{"id":32063,"date":"2017-01-25T01:04:19","date_gmt":"2017-01-25T01:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/mass-presidential-pardon-for-quarter-of-prisoners\/"},"modified":"2017-01-25T01:04:15","modified_gmt":"2017-01-25T01:04:15","slug":"mass-presidential-pardon-for-quarter-of-prisoners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/mass-presidential-pardon-for-quarter-of-prisoners\/","title":{"rendered":"Mass presidential pardon for quarter of prisoners in Burundi"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Burundi began Monday releasing a quarter of its jail population under a mass presidential pardon, but prisoners’ rights groups voiced concern they were just making room for more political inmates.}<\/p>\n

A first group of 300 were released from the Mpimba central prison in Bujumbura, but authorities aim to free some 2,500 of the total, which stood at 10,051 last month.<\/p>\n

The releases, which included 58 activists arrested in a police crackdown on demonstrators in April 2014, were aimed at “relieving prisons to allow those remaining to live in acceptable conditions,” said Justice Minister Aimee Laurentine Kanyana.<\/p>\n

Burundi began Monday releasing a quarter of its jail population under a mass presidential pardon, but prisoners’ rights groups voiced concern they were just making room for more political inmates.<\/p>\n

A first group of 300 were released from the Mpimba central prison in Bujumbura, but authorities aim to free some 2,500 of the total, which stood at 10,051 last month.<\/p>\n

The releases, which included 58 activists arrested in a police crackdown on demonstrators in April 2014, were aimed at “relieving prisons to allow those remaining to live in acceptable conditions,” said Justice Minister Aimee Laurentine Kanyana.<\/p>\n

“Every time political prisoners are released it’s a good thing,” Pierre-Claver Mbonimpa of the Aprodeh prisoners’ defence group told AFP.<\/p>\n

“But we are calling above all for the release of over 4,000 political detainees since the start of the crisis in Burundi,” added Mbonimpa, who lives in exile in Belgium.<\/p>\n

But he said the pardon by President Pierre Nkurunziza was also aimed at “making space for the victims of numerous arbitrary arrests which add to the repression which Burundi suffers”.<\/p>\n

Burundi has always denied holding political prisoners.<\/p>\n

The African country has been in the throes of a serious, sometimes deadly political crisis since April 2015 when Nkurunziza announced his intention to run for a third term which opponents said was unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

He went on to win an election in July that was boycotted by the opposition and criticised by outside observers.<\/p>\n

The violence in Burundi has so far killed at least 500 people and driven more than 300,000 to leave the country.<\/p>\n

Burundi has also moved to quit the International Criminal Court which was investigating the country, and cut ties with the UN’s main human rights body after a damning September report detailed atrocities and warned of “genocide”.<\/p>\n

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

{Burundi began Monday releasing a quarter of its jail population under a mass presidential pardon, but prisoners’ rights groups voiced concern they were just making room for more political inmates.} A first group of 300 were released from the Mpimba central prison in Bujumbura, but authorities aim to free some 2,500 of the total, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[228],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-32063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","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\/32063","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=32063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32063"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=32063"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=32063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}