Tuesday

19th Mar 2024

Too soon to lift EU sanctions on Burundi, NGOs warn

  • Burundi sanctions are not on the official agenda when EU foreign ministers meet in Brussels on Monday

The EU should not relax sanctions against Burundi until the regime there has stopped persecuting journalists and human rights activists, leading NGOs have said.

"The EU should not rely on promises of human rights reforms from the Burundian authorities, and insist instead that they meet concrete benchmarks," 12 NGOs, including Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in an open letter to EU foreign ministers on Monday (21 June).

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Get the EU news that really matters

Instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

The sanctions, imposed in 2016, include a ban on EU budgetary assistance and blacklisting of regime henchmen.

The government has since made progress, for instance, by pardoning four journalists and releasing more than 2,500 prisoners.

But one prominent human rights defender, Germain Rukuki, is still serving a 32-year sentence, while an opposition MP, Fabien Banciryanino, was jailed last year, the NGOs noted.

Pro-government militias are given free rein to police parts of the country, where "unidentified dead bodies are still [being] found", they said.

Political opponents are being arrested and mistreated on a daily basis.

"Dozens of new torture cases have been documented since the 2020 elections, and at least one detainee died in detention after being tortured by intelligence agents in 2021," the NGOs noted.

And there have been "no credible investigations" into the extra-judicial killings which took place at the height of a political crisis in 2015 to 2016.

Meanwhile, "the few independent media outlets that are allowed to operate exercise self-censorship and avoid controversial issues. Journalists are regularly threatened or harassed by government and ruling party officials," the NGOs added.

"The Burundian government has failed to implement reforms in most of [the] areas" stipulated as EU conditions when the sanctions were first imposed, they said.

The appeal came amid heightened diplomacy by the former Belgian colony in east Africa to get off the hook.

"It's high time we close the chapter of 2015 to 2020, so we discussed a lot on issues regarding human rights, justice, good governance, and co-operation," Burundian foreign minister Albert Shingiro said in April after meeting the Belgian, Dutch, French, and German ambassadors there.

He also issued a similar message after meeting Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, the French minister of state for tourism and French nationals abroad, also in April.

The EU sanctions expire in October unless they are renewed for another year.

Letter

'We call on the EU to appoint a Horn of Africa envoy'

The UNESCO world heritage site in Aksum, Ethiopia, other heritage sites and religious centres are now under threat. This tragedy is compounded by a terrible loss of innocent lives, sexual violence and a destabilising refugee crisis.

Borrell: 'Israel provoking famine', urges more aid access

70 percent of northern Gaza is facing famine, new data shows. There is one shower per 5,500 people, and 888 people per toilet. 'How can you live in these conditions?" asked Natalie Boucly of UNRWA at the European Humanitarian Forum.

Opinion

Potential legal avenues to prosecute Navalny's killers

The UN could launch an independent international investigation into Navalny's killing, akin to investigation I conducted on Jamal Khashoggi's assassination, or on Navalny's Novichok poisoning, in my role as special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, writes the secretary-general of Amnesty International.

Latest News

  1. Borrell: 'Israel provoking famine', urges more aid access
  2. Europol: Israel-Gaza galvanising Jihadist recruitment in Europe
  3. EU to agree Israeli-settler blacklist, Borrell says
  4. EU ministers keen to use Russian profits for Ukraine ammo
  5. Call to change EIB defence spending rules hits scepticism
  6. Potential legal avenues to prosecute Navalny's killers
  7. EU summit, Gaza, Ukraine, reforms in focus this WEEK
  8. The present and future dystopia of political micro-targeting ads

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Nordic Council of MinistersJoin the Nordic Food Systems Takeover at COP28
  2. Nordic Council of MinistersHow women and men are affected differently by climate policy
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersArtist Jessie Kleemann at Nordic pavilion during UN climate summit COP28
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCOP28: Gathering Nordic and global experts to put food and health on the agenda
  5. Friedrich Naumann FoundationPoems of Liberty – Call for Submission “Human Rights in Inhume War”: 250€ honorary fee for selected poems
  6. World BankWorld Bank report: How to create a future where the rewards of technology benefit all levels of society?

Join EUobserver

EU news that matters

Join us