Burundi Claims Crisis Is Over as It Expects Refugees to Return
- Government’s assertion of calm disputed by opposition figure
- Unrest that began 2015 forced many to flee to Tanzania, Rwanda
Repatriated Burundian refugees arrive at Ruyigi, eastern Burundi, on Sept. 7.
Photographer: Evrard Ngendakumana/Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images
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Burundi’s government said it expects 60,000 refugees to return next year in a sign the East African nation’s more than two-year political crisis is over, a claim disputed by an opposition leader who described conditions as still too dangerous.
“Many of the refugees have seen that they fled nothing and that the country is
calm,” Interior Ministry spokesman Terence Ntahiraja said in an interview on national radio on Thursday. He said returnees would be given three months’ food rations and unspecified other support.