'Catastrophe' coming to Burundi
2005-02-22 10:05
Bujumbura - A Burundian general warned on Monday of impending disaster at a camp for disarmed rebels in the war-torn central African state, saying men were dying there of starvation and the situation was explosive.
"If the UN doesn't do anything to remedy the situation as it is supposed to, we're heading for catastrophe," warned General Adolphe Nshimirimana, second in command of the new Burundi army.
An alarming picture emerged of the reception centre at Buramata, 25km north of the capital Bujumbura, where thousands of ex-rebels have voluntarily turned themselves in under peace accords ending a civil war that claimed at least 300 000 mainly civilian lives.
"It's an explosive situation,"said Nshimirimana. "All these people are without shelter, food and medication."
'State of complete breakdown'
"It's awful, these people are in a state of complete breakdown," agreed a local United Nations official who did not wish to be identified:
"There are thousands of them stretched out on the ground under a merciless sun, without tents, cover, anything."
The ex-rebels had arrived last Wednesday and Saturday and had still received no rations, he said.
The anonymous official said the UN had the task of transporting the men to the camps and arranging for their security, but not the task of providing rations. "It's up to the Burundi government to feed them," he insisted.
Three former rebel fighters suffering from malaria had died of starvation in the reception centre, Nshimirimana claimed.
The three were members of the Forces For the Defence of Democracy (FDD), formerly the chief rebel movement in the war that raged for a decade.
"The three men were actually killed by malaria but they were undoubtedly weakened by hunger," said the anonymous UN official.
The army announced last Wednesday that about 18 000 former FDD fighters were now in taking part in a process of disarmament and mustering in reception centres begun on January 25.
The ex-rebels had first been mustered at assembly points under the supervision of their own leaders.
They were disarmed by UN peacekeeping troops, then kept in the reception centres under UN protection. These centres are the responsibility of the Burundi government.
Nshimirimana, a member of the majority Hutu ethnic group and former FDD military leader, is now second in command of the new Burundi army created under the peace accords, which includes the former government forces together with six rebel movements that signed the peace accords at Arusha in Tanzania in 2000.
The new army is commanded by General Germain Niyoyankana,a member of the rival minority Tutsi group.