In Burundi it is No Nyangoma, No peace


  1. Burundi's opposition leaders has broken his silence and called for the resignation of the countries President Pierr Nkurunziza for abrogating the constitutional order in favor of his own cronies.

    After returning from self imposed exile on July 15, 2007, Mr. Leonard Nyangoma, the leader of CNDD, has renewed his warning aganist attacks targeted on opposition leaders.

    He appealed to the Forces for National Liberation (FNL) to remain committed to the talks despite attacks targeted to its leadership.

    The CNDD leader has animated through a source in Burundi that the government is rapidly loosing out touch with the realities in the country.

    After returning back to the country after a one years self imposed exile in Belgium, Nyangoma has maintained that he was forced to take temporary refuge after the government had targeted him for arrest and detention after falsely accusing him and other members of his party for ploting a coup.

    Nyangoma accuses the so-called "Club Kampala" for inventing the coup theory inorder to justify the continued incarceration of the Burundi ex president Ndayize Domitien and several other opponents of the government.

    The government has stepped up its crackdown on its opponents accusing them of smuggling in the country illegal weapons.

    Offices and residences of opposition leaders have been targeted for destruction.

    The opposition and other resistance groups have also been banned from holding meeting in many parts of the country. FNL and the CNDD faction of Nyangoma feared for their lives.

    In 2005, Nyangoma declared his party as an opposition party and despite his absence in country, Nyangoma remained critical to the CNDD-FDD government accusing it of human rights violations and undermining democracy.

    Nyangoma's political journey is traced soon after the death of Mr. Melchior Ndadaye in 1993, following his assassination by the then mono-ethnic Tutsi army.

    Leonard Nyangoma has remained critical and a champion of democracy leading the likes of Ndadaye and others.

    In 1994, Nyangoma gave up his position as an interior minister and founded the party CNDD along with its armed wing FDD and lead the armed struggle with the objective to have a representative national army which comprises all the ethnic groups.

    Despite divisions that later occurred within CNDD and its armed wing FDD, Nyangoma has remained as the epicenter of any possible positive change in Burundi.

    It is remembered how his political adversary had hard time running against him in 2005 as there was nothing negative to say about him or his party, except his Bururi origin, which, unfortunately he has no control of. A Ngozi native who spoke to BR on condition of anonymity stated that in 2005 elections, those parties running against CNDD used regionalism propaganda as reason not to vote for Nyangoma.

    He is back in Burundi but will he lead the change this time?



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