BUJUMBURA, (Reuters) – Burundi police yesterday fired teargas and beat protesters demanding President Pierre Nkurunziza end his bid for a third term next month, in a resurgence of unrest that has stoked fears of ethnic conflict in Africa’s Great Lakes.
A Reuters photographer said at least eight of the flag-waving and chanting demonstrators were dragged off by police. Some in the crowd responded by pelting officers with stones and rocks.
Separately, shots were fired at the offices of the European Union’s representative in Bujumbura, prompting the mission to demand the government step up its security. The EU gave no more details.
Paris deployed 15 gendarmes to bolster security at its diplomatic outpost in the city, a French diplomatic source said.
Rights groups say at least 20 people have died in three weeks of clashes between security forces and protesters who say Nkurunziza’s ambitions violate the constitution and a peace deal that ended an ethnically fuelled civil war in 2005.
Laying the same charges against the president, a group of renegade generals tried and failed to overthrow him last week. The government said late on Monday it would treat any future demonstrators as accomplices in the failed putsch.
But crowds gathered again in the suburb of Nyakabiga on Tuesday, shouting: “We will not stop until he gives up the third term.”
The longer unrest continues the more chance that a conflict which up until now has been largely a struggle for power reopens old wounds in a region with a history of mass ethnic killing.
