BURUNDI: Judges resume work after 50-day strike
BUJUMBURA, 22 October (IRIN) - Proceedings in most courts across
Burundi
resumed on Wednesday when judges went back to work after a 50-day
strike.
The judges were heeding a call made on Sunday by their trade union
leader
for them to suspend the strike.
Trade union leader Adelin Hatungimana issued a statement on Sunday
saying
the judges would give the joint government?judges committee time to
work
on their demands, which include better working conditions, greater
independence from the government and salary increases.
In his statement, he also threatened that the judges would resume their
strike if the government failed to respect its commitments.
Several organisations and individuals in the country have voiced their
opposition to the strike, which has impacted negatively on the judicial
system by creating an even greater backlog of cases.
Judge Gregoire Nyamushibuka of Burundi's Court of First Instance said
the
strike violated prisoners? rights as those detained in police units had
been transferred to prisons without arrest warrants.
Police Superintendent Jean Doyidoyi said he had sent prisoners to
Mpimba
Prison - Bujumbura's main detention facility - on the orders of the
attorney general.
"The measure was taken to avoid the increase of criminality and also to
avoid exceeding the legal detention period in police prisons," Doyidoyi
said.
The director of Mpimba Prison, Col. Kobako Cymaque, told IRIN that 164
people were transferred to that prison without a magistrate's arrest
warrant during the strike. He said the prisoners' files would now be
sent
to tribunals for the normal procedure to be followed.
Nyamushibuka said this would violate the legal procedure, as only a
judge
was entitled to sign an arrest warrant and decide on the prisoner's
indictment. He added that this would require that the judges visit
different prisons to ensure that such prisoners had been legally
detained.
The judges resumed work without the government meeting most of their
demands. Since the beginning of the strike, the government kept saying
it
was unable to increase the judges' salaries under the country's current
economic situation. The country has been paralysed by a 10-year civil
war.
However, a joint government?magistrate committee has been set up to
review
the independence of the judicial system and make proposals to the
government on the implementation of the magistrate?s statutes.
Under the terms of the accord for peace and reconciliation, which was
signed in Arusha, Tanzania, in 2000, the judicial system was to undergo
drastic reforms to put in place an ethnically balanced judicial system,
currently dominated by Tutsis.