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UNITED NATIONS. – A briefing by a Burundian activist to the United Nations Security Council was cancelled at the last minute on Thursday after Russia objected to her participation, diplomats said.
Rights activist Carine Kaneza was scheduled to brief the Council on the devastating crisis in her homeland as it discussed a damning report by the new UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, on the situation in Burundi.
Diplomatic sources told France24 that Russia objected to her participation and her intervention was cancelled.
The report by Guterres, which is his first on Burundi, states that the political impasse in the country has deepened, almost two years after Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza announced he would run for a third term, sparking mass protests and a failed coup.
Guterres strongly warned against Nkurunziza seeking a fourth term – a possibility that the president alluded to in December – and joined others in sounding the alarm on a political process that could lead to changes to the constitution, which he said “has the potential to plunge the country into an even deeper crisis”.
Kaneza, who is a spokesperson for the Women and Girls Movement for Peace and Security, told France24 that “the risk of genocide and mass atrocities” described in the Secretary-General’s report are clear red flags. The report says that despite a decline in overt violence and fewer incidences of armed confrontation, reports of human rights violations and abuses continue, including killings, enforced disappearances, gender-based violence, arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture and ill-treatment, and the discovery of unidentified bodies.
He details allegations of more than 200 cases of enforced disappearances since October 2016 and 593 violations of the right to life since April 2015. In response to the report, the Burundian ambassador to the UN, Albert Shingiro, said Guterres was part of “an axis of evil” that was “harassing” Burundi. – France24.
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