The world looks away as blood flows in Burundi

More than a quarter of a million people have fled in terror as opposition militias plot their return. Without international assistance a humanitarian disaster looms

Thierry wants to talk, but chokes on memories of blows and stabs punctuated by the sound of his father pleading for his life before masked men hacked him to death. He shrinks into himself, cold and small on a damp wooden bench just inside Tanzania. Hell is just a couple of kilometres and a river crossing away, in the country he called home until two hours ago
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“Blood flows everywhere in Burundi, that’s how things are,” said the young farmer, rolling up his trouser legs and a shirt sleeve to show cuts and bruises almost as raw as his anguish. He asked that his name be changed to protect family still inside Burundi. A refugee at 27, he is just one victim of a crisis that has pushed more than a quarter of a million people into exile, and now threatens the tenuous stability of a region with a grim history of genocide. Torture, assault, abduction and murder fill the stories of those who have fled.

“I want to forget everything about Burundi, even our names,” said another young man, who has collapsed at a refugee registration post after carrying his 16-year-old sister, pregnant after rape, across a river to safety. They left behind the grave of another sister, killed last year by a government bullet.

Survivors warn that, as the violence spirals and rumours grow of opposition militias training in neighbouring countries, a government fearful of losing its grip has resorted to the poisonous ethnic propaganda that fuelled the country’s past wars and the genocide in neighbouring Rwanda.

Yet the world doesn’t seem to have noticed. There is little sense of international urgency about halting Burundi’s disintegration, and aid groups say there is even less interest in funding food and shelter for victims.

“Our country is on the brink of war, and we feel forgotten,” said Genevieve Kanyange, a senior defector from the ruling party who spent weeks in hiding before fleeing into exile. “If we don’t get help soon, it may be too late.”

Violence first flared last year when the flamboyant president, Pierre Nkurunziza, a former PE teacher, militia commander and devout born-again Christian, announced that he was casting aside the constitution to run for a third term.

That triggered a failed coup attempt, mass protests and a crackdown that has become a permanent state of violence. On average, more than a hundred people a day have staggered across the Tanzanian border in 2016, figures from aid agencies working in the region show.

They join the 250,000 or so who were already spread across Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the end of last year, in camps that are desperately overcrowded and short of food. An appeal for funds has raised only £1 in every £10 needed, a United Nations spokesman said.



More at:   http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/10/burundi-ethnic-violence-refugees



Sometimes I think this world is shitty place