Nyanza-Lac : a man detained for wearing a T-shirt labeled “Visit Rwanda”

Patrick Nsengiyumva was arrested last Friday at his home in Kabonga by the police of Nyanza-Lac, in the province of Makamba (southern Burundi). His relatives denounce “arbitrary detention” and demand that he be released. INFO SOS Médias Burundi

According to sources in Kabonga, the man in detention was arrested by agents of the PNB (Burundi National Police) assigned to a local post. The arrest took place at his home in the locality of Nyabigina.

His only crime is having worn a T-shirt labeled “Visit Rwanda”, this brand that has pushed millions of foreigners, especially Europeans and Americans, to take a plane to discover the green charms of the country of a thousand hills that is rising from its ashes to impose itself as an African tiger, thirty years after the genocide against Tutsis in 1994.

“Patrick was taken to the dungeon after a short interrogation before a judicial police officer (OPJ) at the district police station”, indicates a police source.
“I bought this T-shirt at the Rumonge market (southwest Burundi)”, defended Patrick Nsengiyumva, without however being able to convince the OPJ. “I can even bring witnesses who were there when I bought it”, he added.

The man is held in the dungeon of the provincial prosecutor’s office. His relatives and lawyers denounce “arbitrary detention”.

“Wearing such clothing is not punishable by any article of the Burundian penal code,” they say.

In January 2024, Burundian authorities closed borders with Rwanda, which they accuse of harboring rebels who want to destabilize the territory of the small East African nation. And relations have continued to deteriorate further in recent times between the two sister nations of the Great Lakes region of Africa, with their presidents accusing each other of maintaining terrorist groups in eastern Congo where the Burundian army is engaged alongside the FARDC (Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo) and their allies, with the Rwandan army suspected of supporting the M23 rebels who continue to reclaim areas in the mineral-rich regions of North Kivu and South Kivu provinces.