Burundi: Paramilitaries Commit Killings

Burundi: Paramilitaries Commit Killings

(New York, December 14, 2001) -- Government-sponsored paramilitary
forces known as “Guardians of the Peace” have committed many killings,
rapes, and other crimes over the last four years in Burundi, Human
Rights Watch charged today.

In an eighteen-page report entitled “To Protect the People: The
Government-Sponsored ‘Self-Defense’ Program
in Burundi,” Human Rights Watch called on the Burundian government to
disband the paramilitary force, which has been responsible for many
violations of international
humanitarian law.

The Guardians, as well as similar patrols in urban areas, were
established by the previous government as part
of a “civilian self-defense” program to combat rebel forces in the
eight-year-old civil war. A recently installed transitional government
has so far continued the program.

“The government has a duty to protect its citizens,” said Alison Des
Forges, Senior Advisor to the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch,
“but it also has an obligation to ensure that all its armed forces obey
the laws of war. Calling the Guardians ‘civilians’ does not change the
facts: they are recruited, trained, and armed by the authorities. They
act under military orders and, like soldiers, must be held accountable
for any abuses they commit.”

In many cases, authorities required unwilling participants to serve as
Guardians or as members of similar patrols in the cities even though
there was no legal process for conscripting them for such service.
Participants receive no pay and generally do not know how long they will
be required to serve. They receive no uniform or insignia. Whatever
powers they exercise are not formally established or publicly known to
other citizens.

Human Rights Watch has found that Burundian officials recruited many
children aged fifteen and younger for service in the Guardians and in
urban patrols. Supposedly recruited to defend their own neighborhoods,
many of these children were ordered into full-scale military operations
far from their homes. Some officers saw the children as more expendable
than better-trained adult troops and sent them into combat in the front
lines. Hundreds have died in military operations and
from beatings suffered in the course of training.

All parties to the civil war have used children as soldiers. The
government of Burundi has signed international conventions banning the
use of children under the age of eighteen years in combat, and military
authorities have ordered that children younger than that age not be
recruited for military service.

The report underlined the danger of preaching “self-defense” in a region
where ethnically-based violence has cost hundreds of thousands of lives
in recent years. “Telling people that they may have to take up arms to
defend themselves makes them more afraid and more open to manipulation
by ruthless leaders,” said Des Forges. “If people think the government
cannot or will not protect them, they will be far readier to attack
others.”

The report, “To Protect the People: The Government-Sponsored
'Self-Defense’ Program in Burundi,” is available at
http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/12/Burundi1214.htm

It is available in French at http://www.hrw.org/french/reports/burundi2/

For more information on Burundi, please see:

Burundi: Children Abducted for Military (HRW Press Release, November 14,
2001) at http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/11/Burundi1114.htm