(English) Burundi’s tit-for-tat killings spread fear

Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza has given gunmen opposing his third term five days to surrender and be granted an amnesty or face tough anti-terrorism legislation to be introduced by the end of the month. It follows months of shootings in the capital, which the BBC’s Alaistair Leithead says has raised fears of a return to civil war:
I have been receiving the photographs for several weeks now. Every few days they pop up on my phone – usually with a little note: “These are the latest found today.”
The person who is texting me is talking about bodies. Almost every day in Burundi a body is found, dumped in a storm drain or beside a road.
Often they have been shot or stabbed in the chest; sometimes they have been tied up – usually somebody takes a picture.
The photographs and videos are posted on Facebook, or messaged from phone to phone – it is how people share information now.
The independent media is all but shut down. Many journalists and human rights activists have been scared out of the country.
One of the photos which appeared on my phone was of a well-known woman who had worked for the opposition party. The picture was delivered two days after she had gone missing. Another was of Eloi Ndimira, a 54-year-old man who walked with a crutch and had tried to stop the police beating someone on the street. They turned on him.
The photograph is truly horrific. I will not even describe it.
We met his family as they were laying flowers on his grave; they were afraid to speak, to be seen with us.
Cleaning up his body for the burial, they found he had been beaten, stabbed, shot. And his heart had been cut from his chest.Widespread terror
They were not the only two people to die in Burundi’s capital, Bujumbura, in the last few weeks.
I recognised the neatly painted blue house number from the video clip: Number 48 Buye street. Flies now buzzed at the foot of the red metal doors, where the video had shown a pool of blood-stained earth, marking the spot where Christophe Nkezabahizi had been shot twice, at close range, having done as the police asked, and opened the door.
Mr Nkezabahizi was a cameraman for the state broadcaster. He was not like the underground activists we met who know the risks of photographing the latest body to have appeared on the street.
He had not protested against the third term the president had gained after an election widely described as flawed. He had told the stories the government wanted telling.
The policemen knew this – he told them just before he was killed. They knew this when they told his family to lie face down in the street – just before they were all murdered.
A rebel leader-turned president, born in 1964
Born-again Christian who cycles and plays football
A former sports teacher
Married with five children
Father killed in ethnic violence in 1972
Burundi’s Constitutional Court backed his argument that his first term in office did not count towards the two-term limit, as he was elected by MPs