Parena condemns arrest of university students

A Burundi human rights organization, league Iteka, says “the number of students detained in Ngozi, northern Burundi are currently nine”. It says six students from the Mutanga campus of the national university were arrested on Friday, 31 August 2001 in addition to the other three arrested two days earlier. “The arrested students are supporters of Parena and parties supporting Col Epitace Bayaganakandi”, Iteka said, adding that the arrests “created a climate of fear and suspicion between Hutu and Tutsi students in university hostels”.

In its ‘Letter to the Nation’ bulletin, the party of former president Jean-Baptiste Bagaza currently in exile in Uganda, Parena, says the students are “tortured throughout the day in secret cells”. Iteka quoted the students as telling its observers that Tutsi students were organizing night meetings and had brought in to the campus a lot of arms causing Hutu students to leave the university halls fearing for a possible attack by Tutsi students.

The human rights organizations also quoted university officials telling the media that “they are not aware of these facts but acknowledged that Tutsi students had left their rooms in fear of being arrested by the police”. Concerning the presence of a lot of weapons in the campus, the university authorities “did not deny the facts but said the affair was in the hands of the police and intelligence department”. Reacting to the allegation of weapons finding their way into the campus, Parena said the accusation was “part of the policy of the government’s “all-out repression against Parena and anything which ressembles it”. Parena blamed Hutu students “for no longer staying in the campus under the deceptive pretext that their Tutsi colleagues had recently brought in arms” and warned that “although the dictatorial madness was today being unleashed on the Parena, the monster would tomorrow devour its allies then its own children”.