A refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was killed and three other people were wounded by a South African United Nation peacekeeper during a food riot at a camp in Burundi, officials said Friday.
The soldier shot and killed the refugee, wounding two other refugees and a police officer when scuffles broke out during food distribution on Thursday at the Gihinga camp in central Burundi, they said.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which runs the camp, condemned the incident but said details were still being investigated.
”We deplore the death of a refugee,” UNHCR spokesperson Catherine-Lune Grayson said, adding that during the fracas some camp residents had apparently tried to take weapons from South African troops who guard the perimeter.
”We don’t know yet exactly who fired, whether it was the police or the peacekeepers, but we are trying to clarify the situation,” she told AFP.
But Prosper Bazombanza, the governor of Burundi’s central Mwaro province in which Gihinga is located, said he believed excessive force was used by the peacekeepers after they were summoned inside the gates to help stop the riot.
”There was a use of excessive force,” he said.
The 5 400-strong UN peacekeeping force in Burundi operates under the mandate of the UN Operation in Burundi set up in 2004 in a bid to help the tiny central African nation recover from more than a decade of conflict.
With about 800 soldiers, South Africa is the third-largest contributor to the force behind Pakistan and Kenya.
The Gihinga camp, about 80 kilometres east of Bujumbura, houses about 1 865 Tutsis from the DRC who were moved from another camp in western Burundi in August 2004 after some 180 refugees there were massacred by Hutu rebels.
Burundi is home to about 25 000 DRC refugees who have arrived in successive waves since 1996, fleeing inter-ethnic violence and civil war in their villages. — Sapa-AFP