Highlights: In Burundi, two provinces in the north of the country have been carrying out for several months an operation to separate cohabiting couples. The current presidential couple, very practicing Catholics, have repeatedly called for an end to cohabitation in the country. Women in a household for 15-20 years – sometimes with up to eight children – sent back to their parents, children separated from their mothers and forced to go live with the first woman. Several witnesses denounce numerous abuses in the name of moral and Christian order.

In Burundi, two provinces in the north of the country have been carrying out for several months an operation to separate cohabiting couples in the name of “moral and Christian order”, at the instigation of the authorities.…

Burundi: hundreds of “concubines” driven out of their households by the authorities in the name of moral order

In Burundi, two provinces in the north of the country have been carrying out for several months an operation to separate cohabiting couples in the name of “

moral and Christian order

”, at the instigation of the authorities. “

We have started to expel women who live with men from these households

,” explains a governor. Details.

The cathedral of Bujumbura (Burundi). The current presidential couple, very practicing Catholics, have repeatedly called for an end to cohabitation in the country. Two northern provinces are at the forefront in this issue, with cohabiting partners being forcibly separated. flickr

By: RFI Follow

It is a form of return to moral and Christian order in

Burundi

: after hunting down cohabitors and other practitioners of free union in 2017, under the leadership of the head of state at the time, the late

Pierre Nkurunziza

, the current presidential couple, very practicing Catholics, have repeatedly called for an end to cohabitation in the country. A sin which, according to them, would prevent Burundi from developing. A call that has been heard differently across the country.

Two northern provinces are in any case at the forefront in this issue, with cohabiting partners who are forcibly separated. But the administration assures that it acted methodically. Thus the governor of the province of Ngozi assures that they first initiated an awareness and explanation phase at the beginning of November 2023.

The rest, Désiré Minani told it on a local radio, BeTV: “

Since January, we stopped the consultation phase and we began to expel from these households women who live with men who are not their legal husbands . We had already evicted 237 women throughout the province of Ngozi until March 26, 2024.

”

It is often the neighbors who denounce “

these couples who live in sin

”, according to the expression of President

Évariste Ndayishimiye

. Then, the administration, accompanied by young

Imbonerakure

militiamen and the police, went to the home of this couple, as this woman from the neighboring province of Kayanza explains, also well advanced in the hunt for concubines, with nearly 200 couples already separated: “

They check if you are legally married and if this is not the case, they force the man to return to live with his first wife and the concubine is sent back to her parents. Then they padlock the door of the house.

Women in a household for 15-20 years – sometimes with up to eight children – sent back to their parents, children separated from their mothers and forced to go live with the first woman, or even men forced to go live with their first wife who left them ten years ago: several witnesses denounce numerous abuses in the name of moral and Christian order.

Burundi: hundreds of “concubines” driven out of their households by the authorities in the name of moral order

Burundi: hundreds of “concubines” driven out of their households by the authorities in the name of moral order

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