Burundi
Ongoing abductions of children in Burundi

afrol News, 15 November - Human rights groups yesterday held that massacres of civilians and abduction of children are continuing in Burundi after the new government of transition took power on 1 November. Armed groups, not signatory to the Burundi peace, mainly is held responsible.

- Two weeks into the new transitional government and the key players in the Burundi conflict are showing little sign of strengthening their commitment to the protection of human rights, Amnesty International yesterday said in a statement.

- Human life continues to be treated with contempt, while cynical efforts are made to drag children as young as 12 into the horrendous cycle of violence that has plagued the country in recent years, the human rights group added.

Between 2 and 4 November 2001, at least 93 civilians are reported to have been massacred by government forces at Maramvya in Rural-Bujumbura province Amensty reports. The killings reportedly began at around 1pm on 2 November, apparently in reprisal for an incident the previous day in which combatants, believed to belong to the armed political group the Forces nationales pour la libération (FNL), National Liberation Forces, opened fire on a government army vehicle. 

Some of the civilians were shot as they worked in the fields, while others, who took refuge in their homes when they heard the gunshots, were bayonetted to death. The bodies were buried some days later in mass graves, with as many as six bodies to a grave.

The Maramvya killings reportedly followed the extrajudicial execution by government forces of at least 31 unarmed civilians, including at least six women and two children, on 25 October in the Buzige and Migereka II collines in Bubanza Province.

In a separate and disturbing new development, another armed political movement, the Conseil National pour la Défense de la Démocratie - Forces pour la Défense de la Démocratie (CNDD-FDD), has begun abducting school-children and students from schools.

In the early hours of 6 November four teachers and around 54 children, aged between 12 and 15, were forcibly abducted from a primary school in Ruyigi, while on 9 November some 250 children, aged between 15 and 18, were abducted from Musema boarding college in Kayanza province. The college itself was burned down, Amnesty reports.

All of those abducted from Musema are understood to have been subsequently released or to have escaped, and the four teachers and 25 of the children abducted from Ruyigi have also returned home. However, as many as 29 of the children abducted from Ruyigi remain unaccounted for and their current whereabouts are unknown.

Claims by the CNDD-FDD that the children were taken away in order to protect them from reprisals by government troops appear to be misleading. Some of the children were reportedly made to carry military equipment or assist wounded soldiers, and it is feared that one of the motives in abducting the children may have been to forcibly recruit them as child soldiers for the CNDD-FDD.

- All parties, whether rebel or government, have used children to fight this horrible war. But dragging large, numbers of students from school to make them into soldiers represents a new and alarming practice, said Alison Des Forges, Senior Adviser to the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch.

On 13 November the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported that over the previous three days 107 children had also been abducted from refugee camps in Tanzania by Hutu armed political groups. The fate of these children is currently unknown.

Both Amnesty and Human Rights Watch ask for international engagement to end the ongoing violence in Burundi. "A strong denunciation by Mandela and by the Security Council might convince the rebels to free the students," said Des Forges. "It might even persuade the FDD to leave children at their books instead of pushing guns into their hands." 

The two Hutu-dominated rebel groups, the FDD and the Forces of National Liberation (FNL), are not part of the government and they have intensified the war since it took power. Representatives of FRODEBU and the FDD are to meet this week in Tanzania to discuss a cease-fire. The FDD rebels frequently take sanctuary in Tanzania and they have been supported by the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Human Rights Watch.

Sources: Based on Amensty, Human Rights Watch and afrol archives

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