Geneva (AFP) – Burundi’s government is behind systematic human rights violations, including executions and torture, UN investigators said Tuesday, warning of possible crimes against humanity and the looming risk of “genocide”. 

“Gross human rights violations have and are taking place, committed primarily by state agents and those linked to them,” the investigators concluded in a report, stressing that they could “not exclude that some instances of these gross human rights violations amount to crimes against humanity.”

“Given the country’s history, the danger of the crime of genocide also looms large,” the report warned.