The African Union said it was ready to send 5,000 peacekeepers to Burundi to protect civilians caught up it a growing crisis, the first time the bloc has invoked powers to deploy troops to a member country against its will.
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The African Union gave the Burundi government 96 hours to cooperate fully and accept the deployment of peacekeepers, warning that it reserved the right to enforce its decision to send in forces – as per its charter.
Burundi has so far dismissed proposals for any peacekeeping force.
“The security forces intervened with the greatest possible professionalism”, it said in a statement late on Tuesday.
The AU peace and security commissioner Smail Chergui, though, had tweeted; “A very clear message coming out of the ongoing PSC meeting: the killings in #Burundi must stop immediately”.
The diplomat said the mission, labelled the African Prevention and Protection Mission in Burundi, would be comprised of the East African Standby Force.
Small destitute Burundi, a central African nation marked by a troubled ethnic history and a deadly civil war, has been mired for eight months in a deepening political crisis that the African Union fears could trigger a genocide.
Thursday’s special session of the Human Rights Council comes just days after at least 87 people were killed in attacks on military facilities in the capital, Bujumbura.
The current instability began in April when President Pierre Nkurunziza said he would run for a third term.
“The people of Burundi have endured the horrific consequences of this crisis”, said John Smith, a senior Treasury Department official. Early this month the UN’s advisor against genocide, Adama Dieng, accused both the government and the opposition of manipulating Hutu-Tutsi tensions, saying that the hate speech and rhetoric being used resembled that heard ahead of the Rwanda genocide in 1994. The document also tasked the UN High Commissioner with promoting efforts to learn about the reality, offer technical support and cooperate with the country’s authorities and relevant sides to prevent a risk of more severe human rights violations.
The U.N.’s top human rights body is discussing the rising violence in Burundi, with the United States leading a diplomatic push aiming to deploy a mission of experts and launch an investigation of abuses. It takes the consensus of the five permanent members [of the UN Security Council].
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“Of the 220,000 terrified people who have sought refuge in neighbouring countries, many are the same families that had to flee their homes during Burundi’s civil war, and had returned home over the past decade, full of hope for peace, stability and economic growth in their homeland”, he said. They said they had reports of “arbitrary kilings and targeted assassinations” as well as arrests, detentions and torture.
