Authorities in Burundi paraded about 200 alleged criminals, most of them suspected members of the country’s last active rebel group, before the public in the capital on Thursday.
In an event criticised by human rights groups, the detainees were put on display at Bujumbura’s Prince Louis Rwagasore stadium as part of a campaign to end the insurgency of the National Liberation Forces (FNL).
Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza, who has vowed to crush the group by the end of the year, made a personal appearance at the spectacle that attracted about 500 curious onlookers and members of the media.
”As the president has long promised, we are showing you people we have arrested over the past two months in the fight against the FNL and criminal elements,” Interior Minister Salvator Ntacobamaze told reporters.
Those on parade were accused of numerous crimes, including murder, rapes and fraud, but the huge majority — nearly 150 of them, including 36 women — are suspected of collaborating with the FNL.
The Hutu group has refused to recognise Nkurunziza, himself an ex-Hutu rebel leader, as president and spurned peace overtures, prompting the two-month crackdown that has been criticised by some as excessive.
Rights groups have reported numerous violations, including the torture and arbitrary arrests of suspected FNL collaborators, all of which have been denied by the government.
On Thursday, authorities acknowledged that none of the displayed detainees had yet been convicted of any crime and several protested their innocence and complained that the event violated their rights under the law.
”These people have not yet been tried because investigations are still ongoing, but they are criminals, wrongdoers,” said judicial police commissioner Deo Suzuguye, later allowing that some might be proved innocent in court.
Detainee Marie Ndikumana, a 39-year-old widow and mother of six, said she believed she would be absolved of any guilt.
”I was accused of having helped the FNL,” she said. ”But if I helped the FNL, it was because I was forced to.”
Detainee Jean Damascene Kwizera, a 17-year-old student, said he had been unjustly arrested at his school last month and had nothing to do with the rebel group.
”I am not an FNL member and nobody has questioned me about it until now,” he said, accusing authorities of violating his rights.
Similar events were held simultaneously at three other venues in two outlying provinces and all were criticised by Jean-Marie Kavumbagu, the president of Burundi’s main human rights group, Iteka.
”We condemn this public exhibition,” he said. ”It flies in the face of the principle of the presumption of innocence that is enshrined in Burundian law.”
The FNL is the only one of the tiny central African nation’s seven Hutu rebel groups to remain outside a peace process aimed at bringing a final end to a 12-year ethnically driven civil war that has claimed about 300 000 lives. – Sapa-AFP