BUJUMBURA October 9th (ABP) – The Burundi Prime Minister, Mr. Alain Guillaume Bunyoni received, on Thursday October 8, the executive bureau of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) led by its Chairman, Mr. Pierre Claver Ndayicariye.
Mr. Ndayicariye said that it is an audience that the TRC requested from the Prime Minister to inform him of the steps already taken by the commission during the year 2020. He said that the TRC has informed the Prime Minister that, from January to May 2020, it worked mainly in the perimeter of Gitega, in the Gitega and Giheta communes; Karusi province in Shombo commune, where several graves were exhumed, dating mainly from 1972, he said.
According to him, the TRC informed the Prime Minister of the challenges it faces in terms of material, financial and human resources, means of travel; from there, at the level of all the psycho-traumatic support that can affect the TRC commissioners, executives and agents, he said. This psycho-traumatic framework, as he pointed out, also concerns people who have lost theirs.
Currently, he said, the TRC has been carrying out its activities in Makamba province for 5 weeks. The bones already found at Gitega, Rumonge, Makamba constitute a large number. He noted the need to temporarily preserve everything that was found in those graves “because it is part of the archives of the TRC, of collective and community memory”.
Mr. Ndayicariye also indicated that the TRC has approached the issue of conservation with several aspects “because we have to manage peace, security and peaceful cohabitation of the community by aiming for truth in the service of reconciliation. Our country needs to build the pillars of real peace, of solid reconciliation so that children born today and tomorrow can live better than we did”.
The TRC Chair added that this commission will seek further audiences and extend them to the Senate, the National Assembly, the Office of the President of the Republic and that of the Vice President. Because, according to him, this commission “fulfills a mission of national scope” and would like it to be “politically and diplomatically accompanied by enhancing its protocol and security status in line with the missions that the law has defined at the level of this commission”.