The powerful chairperson of Burundi’s ruling party said on Tuesday he had spent the night in the South African embassy, fearing for his safety after his police bodyguards were changed unexpectedly as he faces growing discontent.
Hussein Radjabu’s ruling Hutu CNDD-FDD party is facing mounting criticism after five people, including former president Domitien Ndayizeye, were acquitted last week of plotting a coup in the tiny Central African nation.
Critics said the plot — in which seven suspects were accused of conspiring to kill President Pierre Nkurunziza and overthrow his government — was invented by the ruling party to quash dissent. The government has denied that.
About 1 400 party members have called for an urgent meeting, which some officials say may seek to remove Radjabu, who diplomats say wields huge influence through his control of the finance and intelligence arm of the former rebel group.
Allegations of corruption and human rights abuses against the authorities have clouded what has been viewed as a home-grown African success story as Burundi emerges from more than a decade of civil war that killed an estimated 300 000 people.
”I came here to explain to the embassy representatives the problem faced by my party at the moment and see what they could do to solve it,” he told Reuters late on Monday.
”But after I heard that my security guards had been replaced, this makes me worry. It is the reason why I decided to stay here for some time until that problem is sorted out.”
South Africa helped mediate Burundi’s peace process. Radjabu said on Tuesday he had left the embassy, adding that he had been reassured his security was guaranteed.
Radjabu wants the party meeting to be held next month, but party members want it to take place as soon as possible.
The CNDD-FDD came to power in August 2005 at the end of a United Nations-backed peace process to a war that pitted rebels from the Hutu majority against the minority Tutsi elite.
Diplomats criticised Burundi’s government, under pressure over its record on democracy and freedom of expression, for its handling of the alleged coup plot and some feared it could destabilise the nation.
Two defendants in the case were jailed after confessing to the plot, under what one said was torture. A government minister acknowledged some torture had occurred. — Reuters