France has moved to toughen the international response to the worsening violence in Burundi, where fears of Rwanda-style mass killings are rife.
At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, France said it would present a draft resolution outlining steps to end the crisis including sanctions against those who are fomenting violence, diplomats said. “We are extremely worried by what we are seeing in Burundi at this moment: this increase of political violence and the extremely alarming ethnically-based hate speech,” French Deputy Ambassador Alexis lamek told reporters on Monday.
lamek said the council must “act” in the face of the worsening crisis that followed protests over President Pierre Nkurunziza’s third term in office.
On Monday, two people were killed and a policeman wounded in gun battles in Burundi’s capital, just days after a UN employee was among nine people killed at a bar by armed men in police uniform. Burundi has suffered a dramatic rise in killings, torture, arrests and detentions since Nkurunziza launched the controversial bid to prolong his term in office in April.
Police have launched a huge security operation in the capital’s opposition districts searching for weapons after an ultimatum to give up arms expired Saturday.