Amnesty calls on government to end rights abuses

Despite the recent political changes in Burundi, Amnesty International (AI) continues to receive reports of torture at an alarming rate, the organisation said on Monday. "Torture and ill-treatment in security-force custody continue to devastate the lives of hundreds of ordinary Burundian people," the agency said. The problem was exacerbated by a culture of impunity, which was encouraged by decades of government refusal to meaningfully investigate and prosecute those responsible for gross human rights violations, AI added. Soldiers accused of involvement in human rights abuses were rarely arrested, and even more rarely tried. Paradoxically, the few trials that had taken place had confirmed the impunity of the security forces, as illustrated by the levity of the sentences imposed, and this demonstrated clearly the contempt of the security forces for the lives of civilians, AI said. It cited the case of a police officer, Deogratias Bakundukize, who continued to work despite having been found guilty of the deaths in custody of two detainees on separate occasions. AI also cited the example of three soldiers sentenced to between one and two years' imprisonment each, having been convicted of involvement in the killing of 54 people, mostly women and children, in December 1996. Another soldier, convicted of shooting a Hutu MP at point-blank range, was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment and fined the equivalent of one US dollar, in September 2001. AI urged the new transitional government of Burundi to take the opportunity to end the "blight" of torture, to end incommunicado detention, to introduce a full right of appeal, and to reform the legal system so that members of the security forces accused of abuses could be tried in a civilian court, as opposed to the military courts currently used.