BY Ian Dunn | January 15 | 
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Scotland’s prayers for the people of Burundi
Prayers and aid are flying across the world from Scotland to Burundi as the tiny African nation slides towards chaos and civil war.
SCIAF has already sent £35,000 to help refugees who have fled to neighbouring Rwanda and Archbishop Leo Cushley of St Andrews and Edinburgh, who was previously part of the Vatican diplomatic mission to the country, has urged Scots to pray for peace there.
Violence has been worsening in the East African country for over a year and after President Pierre Nkurunziza’s decision to run for a third term, in an apparent violation of the constitution. As many as 1000 people have been killed in clashes since the April decision by Nkurunziza to run for a third term. He was re-elected in July with 70 percent of votes in an election boycotted by the opposition. Since then there have been daily reports of fresh violence and all attempts to make the government and opposition negotiate have failed.
SCIAF currently work with three partner organisations in the country, to improve education and agriculture.
“We’re living in vivid tension today, young people from the ruling party control all movement during the night,” one of SCIAF’s partners, who cannot be named for their own safety, said.
“From 8pm we cannot be out of our homes otherwise we are victims of pillage, violence and killing. Keep praying for peace in Burundi.”
The Burundian Government this week rejected an offer of a 5000 strong African Union peace keeping force and many outside observers fear that it may now be impossible to avoid a repeat of the civil war which killed 300,000 people between 1993 and 2006.
Archbishop Cushley, a former Vatican diplomat, was there during the conflict, as part of the Holy See’s mission to the country from 1997-2001. It was not an easy posting.
“You’re very close to the equator, so at 6pm every night darkness would fall,” he said. “And then ‘the music’, as the locals called it, would start. Gunfire, mortars fired into the city. It would go on all night. Our road we were based on went out of the city into the bush so you could look out and see the tracer bullets being fired down the road.”
Having seen the country drag itself out of such suffering, he is ‘dismayed’ it seems to be heading back down that road.
“Pray for the ordinary people who want peace, peace to plant their crops, to send their children to school,” the archbishop urged. “These are people like you and me.”
— To support SCIAFs work in Burundi visit: www.sciaf.org
—This story ran in full in the January 15 edition print of the SCO, available in parishes.
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