– ‘No war or genocide’ –
But the government dismissed the concerns, saying it wanted only to crush “terrorism” and comparing the fight to Somalia’s struggle against Islamist Al-Shabaab insurgents that Burundi is fighting as part of an internationally backed African Union force.
“There will be no war or genocide,” presidential communications chief Willy Nyamitwe told AFP on Saturday.
“It is amazing to see that a government that wants to put an end to terrorism is criticised instead of being encouraged,” he added.
The rising unrest has sparked fears Burundi could slide back into conflict after its 1993-2006 civil war, when some 300,000 people died as rebels from the majority Hutu people clashed with an army dominated by the minority Tutsis.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Friday that the discovery of bodies – “many apparently summarily executed” – has become a “regular occurrence” in Burundi’s capital Bujumbura.
Last week, the country’s Senate president Reverien Ndikuriyo threatened to “pulverise” regime opponents who do not lay down arms before the Saturday deadline.
“Today, the police shoot in the legs… but when the day comes that we tell them to go to ‘work’, do not come crying to us,” he said.
The loaded term “work” was a euphemism used in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide to describe the mass killings of at least 800,000 mainly Tutsi people by extremist Hutu militias.
Kagame said the violence in Burundi reminded him “a little” of the horrors of 1994 in Rwanda.
“They should learn from what happened here,” Kagame said.
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