GENEVA: UN investigators on Monday accused Burundi’s government of crimes against humanity, including executions and torture, and urged the International Criminal Court to open a case “as soon as possible.”
The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Burundi said it had “reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed and continue to be committed in Burundi,” pointing a finger at “the highest level of the state.”
The three investigators, appointed by the Human Rights Council last September, described a “climate of fear” in the crisis-hit east African country.
The report detailed widespread and systematic abuses including extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances, torture and sexual violence.
“We are struck by the scale and the brutality of the violations,” commission president Fatsah Ouguergouz said in a statement.
Decrying impunity in Burundi and the “strong likelihood that the perpetrators of these crimes will remain unpunished,” the investigators asked “the International Criminal Court to open an investigation ... as soon as possible.”
If it wants to follow that advice, the ICC will indeed need to move quickly: last year, Burundi formally announced it was withdrawing from the court, with the move set to take effect on October 27.
After that date, the ICC can only open a case if asked to do by the Security Council.
Burundi was thrown into a political crisis in April 2015 when President Pierre Nkurunziza decided to run for a third term that his opponents said was unconstitutional.
He won elections in July that year which were boycotted by the opposition.
Between 500 and 2,000 people have been killed in clashes in the country, according to UN and NGO sources. More than 400,000 people have fled and dozens of opposition activists have been forced into exile.
In its report Monday, the Commission of Inquiry put blame for the likely crimes against humanity in Burundi at “the highest level of the state.”
The perpetrators included members of Burundi’s National Intelligence Service, including high-ranking officers, the national police, military officials and members of the ruling party’s youth league, the Imbonerakure, investigators said.
Nkurunziza himself, surrounded by a close-knit circle of “generals,” was behind “big decisions, including ones that led to serious human rights violations,” it said.
Armed opposition groups were also responsible for rights violations in Burundi, the report said, noting that these abuses had been more difficult to document.
The UN investigators were never permitted to enter Burundi, forcing them to conduct their probe from neighboring countries, where they interviewed more than 500 victims and witnesses.
They said they were drafting a confidential list of suspected perpetrators of crimes against humanity, along with detailed information about the acts they are accused of committing or ordering.
The UN is prepared to share the list with any competent judicial body capable of “conducting credible investigations,” with the aim of bringing the perpetrators to justice, the report said.
Burundi suffered a civil war from 1993 until 2006 between majority Hutus and minority Tutsis, which claimed an estimated 300,000 lives.
The current unrest has also sparked fear of a wider crisis in Africa’s volatile Great Lakes region, with the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda having been fueled by similar ethnic tensions.
UN investigators urge ICC to probe Burundi crimes against humanity
UN investigators urge ICC to probe Burundi crimes against humanity
US congresswoman supports censure of colleague over comments against Arabs, Muslims
- Republican Randy Fine ‘spreading hate,’ Democrat Robin Kelly tells Arab News
- ‘Members of Congress should not be targeting Muslims for political gain’
CHICAGO: Illinois Congresswoman Robin Kelly has said she supports calls in the US House to censure Florida Congressman Randy Fine, who has repeatedly made derogatory comments about Muslims and Arabs on his official social media accounts.
Kelly, a Democrat, denounced anti-Muslim and anti-Arab statements made by Fine, a Republican, saying she expects a censure resolution to be put together by House members possibly next week.
“There’s just no room for hate. That’s just the bottom line. I’ve seen hate. It causes people to lose their lives. It causes people to not have the same opportunities as other people. It causes people to have extra stress, extra trauma. And to categorize a whole group of people is so unfair,” Kelly told Arab News.
“I come from a family with a lot of different ethnicities or cultures, and I’ve seen the damage that hate has done in categorizing any one community.
“The Islamic community is just always presented as the bad guy in the movies and on TV … Being a person of color and seeing things that even my own family have gone through, I’m just very sensitive to it.”
Last month, when a supporter of New York’s Muslim Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on social media that dogs have no place in a Muslim home, Fine wrote: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
Then on Feb. 20, Fine introduced to Congress the “Protecting Puppies from Sharia Act,” cosponsored by nine Republicans.
Fine has been criticized in the past for making Islamophobic and anti-Arab comments on his social medial pages.
Last May, when Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib said it was “a crime to use starvation as a weapon in Gaza,” Fine responded: “Tell your fellow Muslim terrorists to release the hostages and surrender. Until then, #StarveAway.”
During his election campaign in December 2023, in response to an anonymous poster on X who criticized delays in getting food trucks into Gaza, Fine wrote: “Stop the trucks. Let them eat rockets. There are plenty of those. #Bombsaway.”
Before running for Congress, responding to a New York Times report and photo of 67 Arab children killed by Israel, he said: “Thanks for the pic.”
Muslim groups in Florida have been complaining about Fine’s rhetoric since 2021, including after he sent a private Instagram message to a Florida Muslim saying: “Go blow yourself up!”
Kelly said she is also disturbed by the comments of Fine’s allies, citing them as a broader undercurrent of Islamophobia rising in the US.
She insisted that Islamophobia is no different than antisemitism or racism against other groups, including African Americans like herself.
Fine and Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles “are spreading hate and should be censured,” Kelly wrote on her own Facebook page this past week.
“Our country is already divided enough, members of Congress should not be targeting Muslims for political gain.”
Ogles, a cosponsor of the “Protecting Puppies from Sharia Act,” declared: “Muslims don’t belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie.”
Kelly, who was elected to Congress in 2013, said: “I think they should all be censured. I say to people that feel the Islamophobia, ‘Don’t get weary, don’t get lost in the chaos. That’s what they want you to do. You can’t go in your house and close the door. You have to be a voice. You can’t stay on the sidelines because this isn’t acceptable.’”
Arab News reached out to Fine for comment.
