France proposes UN sanctions to halt violence in Burundi

France presented a draft resolution to the UN Security Council aimed at toughening the international response to an outbreak of violence in Burundi, but the foreign minister rejected the move and announced “the country was calm.” The measure threatens targeted sanctions against Burundian leaders who incite attacks or hamper efforts to end the crisis that followed protests over President Pierre Nkurunziza’s election for a third term. “The escalating violence in Burundi has reached a very worrying stage, maybe a tipping point,” French Deputy Ambassador Alexis Lamek told reporters on Monday. “We must face the reality: If we let the tensions escalate without doing anything, the whole country could explode,” he warned. Burundi has been rocked by violence since Nkurunziza launched the controversial bid to prolong his term in office in April, with more than 210,000 people fleeing the country. At least 240 people have been killed since then, “with bodies dumped on the streets on an almost nightly basis,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein told the council. Burundi’s civil war from 1993 to 2006 left about 300,000 people dead. On Monday, two people were killed and a policeman wounded in gun battles in Bujumbura, just days after a UN employee was among nine people killed at a bar by armed men in police uniform. France’s draft calls on the government and all sides to “reject any kind of violence” and condemned the killings, torture, arbitrary arrests and other rights violations in Burundi. The UN Security Council could vote on the draft in the coming days. At an emergency meeting called by France, Burundi’s Foreign minister Alain Aime Nyamitwe said the “country was calm” except in some areas of Bujumbura, where “small groups of criminals are active.” “Burundi is not burning,” said Nyamitwe, speaking by video conference from Bujumbura. The foreign minister urged the Security Council not to resort to sanctions, calling them “ineffective”. He said the government was holding a dialogue with the opposition, as demanded by the UN. The draft resolution calls on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to present options within 15 days on reinforcing the UN’s presence in Burundi.

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France proposes UN sanctions to halt violence in Burundi