The latest crisis in Burundi was sparked by President Pierre Nkurunziza’s announcement he would run for office a third time. Burundi’s constitution says the longest a president can rule is two terms.
Nkurunziza insists he is eligible to stand again, because for his first term parliament appointed him; there was no direct election.
Although the constitutional court has supported his bid, the court’s vice-president Sylvere Nimpagaritse fled Burundi in May, saying there had been “enormous pressure and even death threats” to rubber-stamp Nkurunziza’s candidacy.
The small land-locked African country has had a violent history, including massacres and military takeovers. It became independent from Belgium in 1962. It neighbours Rwanda, which suffered a genocide in 1994.
Burundi has the same ethnic mix. It is 85 percent Hutu. The minority Tutsis traditionally dominate politics and the military. Inter-ethnic violence has seen hundreds of thousands of people killed in a civil war.
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