Burundi: Burundian refugees in Tanzania are between a rock and a hard place
It’s no secret, everyone is watching or hearing it, but no one reacts. Burundian refugees in Tanzania are regularly mistreated. It is as if they encountered in Tanzania what they fled in Burundi. The difference is that they are not in their families; which further increases their suffering.
Indeed, the good relations between the power of Gitega and the Tanzanian government (relations based on the private interests of the authorities of the two countries) are the crux of their problem. Since the cnddfdd came to power, high-level authorities in both countries have formed a business relationship, just for personal interests. In this way, having a lot of refugees abroad is a bad image for the country. This demonstrates insecurity in the eyes of the international community. However, the ruling powers believed that they could kill all those who oppose their mismanagement and various human rights violations in absolute silence. He believed that no one would escape him because he was counting on the vigilance of his imbonerakure militia. These refugees are embarrassing elements for the authorities because most of them fled after having escaped certain death in places of torture. Outside the country, they can get in touch with the various human rights organizations that the cnddfdd power has driven from the country to ward off witnesses to the horrors it is doing to its people. When this power cries out that what is written / said about Burundi is a lie, that it is the settlers who manipulate the refugees to discredit it, it forgets that those who escaped their torture are still alive and can testify whatever ‘they saw, heard and / or suffered. A day will come, all those responsible (those who committed these crimes are known) will answer for their actions.
This is why the authorities have pursued the refugees (where possible) into the host countries to mistreat or annihilate them. Tanzania is the country which records many violations of the rights of Burundian refugees. As the camps are set up less than 150km from the border required by international law in the matter, the cnddfdd sent some members of its imbonerakure militia to closely monitor these refugees and eliminate, in collaboration with the Tanzanian police, all bothersome elements. As a result, many of the refugees were abducted by elements of the Tanzanian police and were never found. Their people thought they were in the police dungeons, but when they went to look for them at the police stations, they found no trace. URNHITAMWONEZA will make an inventory of all Burundian refugees who disappeared in this way in Tanzania so that sooner or later, Tanzania responds to this act. If the Tanzanian government did not want Burundian refugees, it had to be told to the UNHCR so that it could find another home. To mistreat them (by killing them, depriving them of basic needs) in complicity with the power they fled is a serious violation of international refugee laws and this country should shoulder this responsibility. Tanzania’s objective is none other than to force them to return to their country of origin because the rhetoric of the officials has always been the same: there is total peace in Burundi. And yet it is always for the refugees to feel that peace and security have been restored, that it is time to return; it is not the speeches of the authorities that reassure them.
With the new leaders emerging from the May 2020 elections, people believed in visible change in security. Some refugees even thought about returning. But Evariste Ndayishimiye’s speech urging the refugees to return to their country was ambiguous. It contains expressions, insults and even threats for some. This shows that the clique in power has no desire to repatriate all Burundians to build their country. Their concern is that the majority return to show the public that there is total peace in order to restart cooperation and receive aid. The military clique will know what to do with them next (that’s what they say behind the scenes). Yet human rights organizations continue to show that at least 20 people die in less than a month, with a new phenomenon of raping women and girls before beheading them or killing and then beheading the men. (a practice of the FDRL-Interahamwe) .The treatment inflicted on refugees who accept willingly despite returning fleeing harassment from Tanzania, sufficiently proves that the Government of Gitega does not have the good will to welcome the refugees with dignity . He did not even prepare the necessary reception infrastructure, let alone the hearts of the neighbours. There is a great risk that they will return outside if they still manage to escape them.
The case of Burundian refugees who have returned from Tanzania and who are in Mabanda commune, Makamba province is very shocking. They sleep on the floor without food. They have been waiting since Tuesday July 28, 2020 for a team of people to take the Covid19 test. Others join their group and are crammed together without any testing. When they at least ask to let them go home, the imbonerakure and the municipal commissioner threaten to burn them alive. They also deplore 03 of them who were allegedly abducted by the police on the pretext that it was to give them a separate Covid 19 test, but they did not see them again.
URN HITAMWONEZA insists that the UNHCR and the United Nations do everything they can to ensure that this harassment of Burundian refugees by Tanzania, in complicity with the government of Burundi, stops and that these refugees find at least one other country reception before they are reassured for their safety so that they return to their native country. In the meantime, all the organizations in charge of human rights should stand up to cry out for this fragrant violation of international refugee law, and above all to find them means of subsistence worthy of a human being on this planet.
We invite you once again to sign the petition launched to help these refugees and internally displaced persons.