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STORY: GENEVA / BURUNDI HUMAN RIGHTS
TRT: 02:38
SOURCE: OHCHR
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 22 JUNE 2016, GENEVA / FILE
FILE – APRIL 2015, BURUNDI
1. Med shot, protesters
2. Wide shot, protesters
3. Med shot, police
22 JUNE 2016 GENEVA
4. Med shot, independent expert walking up escalator
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Christof Heyns, Chair, Independent Investigation in Burundi, United Nations:
“From March to now, probably the largest difference is that the violence has largely, at least the overt violence, dead bodies on the streets that has largely disappeared. At the same time there is still violence. It is more targeted. It is also not just in the capital, in the four districts where it used to be. It is now in different parts of the country. There are many reports of disappearances, of torture as well.”
FILE – APRIL 2015, BURUNDI
6. Close up, Burundian flag
7. Wide shot, Bujumbura street
22 JUNE 2016 GENEVA
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Christof Heyns, Chair, Independent Investigation in Burundi, United Nations:
“I think it will be important for the various armed groups to be disarmed. It will also be important for the government structures to operate within the legal system, within the legal norms. It will be important for accountability to be established because there is very little accountability taking place, if someone uses force in an unjustified way.”
FILE – APRIL 2015, BURUNDI
9. Med shot, Burundi police
10. Wide shot, Bujumbura riots
OHCHR - 22 JUNE 2016 GENEVA
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Christof Heyns, Chair, Independent Investigation in Burundi, United Nations:
“The approach is very much of, ‘one of you are either for us or against us’. And it goes really down from the political players, it goes down to even school children, if they scribble on a picture of the president, by the hundreds, school children have now been arrested and are in jail and face up to five to ten years in jail. That seems to send this message of very little tolerance for different opinions within the society. And we see the same with the NGO’S, we see the same with people whom we met in March, they do not want to speak to us now. So there is really, I think an atmosphere of fear, because of this idea of you are either with us or against us.”
FILE – APRIL 2015, BURUNDI
12.Med shot, police running in the backdrop of an empty street
OHCHR - 22 JUNE 2016 GENEVA
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Christof Heyns, Chair, Independent Investigation in Burundi, United Nations:
“In the short term stability must be re-established but also its not just a, as one person said, it cannot just be the peace of a loaded gun. It must be a peace based on civil society having a space, NGO’S have been suspended, media, radio stations have been closed down. Those things need to be reopened so people feel there is some space for them and that they are not being watched every single step.”
14. Med shot, expert walking in the corridor
A United Nations (UN) investigation team in Burundi has said that widespread violence has been reduced in the country but that it was not an indication that the country “is peaceful.”
The chair of the team Christof Heyns said that the “overt violence, dead bodies on the streets” - has largely disappeared, but “at the same time there is still violence. It is more targeted.”
He also noted that violence had spread to different parts of the country, adding that there were “many reports of disappearances of torture as well.”
Heyns described the country to be in a “state of fear” saying the approach is much of ‘one of you are either for us or against us’.
Burundi plunged into crisis last year when the country’s president Pierre Nkurunziza announced he was running for a third term, a vote he won last July amid opposition boycotts. More than 400 people have been killed in unrest since April 2015.
