Salvator Nyandwi, the chairman of the association of gravediggers ”Dufashanye”, was arrested in the afternoon of 5 November. He is detained in Gihamga police Brigade custody in Bubanza Province in the West of Burundi. He is accused of speaking to a journalist.
One of the graves destroyed in Mpanda cemetery
The association gathers gravediggers who work in Mpanda cemetery. In the morning of 5 November, Salvator Nyandwi was responding to Iwacu Press Group reporter, who was investigating the destruction of some graves in Mpanda cemetery when he received a call from the chief of Buringa area. “He asked me the reason why I was speaking to a journalist without his permission,” he said. The same administrative authority of the area wondered why a reporter dares to enter his sector without asking him permission. Information provided by the gravediggers says a hundred of graves had already been destroyed.
Most of them are soldiers and police officers‘. The gravediggers are very much concerned after finding that the majority of suspected authors of these destructive acts have been released.
Léopold Ndayisaba, the administrator of Gihanga Commune states that the arrest of the chairman of the Association “Dufashanye” is not related to the interview he granted to the Iwacu journalist. “His arrest is rather due to a systematic theft of construction materials in the Mpanda cemetery.” He ensures that there is no particular problem in this cemetery and points out that there are just thieves who are stealing metal sheets used to construct the graves”.
Ndayisaba refutes the accusations of those who say that the suspects of this theft were released. “One person is still behind bars. Only two have been released,” he says.
IWACU Open Data
