Still too many shooting

Light weapons, still well widespread among the population, often become a tool to escape from the extreme poverty under which Burundians are bounded into. Lack of jobs, schools and health infrastructures and an efficient social structure offer no alternative to the numerous previous soldiers and rebels who have gone back home from the army, and to a large number of young people often recruited by the only rebel force yet to sign the Peace Agreement, other than setting up criminal gangs, increasing in this way criminality, corruption and violence. In the Northern Neighborhoods it is still possible to hear daily accounts of several killings carried out at nights by thieves, police and small gangs of bandits.

One morning a story circulates in the Northern Neighborhoods:

Yesterday we were in a cabaret (a local open-air bar where customers are seated on tiny bar stools) when some soldiers ordered everyone to move away because they wanted to get a beer. Customers replied they would do so only after having finished theirs; soldiers got annoyed and started shooting on the air. A young man received an injury to his arm. The following day his arm was amputated. He was a last year’s medicine student, specialization in surgery.

Cesar:

Last night a friend of mine was killed. He was sleeping next to his pregnant wife. At a certain point he left the house to go to the toilet. When leaving the toilet, Cesar heard some noises coming from the opposite house, on looking inside this premises he found a young armed gang on the run having ravaged the house. Unfortunately, he recognized, and he iswas caught and recognized by a member of the gang: a boy living in the neighborhood. The boy, under the order that witnesses are not to remain alive, breaks into Cesar’s house and open fire on him. Cesar’s only crime was getting out of home in the wrong time.

A night in the North Neighborhoods: Suddenly the quiet night is broken by a rumble. It is a grenade thrown close to a school in the Cibitoke neighborhood. People are scared and take refuge in local houses. The following day the news spreads around and a boy, having had his mobile phone stolen and on recognizing the guilty man, made the mistake of calling his name. The man, on hearing his name called, took a grenade out of his pocket and threw it at the child.

Inside the country:

In Burundi witchcraft practices are still widespread. Often a sorcerer is being paid to use witchcraft against someone who has done something wrong, in order to get revenge. The sorcerer makes public the name of whom will be targeted, who will very soon be dead. The only remaining option for the named target is to pick up all of their belongings and run away, taking relatives with them.