A protest on Thursday in the Burundi capital against the presence of South African troops in the country was broken up by security forces, who said the demonstrators were members of a banned paramilitary group.
”We believe the protesters were members of Amasekanya (an outlawed Tutsi paramilitary group),” said a police officer.
One protester was arrested when security forces broke up the demonstration outside a hotel in the centre of Bujumbura where South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma, who has been leading mediation efforts to try to restore peace in Burundi after 10 years of war, was staying.
Zuma arrived in Burundi late on Wednesday from a meeting of the African Union’s conflict management body in Addis Ababa, on his latest peace mission to the central African country.
He said on his arrival at Bujumbura airport that South Africa, Ethiopia and Mozambique planned to deploy troops to monitor a ceasefire between the army and the main rebel group in Burundi by the end of the month.
South Africa already has 700 soldiers in Burundi, whose duty is to protect politicians who have returned from exile to take part in a transitional government formed in November 2001 under a peace and power-sharing plan.
Some 20 protesters marched past Zuma’s hotel on Thursday, carrying banners that read ”South Africans go home” and chanting the same exhortation.
Their demonstration was broken up by around 30 police. Several thousand, mostly young members of Burundi’s minority Tutsi ethnic minority belong to Amasekanya, which has been dubbed an extremist movement and banned by the authorities.
Burundian President Pierre Buyoya, a Tutsi, signed a historic peace deal with the head of the main Hutu rebel group, Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha on December 3.
Since then, however, both sides have accused the other of violating the pact, notably provisions for a ceasefire.
Burundi has been ravaged since 1993 by a conflict that has pitted Hutu rebels against the mainly Tutsi army and claimed nearly 300 000 lives, mostly civilians.
Under the accord that set up Burundi’s transitional government, also brokered by South Africa, Buyoya must stand down 18 months after coming to power to pave the way for a Hutu successor. – Sapa-AFP