Human Rights Watch reports deepening covert violence in Burundi

*The Burundian authorities are targeting perceived opponents with increased brutality. Government forces are killing, abducting, torturing, and arbitrarily arresting scores of people at an alarming rate, says a report from the Human Rights Watch.*

“Government forces and the ruling party are treating suspected opponents with extreme cruelty and viciousness,” said Daniel Bekele, the executive director of the Africa division of Human Rights Watch.

“While the discovery of corpses in the streets of Bujumbura was a daily phenomenon in the second half of 2015, numerous violations are now occurring in the private,” says HRW.

Now people are being killed and their bodies left behind and in other cases, they are buried in mass graves or taken away to unknown destinations,” explains the report.

“Others have survived violent attacks and sustained horrific injuries – mutilation, crushed bones, sliced ​​throats, strangulation attempts and beatings to death with iron bars,” Bekele says.

On the other hand, the armed opposition groups have also stepped up their attacks, killing Imbonerakure (members of the youth league of the ruling party) and other members of the ruling party, and members of the security forces, the NGO reports.

HRW also documents cases where Burundian refugees in Rwanda were recruited and given military training to join armed groups in Burundi opposition, between May and July 2015.

Today, neither the Burundian government nor the armed opposition have made any efforts to end the spiraling human rights abuse.

The violence, now armed, have already killed more than 400 dead and forced more than 240,000 people to leave the country.