The send-off ceremony took place at Ingoma Stade, where the new President Maj. Gen Evariste Ndayishimiye was sworn-in on June 18.
The dress code was black and white while special shirts and Tshirts with the pictures of the deceased leader have was given out.
The cortege with Nkurunziza’s body left Bujumbura in the morning and driven to Gitega, some nearly 100km east of the capital.
The funeral ceremonies began with the paying of last respects from his wife, Denise Bucumi Nkurunziza, his children and close associates in an intimate gathering at the hospital in the central city of Karuzi.
“I personally have lost my love, children have lost their parent. I thank God for giving us strength to be standing in these hard times, after suddenly losing someone you love,” Mrs Nkurunziza said in her tribute.
Nkurunziza will be interred in Gitega in a special mausoleum that was built in the two weeks since he died.
The ruling party
National Council for the Defense of Democracy – Forces for the Defense of
Democracy (CNDD–FDD) youths were mobilised to line up the road
and wait for the cortege as it makes the 2-hour journey to the political capital.
However, as the East African country bids farewell to the former leader, who was 55 at the time of his death, Burundian refugees who fled the post-election violence that followed Nkurunziza’s decision to forcefully seek a third in 2015 feel no remorse and have little hope to return home.
Mahama Refugee Camp in Eastern Province. |
Emmanuel Nkengurutse, a
former Burundian lawmaker now in exile, says that despite the new leadership
and the death of Nkurunziza, there is little to celebrate and no hope for
refugees who feel that it is not safe enough to return home.
“He is gone, we don’t celebrate death in our
culture but again we are not remorseful that he is gone. He is responsible for
the problems that made us free our country, even as he goes, he leaves behind a
system that will continue his agenda,” Me Nkengurutse told our reporter.
The lawyer and former
legislator said that the election of Ndayishimiye, who was part of the
establishment, will not change much the status quo because it is still the same
CNDD-FDD that remains in power.
“It is the same CNDD-FDD that promotes divisive
politics based on ethnicity, the same party that did a power grab through a
predetermined election and the same party that murdered people all these years
for opposing their agenda,”
“Going by the speech he [Ndayishimiye] made, there is little or no hope for refugees at all. One moment he said that he wants refugees to return and in the same speech he went on to abuse them, using derogatory words. There was nothing to give refugees hope in whatever he said,”
Nkengurutse said that
going by Ndayishimiye’s appointments so far, it will be a mere change of guard
but the system Nkurunziza built will remain in place, with the same people like
Alain-Guillaume Bunyoni, the new Prime Minister, who were pulling the strings
in Nkurunziza’s government, already taking up high ranking positions in the new
government.
“Bunyoni was instrumental in whatever happened
in Nkurunziza’s government. He is the same individual now in the new
government, which is why we are not seeing any hope that we will go home soon.
There is nothing to give us hope that we will be safe when we go back,”
“The same fears we had
while fleeing still remain. The rhetoric in his speech confirms that there was
no change,” says Nkengurutse, whose sentiments are shared by Joyeuse
Ndikubagenzi who believes that refugees will be hunted when they return home.
“The new President did not make any commitments
to disband ‘Imbonerakure’, the youth vigilantes who were involved in the
killings in 2015. They are still killing people. They will hunt down returning
refugees to punish them,” she says, adding that they will also not be mourning
Nkurunziza.
Others like veteran
journalist Alexandre Niyungeko also don’t expect much to change or give
refugees enthusiasm to return home.
However, others like Eloge Willy Kaneza, an Independent International Journalist, believes that Ndayishimiye could rein in some changes.
“I think Evariste
Ndayishimiye will make some improvements, yes. But we have to remember that he
also belongs to the same system and qualifies himself as Nkurunziza’s heir,”
“But in all, I am convinced he will work so
that he may leave his own legacy. As a journalist who knows him for 8 years and
who spent some time in his home town and met him in several political events, I
think he has the ability and will to listen to people at all levels, this is
important for me,” Kaneza says.
Concerning refugees,
Kaneza believes it is always a personal matter when it comes to returning home
but some people might return and others not.
“I believe some CNDD-FDD members who fled the country after denouncing another mandate for Nkurunziza in 2015 will return but also many of those who saw Nkurunziza as “their personal enemy,” he says, adding that some refugees he interacted with showed the will to return home.
“I am not seeing a
massive movement of refugees going back to Burundi in the immediate future but
we are likely to see some make up their minds. Even though the new President
was the CNDD-FDD chief, he was not the commander in chief of the country,”
“So, I think many will try their luck and go back to their country but in his speech, I think there was nothing new. He had been saying this for many years as the CNDD-FDD secretary-general and many times he was sent in Tanzania, the country that received many Burundian refugees in the region,” Kaneza said.
Kaneza says that
Ndayishimiye’s former companions claim that he is peace-loving, hates
corruption and injustice, values he believes are sufficient enough for a leader
to make good decisions and put the past behind and focus on the future.
However, Nkegurutse says that while Ndayishimiye is known to be more realistic and could initiate a peace process, his powers are limited by a small click of people were pulling the strings even in Nkurunziza’s government.
For
many still in exile, there is no point in mourning Nkurunziza, a highly devout
Christian, who they accuse of dividing the country further. There are over
60,000 Burundian refugees in Rwanda, majority of them living in Mahama Camp in
Eastern Province.
No comments:
Post a Comment