Nduta (Tanzania) : five Burundian refugee women raped at the same time

Five women were victims of sexual violence last week near the Nduta camp in Tanzania. All Burundian refugees, they contacted the camp administration for investigations.

INFO SOS Médias Burundi

The incident took place not far from zone 16. A group of women who had just gone to look for firewood and fell into an ambush.

“It looks like it’s an organized crime. Unidentified people came out of a natural reserve and attacked these women and girls. The latter suffered sexual violence, in an atrocious, apparently punitive manner,” say witnesses alerted by the survivors to help the victims.

“Among the attackers, there were people who spoke Kirundi well. We also believe that they were Burundians sent by the regime to disrupt the camp so that it is closed,” they add, affirming that rumors to this effect have been spreading for some time.

For the moment, the victims are receiving intensive care at MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) where the facts were kept secret “so as not to alert the camp and protect the identity of the victims”, we learn.

But the families of the victims have contacted the camp administration and are demanding investigations to arrest the culprits.

“We know the crime scene and certain clues such as the language of the executioners. And so all this can help in the investigations but we are surprised that nothing has been done until Tuesday,” worryingly said Burundian refugees.

Last weekend, the UNHCR and the camp administration discouraged the movement of refugees, especially in the evening, outside the camp.

“So they are informed of the facts. We want our rights, especially the dignity of women, to be protected. This is part of the list of evils that we suffer to push us into involuntary repatriation,” reassure these refugees.

Such cases were frequent, especially in the Nyarugusu camp, which has already recorded assassinations and forced disappearances in a natural reserve in its surroundings.

Refugees from both camps are calling on the UNHCR to add the distribution of firewood to the list of its services for them to avoid such incidents.

Tanzania is home to more than 110,000 Burundian refugees.

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Illustration photo : a Burundian woman refugee in a crop field outside the Nduta camp in Tanzania (SOS Médias Burundi)