Burundi detains official for saying president’s foes should be thrown into lake
A ruling party official in Burundi ended up on the wrong side of the law after he called on supporters to throw political opponents into a lake, a judicial source said on Monday ahead of a referendum on extending President Pierre Nkurunziza’s term in office.
The comments by Melchiade Nzopfabarushe were made during a rally on Sunday to party members in his native village amid increased political jitters in Burundi,whose modern history has been marred by ethnically charged civil war.
Nearly 430,000 people including opposition politicians have fled the tiny East African nation with a population of 10.5 million since Nkurunziza won a third term in a 2015 election that sparked violent clashes, his foes maintain that he had no right to run again.
“We said that we have ordered boats. We will send them (opponents) into Lake Tanganyika,” Nzopfabarushe said in a video clip of his comments, which have been circulating online, to the party members in Kabezi, near the capital Bujumbura.
“He who has the president’s support successfully achieves his endeavours. That is the message we are giving either here or nationwide,” said Nzopfabarushehe, a former senior official in the president’s office.
The judicial source told Reuters that Nzopfabarushe was being held in custody in the capital.
Nkurunziza came to power in 2005 after a peace deal ended a decade of civil war between the Tutsi-dominated army and Hutu rebels, in which 300,000 people were killed.
He ran for a third term in 2015, which opponents said violated the terms of the peace deal, sparking clashes that resulted in hundreds of deaths.
