Gitega : two political prisoners deprived of health care

These are police Major General Herménégilde Nimenya and Colonel Michel Kazungu. The two men, who are serving life jails in the case of the failed coup of May 2015, are bedridden at the regional hospital of Gitega (political capital). Burundian intelligence refused to allow them to benefit from a transfer to the commercial city of Bujumbura where most of specialist doctors are based.

INFO SOS Médias Burundi

The health of the two detainees has deteriorated recently.
They suffer respectively from diabetes and hypertension and hepatitis.

Colonel Kazungu was admitted to this hospital at the end of last September. This is not the first time that he has been refused a transfer to be treated by a specialist.

As for police major general Herménégilde Nimenya, he was transferred to the regional hospital of Gitega on October 4. General practitioners in the political capital have indicated that they cannot treat the two cases. But the intelligence opposed this. According to our sources, even a close friend of General Nimenya who tried to call a specialist doctor to get advice on the medication to prescribe him, had his phone confiscated by Burundian intelligence.

In addition to the lack of specialist doctors, the health facility that hosts the two men is currently being renovated.

“The hospital conditions are very deplorable. The hospital is sicker than the patients it receives,” says a local journalist.

Relatives of the two men are asking Burundian authorities to let them enjoy their right to health.

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From right to left on the first line, police Major General Herménégilde Nimenya and other officers of the Burundian army and police accused in the failed coup of spring 2015, before the Court of Appeal of Gitega, April 2016 (SOS Médias Burundi)