{"id":29308,"date":"2016-10-11T02:06:50","date_gmt":"2016-10-11T02:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/burundi-bars-three-un-rights-investigators\/"},"modified":"2016-10-11T02:06:44","modified_gmt":"2016-10-11T02:06:44","slug":"burundi-bars-three-un-rights-investigators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/burundi-bars-three-un-rights-investigators\/","title":{"rendered":"Burundi bars three UN rights investigators"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Burundi on Monday barred three United Nations rights experts who had accused the government in Bujumbura of being responsible for abuses and warned of a danger of genocide from the violence.}<\/p>\n

In a letter sent by Foreign Minister Alain Aime Nyamitwe and seen by AFP, the Burundian government said the three UN investigators were declared persona non grata with immediate effect.<\/p>\n

Pablo de Greiff from Colombia, Christof Heyns from South Africa and Maya Sahli-Fadel of Algeria had been appointed in December to lead the independent probe.<\/p>\n

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric expressed disapproval of Burundi’s decision.<\/p>\n

“It’s critical that Burundi and every other country cooperate fully with UN human rights mechanism and that is including working with those representing it,” he said.<\/p>\n

The decision to bar the three UN experts came just days after Burundi announced plans to withdraw from the International Criminal Court, warning of a “plot” to harm the country.<\/p>\n

The three experts had concluded in a report released last month that “gross human rights violations have and are taking place, committed primarily by state agents and those linked to them.”<\/p>\n

Thousands of people have been tortured, suffered sexual abuse or disappeared, while arbitrary detention has happened “on a massive scale”, the report said.<\/p>\n

UN diplomats said the move was clearly an angry response from Bujumbura to the report which paved the way to a UN decision to set up a formal Commission of Inquiry.<\/p>\n

PULL OUT OF ICC<\/p>\n

Burundi on Friday said it would pull out of the ICC amid fears that members of the leadership could be indicted as a result of the commission of inquiry’s work.<\/p>\n

Last week, a representative of the non-governmental organisation Trial International was stripped of her visa and ordered to leave Burundi.<\/p>\n

The employee was scheduled to provide legal training to Burundian lawyers defending victims of state-sponsored violence.<\/p>\n

Burundi has been in turmoil since President Pierre Nkurunziza announced plans in April last year to run for a third term, which he went on to win.<\/p>\n

More than 500 people have died, many of them in extrajudicial killings blamed on Burundian police, security forces and militias linked to the ruling party, according to the United Nations.<\/p>\n

At least 270,000 people have fled the country.<\/p>\n

The UN Security Council is due to discuss the crisis in Burundi on Thursday and hear a report from envoy Jamal Benomar.<\/p>\n

\"Heavily<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Burundi on Monday barred three United Nations rights experts who had accused the government in Bujumbura of being responsible for abuses and warned of a danger of genocide from the violence.} In a letter sent by Foreign Minister Alain Aime Nyamitwe and seen by AFP, the Burundian government said the three UN investigators were declared […]<\/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":[228],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-29308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-afp"],"bylines":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","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":71}],"contributors":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","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":71}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29308","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=29308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29308"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=29308"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=29308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}