-year-old Celestin Nimuboma, who worked as a messenger at the prosecutor’s office, outside the house. Inside the home, soldiers tore down a wall, saying they were looking for hidden combatants or arms. Finding nothing, one of the soldiers grabbed an elderly woman, threw her to the ground, and shouted at her, “Where are the FNL? You are old, so you should know better than to lie to us!”³¹ He then threatened her with a bayonet at her throat.³² After robbing the family of all the money in the house, the soldiers left to continue their patrol. Family members then discovered the dead body of Nimuboma outside the house. According to a witness: 

He was very beaten and bloody. I think that his arms and legs were broken, and he had been shot so that the back of his head was gone. ³³

That same day FDN soldiers surrounded the home of Venant Sindiwenumwe, a mason and father of seven children. According to people in the vicinity, soldiers beat Sindiwenumwe and his fifteen-year-old son Yves Havyarimana, who had just begun a new year at school, and forced them to go down to the edge of a nearby river. There they shot the father and son in the back of the head.³⁴ They also executed Stanislas Butoyi, a thirty-year-old fisherman who happened to be visiting in the neighborhood.

As part of normal military operations, soldiers from the groups apparently involved in these killings were transferred to other posts within three weeks of the crimes, making it more difficult for complaints to be pursued against them.³⁵ 

In another incident on October 4, FDN soldiers stopped a young student, Jean-Marie-Vianney Nkezuobagira,in Kanyosha, while he was returning from Bujumbura where he had bought supplies for the new school year.³⁶  Nkezuobagira had recently returned to Burundi after years in the refugee camps of Tanzania where he had attended school in Kasuru. When soldiers realized that he was not a native of Kanyosha, they accused him of being a member of the FNL.³⁷ They took him to a nearby military position where they made him put on part of an old military uniform, apparently to make it look like he was an FLN combatant. After passing by the house where he was lodging to search the premises, they marched him to the river and shot him twice in the head. One witness told Human Rights Watch:

I met the student when he came here looking for a place to go to school after having only been back in Burundi a few days. I saw his papers from his previous school in Tanzania and he had good marks. When I heard that he had been killed, I went down and helped to bury his body. He has been shot twice in the front of his head and had been very severely beaten. I had a hard time even recognizing him. That is how bad he looked.³⁸

FDN soldiers posted at Gitaza also tortured persons accused of collaborating with the FNL. Soldiers apprehended one young resident of Muhuta commune, Bujumbura-rurale, after an informant said he was a FNL supporter. The young man told Human Rights Watch researchers:

The FNL combatant didn’t even know my name and I had never seen him before. But the soldiers took me to their position at Gitaza and began to beat me very hard with their hands and sticks. They put a piece of wood in my mouth so that I could not cry or scream. I was beaten by about twenty men until I lost consciousness. When I woke up, they put me in a ditch in the ground for a while. Later they took me out and one held one arm out and another held my other arm out. They began burning me with a hot metal bar all over my arms and back.³⁹

(A Human Rights Watch researcher examined and photographed the burn marks on his body.)

During this torture, soldiers attempted to extract information from the young man about where FNL combatants were hiding, but he had no information to offer. Soldiers took him to another military position, known as the Chinese camp, and were about to start another round of abuse when a colonel intervened, saying, “There are no places left on your body to beat you.”⁴⁰ He was eventually released when his family members paid bribes to the military.

Abuses by Agents of the Documentation Nationale

Agents of the state intelligence agency, known as the Documentation Nationale (D.N.), detained more than fifty persons from the Kinama section of Bujumbura, held them without charge for weeks, and tortured some of them in the months of September and October of this year.⁴¹  On October 12 a Burundian human rights activist visited the head of one intelligence detention center and saw instruments of torture, such as electrodes, a metal rod, and sticks on his desk.⁴²

No official reason was given for detaining these persons, who included three zone leaders and a fourth person married to another official, all Frodebu candidates elected in local polls at the end of September. ⁴³ Kinama, a section of Bujumbura where Frodebu won two-thirds of the votes in communal elections held earlier in the year, has also been the scene of attacks on the police, reportedly by FNL combatants, as recently as August,⁴⁴ and is said to be an area where Frodebu supporters occasionally cooperate with the FNL.

Under Burundian criminal procedure law, a person may be detained for a maximum of one week, extended to two weeks in cases of “necessary delay” (sauf prorogation indispensable) by the judicial police, but then must be charged or released.⁴⁵  Many of those arrested in late September or early October by D.N. agents were held in D.N. facilities and then transferred on October 14 to the premises of the Interior Security Police (Police de Sécurité Intérieur or PSI) located in Kigobe, Bujumbura. As of this writing, it is unclear who has custody over the detainees.

One Kinama resident and Frodebu supporter, who had been arrested four times since the beginning of the election period in June, was detained on October 13 and released the next day. He told a Human Rights Watch researcher that those who come to arrest him never have a warrant for his arrest, that he is not formally interrogated while in custody, and that when he is released, he is given no proof of release. He recounted severe beatings while in the hands of intelligence agents.He said:

They told me to get on the ground and they started to beat me and whip me with a thick electrical cable on my back and legs. I think that they also broke my wrist but I cannot afford an X-ray to know for sure.⁴⁶

He showed a Human Rights Watch researcher large bruises and cuts extending from his middle back to his thighs. On October 21, a day after speaking to Human Rights Watch, he was detained for the fifth time, apparently for having talked to the press about his prior detentions. As of this writing, he remains in the custody of the D.N.

The D.N., under the direct command of the president, is currently directed by General Adolphe Nshimirimana, a former CNDD-FDD combatant. According to Kinama residents, the D.N. uses CNDD-FDD party members and former FDD combatants to identify and locate persons to be detained.⁴⁷ Some residents of Kinama and neighboring areas believe that some of the arrests and abuse are meant to punish persons who support Frodebu.⁴⁸ They say that demobilized FDD combatants have been seen in the neighborhood, carrying pistols that they use to intimidate other people and with telephones that they use to report to the intelligence service.⁴⁹ Witnesses report that General Nshimirimana has come to Kinama to make arrests, accompanied by agents of the D.N. wearing civilian clothes. In one instance family members tried to prevent a person from being taken away, and armed men with General Nshimirimana fired in the air to scatter them.⁵⁰

Several young men have fled Kinama to find lodging elsewhere after having heard that their names are on the intelligence agency list. One young man told Human Rights Watch that after he had left Kinama, family members told him that General Nshimirimana came to his house with two bodyguards. He said:

Even before the elections, the relationship between those who supported the CNDD-FDD and those who supported Frodebu was not good, but now with the former CNDD-FDD combatants having phones and guns, everything is different.⁵¹

Another man who had fled Kinama commented:

The Documentation Nationale should change their methods and only use the national police to make arrests and not the ex-FDD combatants. That creates problems of personal vengeance.⁵²