{"id":24472,"date":"2016-04-09T01:19:52","date_gmt":"2016-04-09T01:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/francophone-group-puts-burundi-on-ice-over-year\/"},"modified":"2016-04-09T01:19:35","modified_gmt":"2016-04-09T01:19:35","slug":"francophone-group-puts-burundi-on-ice-over-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/francophone-group-puts-burundi-on-ice-over-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Francophone group puts Burundi on ice over year-long political crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{The International Organisation of la Francophonie suspended cooperation with Burundi, citing worsening security and the East African nation\u2019s failure to hold inclusive political dialogue to end a yearlong crisis.}<\/p>\n<p>The Paris-based group, which was created in 1970 to encourage solidarity between French-speaking nations, announced the decision in a statement on its website. All programmes have been suspended except those \u201cdirectly benefiting the civilian population and those which may contribute to the restoration of democracy,\u201d it said. French is one of Burundi\u2019s official languages.<\/p>\n<p>Landlocked Burundi has been rocked by unrest that\u2019s killed more than 470 people since April 2015, when President Pierre Nkurunziza announced plans to stand for a third term, a move criticized by his opponents as unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<p>Presidential adviser Willy Nyamitwe criticised the organization\u2019s move in comments posted on his Twitter account. \u201cIt\u2019s as if la Francophonie was a god and Burundi should bow down to this denial of its sovereignty,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-11513 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/cdn.mg.co.jpg\" alt=\"A young Burundian flees from commotion in the capital Bujumbura.\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{The International Organisation of la Francophonie suspended cooperation with Burundi, citing worsening security and the East African nation\u2019s failure to hold inclusive political dialogue to end a yearlong crisis.} The Paris-based group, which was created in 1970 to encourage solidarity between French-speaking nations, announced the decision in a statement on its website. All programmes have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[99],"byline":[2584],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-mail-guardian-africa"],"bylines":[{"id":2584,"name":"Mail Guardian Africa","slug":"mail-guardian-africa","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2584,"name":"Mail Guardian Africa","slug":"mail-guardian-africa","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24472"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24472"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}