Violence exploded in Burundi in April when President Pierre Nkurunziza said he was running for a third term – a move the opposition called unconstitutional.
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The council is set to convene at 12:15 pm (1715 GMT). On 29 October 2015, the President of the Senate, Reverien Ndirukiyo, said that security forces would soon go to “work” and urged officials to identify people in their neighborhoods so that the police could intervene.
Global alarm over the crisis in Burundi has been mounting after repeated appeals to Nkurunziza to enter into a dialogue with the opposition fell on deaf ears.
BUJUMBURA Burundi (Xinhua) – The Burundian government has denied alleged plans to persecute a section of the population, saying reports had misinterpreted remarks by President Pierre Nkurunziza on disarmament.
The changes were to address concerns from Russian Federation and a few African countries that sanctions would not be helpful to efforts to prevent a bloodbath.
Key Western powers and the United Nations are discussing the possible deployment of global peacekeepers to Burundi if the violence in the African country spirals into a full-scale ethnic conflict, diplomats said on Wednesday.
Britain’s United Nations ambassador Matthew Rycroft, the security council president, said members were meeting “to ensure that we are doing everything possible to increase the pressure on the authorities in Burundi to warn against the dangers of mass atrocities”.
“While this is ultimately a matter for the Security Council to decide, a regional coalition would be well-placed to provide a rapid and credible response if the situation in Burundi worsens”, he added.
According to the United Nations official, within Burundi, and particularly in Bujumbura, there have been increasing numbers of extrajudicial killings documented in recent months, including multiple alleged political assassinations.
The country’s Senate president Reverien Ndikuriyo recently threatened to “pulverize” regime opponents who do not lay down arms. It is the same ethnic divide that led to neighboring Rwanda’s 1994 genocide in which 800,000 people – mainly Tutsis and moderate Hutus – were massacred.
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Burundi ended a 12-year civil war between Hutu rebels and a Tutsi-led army in 2005.
