Commission starts work of identifying political prisoners

Twenty-one members of a new commission began their work on Tuesday to identify all Burundi political prisoners being held throughout the country. The commission will "determine who are political prisoners and provide a complete list", the nation's first vice-president, Martin Nduwimana, said during the commission's launch. The commissioners, who are mostly magistrates and lawyers, are to work in four subcommissions to cover the four provinces of Bujumbura, Ngozi, Bururi and Gitega regions, which each host the nation's main prisons. The main commission has three months to complete its work and is to submit a report once a month. The body is chaired by Judge Elysee Ndaye. In 2004 he chaired a smaller commission that was also charged with determining who is a political prisoner but only for imprisoned soldiers and members of the rebel Conseil national pour la defense de la democratie-Forces pour la defense de la democratie. In July prisoners protested against the determinations of that commission and demand their immediate release. In August paramilitary forces ended the protest by storming the country's main prison in the capital, Bujumbura. Local human rights groups say more than half of the 7,000 prisoners being held in Burundi claim they are political prisoners. The 2002 Arusha peace accord, which officially brought an end to the civil war, calls for a provisional amnesty for all political prisoners but it does not state what defines a political prisoner. For some the term includes Tutsi militiamen charged with the 1993 killing of Hutus as well as the people indicted for the 1993 assassination of Burundi's first democratically elected Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye. Nduwimana urged the members of the new commission to utilise their competences to clear up "the juridical and political controversies behind the issue of who is political prisoner".