Burundi must act on torture, rights group says

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The government of Burundi must act immediately to end a "climate of impunity" that allows the torture, mistreatment and illegal detention of individuals, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.

The New York-based group said it documented 21 cases of beatings and torture carried out in October 2007 by a special security unit deployed to quash banditry and stop recruitment by the country's last active rebel group.

The report was issued the same day President Pierre Nkurunziza was due to meet the African Union's chairman, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, and Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni to discuss escalating violence in his coffee-growing nation.

The military says two weeks of clashes between government troops and Forces for National Liberation (FNL) rebels on the outskirts of the capital Bujumbura have killed 51 combatants.

The violence dampened hopes the FNL would rejoin a truce monitoring team, set up under a September 2006 peace deal, which it quit it in July 2007 accusing mediators of bias.

Rights activists fear the fighting may polarize the population of 8 million and trigger more abuses in Burundi, which is emerging from more than a decade of ethnic conflict that started in 1993 and killed an estimated 300,000 people.

HRW said the alleged abuses took place in Muramvya province, east of Bujumbura, where victims described being beaten with clubs, subjected to death threats and mock executions, and in some cases forced to pay bribes for their release.

Burundian government officials were not immediately available to comment.

HRW said part of the government's problem was difficulty forming a properly trained, professional police force able to assimilate ex-government forces and demobilized rebels.

Not only had police numbers grown to between 15,000 and 20,000 in 2007 from 2,300 in 2000, but more than a third of new officers were former rebel combatants with no formal training, and some have had little schooling.

HRW said politicians also used police for political purposes, noting that some officers had retained strong party loyalties, especially those who once belonged to the military branch of Nkurunziza's party.

The rights group quoted an official of the special Rapid Mobile Intervention Group security unit as saying the party used the national police to "get people in line".

He said his unit was sent to Muramvya "because the government thinks that people are abandoning the party in power, and that people won't vote for them in 2010".

(Writing by Katie Nguyen; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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