NAIROBI: Burundi’s parliament appointed a new human rights commission late Monday after its previous head fled into exile and said its mission was to “fight” the United Nations‘s rights envoy.
International rights groups have long accused Burundi’s government of suppressing civil society, political opposition and the media.
The country’s own National Independent Human Rights Commission was considered close to the government, but it released a report in January detailing hundreds of violations.
That led its president Sixte Vigny Nimuraba to flee into exile after he was criticised by the head of the National Assembly and then accused of corruption.
After a long debate on Sunday, the National Assembly approved an entirely new board of seven members for the commission, headed by a bishop, Martin Blaise Nyaboho, who has spoken out strongly against the opposition in the past.
National Assembly president Gelase Daniel Ndabirabe used the occasion to criticise Fortune Gaetan Zongo, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burundi.
Zongo’s report from August detailed “widespread impunity enjoyed by perpetrators of human rights violations… the deteriorating security situation… and the increase in the number of cases of enforced disappearance and arbitrary arrest”.
In a message to the new national rights commission, shared on social media, the National Assembly president said: “Your mission will be to fight and bring down Fortune Gaetan Zongo… and put an end to these unjust accusations of human rights violations.”
Nimuraba, the previous commission head, fled to Europe last month, according to a diplomatic source and local media, after his home was searched by the National Intelligence Service and police.
Pacifique Nininahazwe, another exiled rights activist, told AFP it was illegal for parliament under Burundian law to replace the rights commissioners midway through their mandate.
He said the new commissioners were all close to the ruling party and had little experience in human rights work. “They are the worst team ever put in place,” he said.
Two members of Burundi’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up to look into historic ethnic violence, also fled into exile this year. Pastor Clement Noe Ninziza and Aloys Batungwanayo fled the country in February after being accused of sharing “intelligence with the enemy”, according to internal sources and the local press.
