NGOZI, Burundi, (Reuters) – In the Burundian president’s rural stronghold, his party’s youth wing dismisses the fears of those who have fled the east African nation that it is gathering arms and sharpening knives for a new bout of ethnic bloodletting.
“Whoever has a machete uses it for cultivating, not for other purposes,” said Patrice Barutwanajo, 28, a member of the so-called Imbonerakure in Ngozi in northern Burundi. “It is impossible to say that people have machetes for killing.”
Barutwanajo works as a marketer for a brewery. In a smart white shirt and pressed trousers, he bears little resemblance to the image of youths bearing arms which refugees say have terrified them into leaving their homeland.
The group insists it is focused exclusively on campaigning for elections, including a presidential poll on June 26 in which President Pierre Nkurunziza will seek a third term, a bid which protesters in the capital say is unconstitutional.
But Western diplomats refer to it as an armed militia of the ruling CNDD-FDD party and a great concern in a country that has faced a coup attempt this month and violent street clashes that threatened to reopen the ethnic wounds left by a civil war and decades of sporadic ethnic killings before that.
One diplomat said Imbonerakure was the “scariest” element in a crisis engulfing Burundi and spilling over into a region with a history of ethnic slaughter.
More than 110,000 Burundians, or 1 percent of the population, have fled to neighbouring states for fear of violence. Some have crossed to next door Rwanda, a nation shattered by genocidal forces two decades ago.
Peter Mushimantwari, 41, a Tutsi in a Rwandan camp, said he fled because the authorities were “distributing fire arms to Imbonerakure, plus teaching them techniques of killing.”
The government denies this. In a speech on Wednesday, Nkurunziza appealed for ethnic unity and urged refugees to return.
Barutwanajo, standing in the main street in Ngozi, said the youth wing was focused on things like building the nearby soccer stadium or provincial building, while also promoting what they say is the government’s record improving health, education and security.
ANXIETY
Soothing words may not be enough in a country where 300,000 people were killed in an ethnically-fuelled 12-year conflict that ended a decade ago and even talk of youth groups stashing weapons sets nerves on edge.
Imbonerakure means ‘Those who see far’, a name that can provoke anxiety amongst opponents, particularly Tutsis.
In 1994, the Interahamwe militia of Rwanda’s ethnic Hutu majority butchered 800,000 people in just three months, most of them from the Tutsi minority or moderate Hutus. Rwandan President Kagame, a Tutsi, has vowed not to allow a repeat.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Tom Malinowsky told Nkurunziza last month of Washington’s concerns about the arming of Imbonerakure. “It is very, very dangerous,” he told reporters after the meeting.
Burundi, which has the same ethnic mix as Rwanda, emerged from a civil war in 2005 in which Hutu rebel groups, including one commanded by Nkurunziza, fought an army then led by the Tutsi minority. The force is now mixed but has shown rifts.
A group of Hutu and Tutsi generals launched a coup that failed last week, after mounting violence during protests in Bujumbura against Nkurunziza’s third term bid.
The ruling party says Nukurunziza can run again because for his first term he was picked by parliament, not a popular vote.
But as a power struggle rumbles on, old ethnic wounds may reopen. Protesters, who government officials have said have come out mainly in Tutsi areas of the capital, say Imbonerakure and police are attacking them, a charge officials deny.
Beyond reports of a handful of small protests in other towns, there have been few other signs of unrest in the nation of 10 million people. Yet most of those fleeing have been from the countryside, with many reporting Imbonerakure youths chanting threats in the villages.
RURAL POWERBASE
Gedeon Ntahokaja, an Imbonerakure member and administrator in the rural Tangara district near Rwanda, said opponents tried to paint Imbonerakure as “a group of people who are just there to cause some trouble. That is not true.”
