Bujumbura - Burundi police stopped a well-known anti-graft activist on Thursday from marching to a government ministry in the capital to protest against rising corruption before next year's election.
The government of the landlocked east African nation of nearly 10 million people has been cracking down on the opposition and rights activists, who say planned constitutional changes could upset a delicate ethnic power balance and allow President Pierre Nkurunziza to run for a third term.
Opponents fear the proposed amendments, which raised fears of turmoil and sparked the country's worst political crisis since a 12-year civil war ended in 2005, may establish the primacy of Nkurunziza's majority Hutu ethnic community over the Tutsis. The United States and the United Nations have warned against the changes.
Gabriel Rufyiri, head of the anti-corruption board (OLUCOME), said he was stopped by anti-riot police as he marched from his home to the ministry of justice where he intended to stage a two-day hunger strike.
“We have never been allowed to demonstrate,” the campaigner told Reuters by phone afterwards.
“They sent me home by force and I am not allowed to go out. It is like I am under house arrest,” said the activist who has previously been jailed for speaking out against corruption.
Police spokesman Hermenegilde Harimenshi said the anti-graft activist was stopped because what he was doing was illegal.
Other civil society activists strongly denounced what they called “a continuous crackdown on freedom of expression” against the rights guaranteed in Burundi's constitution.
“This is a very bad sign while Burundi prepares to organise general elections shortly,” said Vital Nshimirimana, chairman of FORSC, a coalition of more than 300 civil society organizations including OLUCOME.
“It is clear the government is determined to silence whoever criticises what is going wrong in the country.”
Another government critic, Pierre Claver Mbonimpa who has been campaigning against the constitutional changes like Gabriel Rufyiri, has been in detention since May this year.
US President Barack Obama said the United States stood in solidarity with detained activists like Mbonimpa, when he spoke at the Clinton Global Initiative earlier this week.
Reuters