“Some swindlers pretend to be Intelligence agents to extort money from people”

Martin Nivyabandi: “We are doing our best to track down and dismantle those gangs”.

Martin Nivyabandi, the Minister in charge of Human Rights, recognizes that such practice is common in Burundi. This was reported during a press briefing held in Bujumbura the capital on 17 August.

“It has been reported that the National Intelligence Services detains and tortures people. But we noticed that there are organized gangs who call themselves agents of the National Intelligence service when extorting money from their victims after they have mistreated and tortured them”, he states. According to him, they kidnap people for ransom.

Minister Nivyabandi calls people for the awareness of this new phenomenon: “Please be careful, these people even hold badges on which it is mentioned that they are the agents of “Documentation”. However, there is no such a service in this country. »

He assured: “we are working with various security services to track down and dismantle these gangs.”
Nivyabandi asked the victims of such practice to join the department in charge of human rights in his ministry for assistance.

The minister refutes all the allegations of torture perpetrated by the Burundian government including the agents of National Intelligence Services. “The only human rights violations that we know in our country are currently common in all nations. In various fora, we are asking for combined effort to combat this kind of case.”

After the special review of Burundi on 28 and 29 July 2016, the UN Committee Against Torture released its concluding observations on 12 August after the Government of Burundi had failed to participate in the second dialogue session and thus, depriving itself of the opportunity to directly bring its answers to committee members.

In a 12 page report, the UNCAT condemned the forced disappearance of political opponents, citing 36 cases between April 2015 and April 2016, sexual violence by the security forces and Imbonerakure youths , as well as a genocidal rhetoric aimed at eliminating the Tutsi ethnic group.

For this, the Committee calls on Burundi government to submit no later than 12 October 2016 a special follow-up report on all measures taken to implement all the recommendations contained in the report.