Youths stage protests over demobilisation pay

Former combatants from Burundian paramilitary youth groups continued protests on Tuesday in the capital, Bujumbura, despite a promise by the minister of defence to review their demobilisation pay. Streets in the capital were paralysed on Monday when some 100 former combatants, known as the "Guardiens de la paix" (Guardians of Peace) erected roadblocks and stoned passers-by. They attempted to storm the central market but were dispersed by police firing guns into the air. The protesters were enraged after they turned up to collect their payments at the National Commission for Demobilisation and Reintegration and found that many of their names were not on the list of beneficiaries. "Out of 176 of us only four names were on the list," one of the protestors, who declined to be named, said. "We want to show that this is not acceptable." On Monday, the minister for defence and former combatants, Maj-Gen Germain Niyoyankana, admitted that names on the lists included civil servants rather than former combatants. He announced that all payments would be suspended to correct the flaw. The decision is "in the interest of youth", Niyoyankana said. New lists would be drawn up in collaboration with the beneficiaries themselves to ensure that only they get the payments, he added. The chairman of the Executive Secretariat of the commission, Liberat Ntunzwenimana, said last week that some 3,200 former combatants from paramilitary and militia groups had been demobilised. Tuesday's protests at Bujumbura's Buterere neighbourhood were to demand that local commune administrators be given the money to pay the former combatants instead of the demobilisation commission. However, the commission said local administrators had drawn up the initial lists and thus they should be held responsible for the current problems.