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About 20 representatives of Burundi’s civil society groups have travelled to South Africa for consultations with the facilitator of the Arusha peace process for Burundi, Nelson Mandela, news organisations reported on Monday. The delegation, which left on Sunday, included representatives from youth organisations, religious groups, the chamber of commerce and women organisations, Burundi radio reported. The participants were supposed to set up working groups on Monday morning but “organisational problems” surfaced “when some members of an anti-genocide group, Amasekanya, refused to sit at the same table as those they described as genocide perpetrators,” Net Press agency reported.
It said Amasekanya’s president, Diomede Rutamucero, walked out of the meeting hall on Monday after signing a statement which he read to the participants. In this, he reportedly apologised to the organisers that his association could “neither engage in a dialogue nor hold discussions with genocide perpetrators who were in the hall”. The civil society representatives were due to return to Burundi on 2 June, Net Press added.
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