Editor,

RE: "Burundi will gain nothing by shifting blame” (The New Times, February 7).

The trial-run to see how the Burundi government might be able to pass the buck for their own crimes on to their neighbours started long before President Pierre Nkurunziza sought an illegal third term.

Remember how bodies—similarly tied behind their backs and in gurney sacks found in Burundi on Lake Rweru—were hoisted by Burundian authorities on Rwanda without any foreign observer pointing out how risible the Burundi government claims on how the bodies got there and were then unceremoniously buried in shallow graves without any investigation were?

Having got away with this bit of incredible claim, Bujumbura no doubt felt no matter how far-fetched their claims on other subsequent crimes only they could have committed, they also could always be blamed on someone else (especially onto their favourite scapegoat); even if everybody who cared could see the murder weapon in their hands still dripping with their victims’ blood, there would still be those who would feign to believe in the rubbish spouted by Burundian officials, especially if they were attempting to somehow accuse Rwanda as their culprit, no matter the improbability of those allegations.

There are those who hate today’s Rwanda so much, who have made it their life’s purpose to throw any and all manner of wild accusations, no matter how implausible, at the Rwandan Government that they will then help to amplify those wild accusations, even if it means helping the Burundi government to get off the hook.

Interestingly, many of those who engage in this kind of activity claim to be human rights activists—which tells us how this appellation has lost any meaning it might originally have had.

As for the so-called "international community” (which doesn’t really exist), I doubt any of its "members” is so lacking in facts that they could fall for the fictions the Nyamitwes, the Nyabendas or the Gelases are so busy manufacturing.

If they pretend to believe these preposterous claims by Bujumbura and ruling party barons, it is because those claims fit their own interests, not because they could be so ignorant of the large-scale killings (many of them carried out openly) and other serious atrocities being committed almost wholly by the Bujumbura security forces and their Imbonerakure and FDLR auxiliaries.

If the governments of those countries giving diplomatic cover to the Nkurunziza band don’t know what is really happening in Burundi and who is responsible (even when Bujumbura claims the country is 99.99 per cent secure), it is because they don’t want to know, not because it is impossible to see the evidence with their own eyes.

Mwene Kalinda