According to a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), at least 18 Burundian refugees and asylum seekers from refugee camps in Tanzania forcibly disappeared last year.
Many were tortured at a police station in Kibondo, Tanzania, the report said. Seven remain missing and three were released after a few weeks.
Eight of them were turned over to authorities in Burundi and detained “under miserable conditions” without due process, suggesting cooperation with the Tanzanian police and intelligence services, the report said.
The report highlighted both pressure on refugees to go home and alleged continued repression under Burundi’s new president.
Many of the more than 150,000 refugees in Tanzania fled deadly political unrest in 2015 when Burundi was accused of cracking down on protests against the late President Pierre Nkurunziza’s bid for another term in office.
Extrajudicial murders, torture
The United Nations Human Rights Bureau was expelled from the country after reporting more than 300 extrajudicial murders. Burundi’s government denied that it was targeting its people.
It emerges from the Burundi prison that some of the recently abducted refugees have been accused, in little detail, of being associated with anonymous armed groups and causing trouble.
In some cases, during interrogation in Tanzania, the refugees were told that the police and intelligence officers had received information about them from the Burundian authorities.
They told of torture, including by the Tanzanian police, who “shocked them with electric batons, rubbed their faces and genitals with chilli, and beat and whipped them,” the report said.
“We screamed as if we had been crucified,” said a refugee from the rights group and said the police were demanding the equivalent of $ 430, money he didn’t have.
When faced with the choice of staying detained or being handed over to the Burundian authorities, he decided to return.
“They were told they would be released”
“We don’t know what caused it,” said HRW’s African director Mausi Segun, adding that the kidnappings began around the time the election campaign intensified in Burundi’s last election late last year.
It is not clear whether more people have disappeared since the May elections, she added.
The eight refugees who agreed to return to Burundi “chose to return because the pain was incredible” because they had received torture and because they could not afford to extort the fees from them, Segun said .
Some reported that they covered their faces and handcuffed their hands from prison and drove to the border, then taken to Bujumbura and questioned again by national intelligence services.
“They were told they would be released, but nothing happened,” Segun said.
Speaking to the Associated Press news agency about her husband’s disappearance, a woman in Tanzania said local police threatened her with arrest when she tried to find out his fate.
Then she went to the office of the UN Refugee Agency and learned that they were monitoring the case.
After getting nowhere, “I decided not to follow the case anymore because I didn’t want my children to be orphans,” she said. “I don’t know where he is yet.”
No response from the Tanzanian government
The UN refugee agency told HRW that it had repeatedly raised concerns about the enforced disappearances to the Tanzanian authorities, and the government said a “high-level investigation is ongoing”.
The UN agency said it had not heard any results.
It’s not clear if the Tanzanian government at the highest level knows what happened, Segun said.
“The Tanzanians did not receive an answer, which is not surprising.”
The rights group has documented the pressure of the Tanzanian authorities on refugees to go home in the past.
The Burundi authorities have also failed to respond to the allegations.
The new President Evariste Ndayishimiye has asked the refugees in Tanzania to return.
But Segun said his government looked “more or less the same” as that of the late President Pierre Nkurunziza.
“The same people who were in office in Burundi during those terrible years remain in office,” said Segun, reiterating the assessments of other human rights groups in recent months.
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