As tensions mount in Burundi ahead of presidential elections, journalists and activists say they are paying an increasingly heavy price as standard bearers for free speech.
Civil rights in the small Great Lakes nation, they say, are on the decline – sacrificed at the altar of President Pierre Nkurunziza’s controversial ambition to defy a two-term limit and stay in power for another five years. There are allegations of wide spread harassment and threats of violence, and even talk of a hit-list containing the names of opposition figures, civil society activists and journalists to be eliminated before parliamentary polls in May and the presidential election in June. High-profile arrests have already been made: human rights defender Pierre-Claver Mbonimpa was detained last May after reporting that Nkurunziza’s ruling party, the CNDD-FDD, was arming its youth wing and training them in the jungles of neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.
Bob Rugurika, director of the popular independent African Public Radio (RPA), was also arrested in January after implicating intelligence officials in the recent murders of Italian nuns.
“These are the best known cases, but there are many other cases of activists who are constantly harassed, intimidated by high-ranking members of the authorities, who receive threatening phone calls or summonses,” explained Carina Tersakian of the global watchdog Human Rights Watch.
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