BUJUMBURA SEPTEMBER 15, 2015(CISA) – Conference of Catholic Bishops of Burundi (CECAB) has appealed for peace in the country after series of violence rocked the nation since President Pierre Nkurunziza was declared a winner in the presidential elections in July.
In a statement issued at the end of their Plenary Assembly in early September, the Bishops stressed how a division in the population between those who feel safe and those who fear for their lives has been created to the point that several have been forced to flee abroad.
“Poverty threatens the population and this increases the drama we are living in since some members of the international community seem to have suspended their aid to Burundi,” said the bishops.
The bishops further condemned “the criminal acts that occur daily in particular in the capital Bujumbura, where every night murders occur, and where many people do not sleep in their own home for fear of being kidnapped or killed.”
The bishops called for the protagonists of the political crisis so that they sit around a table to “take the necessary measures to enable Burundi to return being a country where everyone feels free and where there is respect for others.”
Reminding Catholics of the fifth commandment, the bishops called upon all to “take the necessary measures to enable Burundi to return being a country where everyone feels free and where there is respect for others.”
67 percent of the East African nation’s 10.4 million people are Catholics.
