For drawing on their President, Pierre Nkurunziza’s face in their school books, three school girls in Burundi are facing five years in jail. The girls
For drawing on their President, Pierre Nkurunziza’s face in their school books, three school girls in Burundi are facing five years in jail. The girls, who are all minors, were arrested last week and were on Monday charged with ‘insulting the head of state,’ according to human rights group, Human Rights Watch.
One of them , a 13-year-old girl was released for being below the age of criminal responsibility while four others arrested alongside the schoolgirls were released.
Lewis Mudge, the Central Africa Director at Human Rights Watch, said textbooks in Burundi’s school system are often passed in between classes and it is, therefore, difficult to know who scribbled on the President’s image in the first place.
“It’s ridiculous that we’re at a point where we even have to ask or interject this point in a conversation. These are schoolgirls that are being detained,” he said.
School children in Burundi have previously been jailed in the past for similar offenses. In 2016, agents of the National Intelligence Services of Burundi arrested eight secondary school students for allegedly insulting Nkurunziza by writing phrases like “Get out” or “No to the 3rd term” on a picture of the President in a textbook, according to Human Rights Watch. That same year, hundreds of children were expelled from several schools for scribbling on the President’s face in their books.
Human Rights Watch said the case was quickly becoming the benchmark for a crackdown of freedom of expression since 2015. The organization added that it would apply pressure on the government of Burundi to release the girls. He said the students in 2016 were released after pressure from the international community following their initial conviction.
President Nkurunziza, who has been in office since 2005, was re-elected to a third term in 2015 despite massive protests and concerns over the legality of running beyond his second term. But Burundi’s constitutional court ruled that he was eligible because he was picked by parliament, not elected by people, during his first term. Scores died in the violence that marred the 2015 vote.
