On January 3, the Burundi Ministry of Interior accused ITEKA League (ITEKA), a Burundi-based civil society organization, of harming the country’s reputation, and removed ITEKA from the list of NGOs allowed to work in Burundi. This past December also marked one year since Marie Claudette Kwizera, the treasurer of ITEKA, went missing; her disappearance prompted the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) to start an online campaign calling for an independent investigation into the situation. The activist’s disappearance and the ban of ITEKA are assumed to be related to their active human rights work. ITEKA President, Anschaire Nikoyagize – who now lives in exile in Uganda – asked the Burundi government in a statement to heed the European Union’s call and reverse the ban, as well as recognize the need for human rights organizations in the country.

 

 

Since Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza decided to run for an unconstitutional third term in office in May of 2015, thousands of Burundians have gone missing, been displaced, been arbitrarily detained or died as a result of the heightened political tensions. Two months ago – shortly after ITEKA received a temporary suspension – the organization and FIDH published a 200-page report that documented several accounts of “murder, kidnapping, disappearances, torture, rape and mass detention” in Burundi. The government has denied the report’s claims that Burundian officials are responsible for the systematic human rights violations, and created a smear campaign under #ThisisMyGenocide to discredit the findings. Read a summary of the report, entitled Repression and Genocidal Dynamics in Burundi, here.