Burundi rebels 'losing support'
2005-12-08 09:12
Bujumbura - Burundi's military said on Wednesday that a new campaign against the country's last active rebel army had badly dented the group's support among its traditional base in the rural peasantry.
Army spokesperson Adolphe Manirakiza said more than 1 500 rebel sympathisers in Bujumbura Rural province where the National Liberation Forces (FNL) are most active had over the past month "renounced" the group.
"In the past month, 1 562 civilians have gone to the police or local administrators and formally renounced any collaboration with the FNL," Manirakiza said.
He said most of those making the statements were members of the Patriotic Hutu Youth movement or of clandestine support cells that had collected money and food for the FNL from the population.
The FNL is the only one of Burundi's seven Hutu rebel groups not to have signed onto a peace deal aimed at finally ending the tiny central African nation's 12-year ethnically driven civil war.
It has refused to recognise a new power-sharing government that took office in August after a series of elections and has carried on fighting despite peace overtures from President Pierre Nkurunziza, a former Hutu rebel leader.
After the FNL ignored an October 31 deadline to agree to talks, Nkurunziza ordered the military to boost operations against the FNL, telling residents of Bujumbura Rural province that the rebels would be dealt with by year's end.
New campaign has been criticised
On Tuesday, the army said its stepped-up patrols were responsible for the killing of 15 FNL fighters who were attempting to cross the border from western Burundi into the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Zenon Ndaruvukanye, the governor of Bujumbura Rural province that surrounds the capital, said the rebels' loss of support in his jurisdiction was due to a number of factors, not least the intensified military campaign.
"The army is tracking the rebels and we are sensitising the people to the situation, going to them and explaining that the FNL no longer has a reason to fight," he said.
Despite the claims of success, the new campaign has been criticised by human rights groups and the country's former ruling party who say it has been marked by rampant abuses, including extrajudicial killings, torture and arbitrary arrests of alleged FNL supporters.
On Monday, the head of the ex-ruling Frobedu party complained that the government "often violates the constitution, it conducts arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings by police have risen to a worrying degree".
Early last month, New York-based Human Rights Watch accused Nkurunziza's fledgling administration of summary executions and torture of civilians suspected of being FNL collaborators.
At the same time, a local human rights group, Aprodeh, said some 400 people had been illegally arrested since September for allegedly associating with the FNL and that 18 of those detainees had been tortured.