/ 10 June 2000

BURUNDIANS FLOOD FROM ‘CONENTRATION CAMPS’

MORE than 45000 Burundians have left five regroupment camps in Kanyosha, on the outskirts of Bujumbura. It comes a day after Nelson Mandela, chief mediator in Burundi’s peace process, announced that he has made a deal with Burundian President Pierre Buyoya for all internees to be freed from Burundi’s regroupment camps by July 31. About 900000 Burundians who have been displaced by the civil war in the country have been living in the notorious camps, which have been condemned by the United Nations and described by Mandela recently as “concentration camps”. Mandela said he and Buyoya have also agreed that the Burundian army will be restructured so it is made up in equal parts of members of the country’s warring Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups.