President Nkurunziza and US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power. AP Press Association Images/STR. All rights reserved.“I have lived in Burundi for 60 years, but I have never seen this: women raped in their homes, bodies mutilated, thrown in common graves, castrated, burnt, decapitated...I don’t know how to describe it”, Maggy Barankitse told me.
Barankitse is a Burundian activist who had to flee the country in June last year after an arrest warrant was issued against her. Her only crime? Speaking up against the president, Pierre Nkurunziza.
Most place the beginning of the current Burundian crisis in April 2015, when president Nkurunziza announced that he would stand for elections for the third time. This is unconstitutional: the constitution stipulates that a president can only rule for two five-year terms. Trying to bypass this rule, Nkurunziza argued that he had not been elected by the people but chosen by parliament at the beginning of his first mandate, in 2005. His third term should, therefore, only be counted as a second term.
