“Those responsible for human rights violations and instigating violence should be subject to sanctions, including asset-freezes and travel bans”, he said during a special session on Burundi of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
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Political violence continues throughout the country following contested elections, an attempted coup and the controversy over President Pierre Nkurunziza controversially standing for – and winning – a third term in office. He said at least 220,000 people have fled the country.
Secretary General Ban Ki Moon is sending a special representative to Bujumbura.
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.
Investigators were in the capital Bujumbura last Friday, where they witnessed the “eruption of major exchanges of gunfire, explosions and shootings” during a coordinated attack on three military bases, two of them inside the city.
Following the attacks, security forces carried out “intensive house searches” in the Musaga and Nyakabiga neighborhoods, where they arrested and subsequently executed hundreds of young men, and took many others to unknown locations.
“All appropriate measures must be taken, in line with worldwide human rights law, to stop the reported flow of weapons into Burundi”.
He called on the worldwide community to get its act together, adding: “The time for piecemeal responses and fiddling around the edges is over”.
“Last Friday’s events are a shocking manifestation of what happens when a country is at boiling point and ready to tip over with any instigation”, Zeid said.
The United Nations has repeatedly called for political talks between Nkurunziza’s government and the opposition to put a halt to the violence, but these appeals have fallen on deaf ears.
In view of the on going crisis in Burundi we chose to share a cartoon which says everything you need to know about the country.
Burundi’s 12-year civil war pitted rebel groups of the Hutu majority, including one led by the current president Nkurunziza, against what was then an army led by the Tutsi minority.
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Burundi has accused neighbouring Rwanda and some Western nations of meddling in its affairs, saying they are stoking the crisis in the poor African nation.
