He urged the worldwide community to take “robust, decisive” action on the situation in Burundi, to avert a civil war that could have serious ethnic overtones as well as alarming regional consequences.
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He asserted Egypt’s support for the AU and worldwide efforts to reach settlement.
Burundi has been in the midst of a political crisis since President Pierre Nkurunziza chose to run for a controversial third term earlier this year, since when at least 400 people have been killed, with the toll possibly considerably higher, and 220,000 have fled to neighbouring States with many others internally displaced.
Declaring that Burundi was getting ready to conflict, UN Secretary-Common Ban Ki-moon stated earlier that he was dispatching an envoy to push for pressing talks to finish the disaster.
And on Thursday, the UN’s top rights body agreed it would send a team of independent experts to Burundi to probe widespread abuses there.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights accused Burundi’s authorities on Thursday of dragging the country towards full-blown civil war and called for travel bans and asset freezes targeting key officials to try to halt the bloodshed. Following that attack, at least 87 people, reportedly including four police officers and four soldiers, were killed.
Zeid called for border controls, a government effort to disarm pro-government militias, efforts to stop the flow of weapons into Burundi, and consideration of “the use of drones” as one way to help monitor frontiers.
In the country’s civil war, which lasted from 1993 until 2003, an estimated 300,000 people were killed – in a country of 10 million people.
“I don’t think it will be possible to negotiate with Nkurinziza, who has already begun this genocide”, he said.
“The nation is getting ready to a civil warfare that dangers engulfing the whole area”, he warned.
Smail Chergui, the AU Peace and Security Commissioner, tweeted that “the killings in Burundi must stop immediately”.
However, Burundi dismissed criticism of its security forces, saying they acted professionally after insurgents attacked military bases in the capital, and also said there was no need to send foreign peacekeepers to the African nation.
“There is no time to delay – Burundi is facing a human rights crisis”.
Preliminary findings have indicated that the current situation is of grave concern and those conducting the mission reported that they received information from pertinent stakeholders of ongoing human rights violations along with other abuses.
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Elisa Nkerabirori, a representative of Burundi’s Human Rights Ministry, spoke on her government’s behalf and said the session was called in “haste” and that her government had sought a delay to avoid a schedule conflict with a meeting of the World Trade Organization in Kenya that has drawn many African diplomats.
