UN Human Rights Commissioner denounces Burundi defamatory attack on inquiry team

Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights urges Burundi government to make an immediate retraction of the inflammatory statement and offer a full apology to Mr. Doudou Diène and other commissioners as well as the UN Human Rights Council which created the Commission of Inquiry on Burundi.

Ms. Michelle Bachelet: “Burundi government should issue an immediate retraction of the inflammatory statement and offer a full apology.”

Michelle Bachelet has said the comments made by Burundi Ambassador were “deeply regrettable in both tone and substance”. “The threat to prosecute the members of the commission for the work they have done is unacceptable and should be immediately withdrawn,” reads a statement issued by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. For her, the personal attack on the chair of the Commission of Inquiry, Doudou Diène comparing him to participant in the slave trade was a disgrace.

On 24 October, Albert Shingiro, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Burundi to the UN, has said the report of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Burundi is insulting and denigrating. “It’s a shame that its authors have not deigned to reserve a minimum of professionalism, integrity and respect for the contradictory principle and ethical rules of the United Nations,” said Shingiro. He also said it is not the first time this happened. In the past years, he said, Africans sold their brothers in the slave and colonial period. “We unfortunately lived this hellish period in another type in 21st century,” reads the statement issued by Burundi Ambassador to the UN at a meeting of the General Assembly’s Third Committee in New York.

Michelle Bachelet also called on Burundi, as a UN member State, to show “respect” to its institutions and the various bodies, laws and mechanisms it has established. “Burundi is also a current member of the Geneva-based Human Rights Council,” says Ms. Bachelet.

The Commission of Inquiry was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2016 to conduct investigations into human rights violations and abuses in Burundi since April 2015. It has been also asked to identify perpetrators to ensure full accountability.

Contacted, Prosper Ntahorwamiye, spokesperson for the government, has said Burundi has not yet ruled on the statement of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to give its opinion.