Burundi residents celebrate after military officer announces coup

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Thousands of Burundians celebrated in the centre of the capital city on Wednesday as a military officer announced a coup against President Pierre Nkurunziza, who was attempting to extend his rule for a much-criticized third term in office.

Soldiers took control of the streets and the airport in the capital, Bujumbura, preventing Mr. Nkurunziza from returning to Burundi after attending a regional summit in Tanzania. His fate was unclear, but reports said his airplane had been diverted to Uganda or Tanzania.

The President's loyalists were reported to be holed up at the state broadcasting headquarters in the centre of the city, firing sporadic warning shots, but his support seemed to have collapsed among most of the country's security forces.

Burundi's police, who had shot and killed more than a dozen protesters during the daily anti-government demonstrations, disappeared from the city streets after the coup was announced, allowing thousands of protesters to pour into the heart of the city for the first time since the protests began on April 26. The protesters cheered and mobbed the soldiers, seeing them as allies in the fight against Mr. Nkurunziza.

Major-General Godefroid Niyombare, who had been fired as intelligence chief in February, announced the coup and the formation of a transitional government while Mr. Nkurunziza was in Tanzania for a summit of East African countries. The coup announcement was quickly broadcast on several local radio stations and protesters poured into the city centre in jubilation. They set fire to a radio station belonging to the ruling party.

At the summit, East African leaders condemned the coup and called for a restoration of constitutional order, but they also rejected Mr. Nkurunziza's plans to seek a third term in a June election, saying that the conditions were not "conducive" for elections.

By nightfall, protesters had left the streets at the army's request, but they were confident of victory. "The people have won," said Jean-Régis Nduwimana, a university teacher and journalist in Bujumbura who provides information on the protests on Burundi's social-media sites.

"The army is with the people," he said in a phone interview. "This is what we've been waiting for. Everyone is happy, everyone is celebrating. We think there's no need for protests now."

General Niyombare said he and an emergency committee of civil leaders had "dismissed" the President and his government because of their defiance of the constitution and the Arusha peace agreement that had ended Burundi's long civil war.

Mr. Nkurunziza immediately denied the coup on his Twitter account, claiming that the situation was stable. But reports from the capital made it clear that his support was fast vanishing. The biggest independent radio station, RPA, was back on the air on Wednesday. The government had shut it down when the protests began, and it had become a symbol of the protests.

The role of the military has always been crucial in Burundi. Since the beginning of the protests, the military has remained largely neutral, while the police and intelligence services have cracked down on the protesters, using tear gas and live ammunition.

From the beginning, it was clear that the military could become the kingmaker in the prolonged dispute between Mr. Nkurunziza and the thousands of protesters. Soldiers have been deployed throughout the city during the protests, but they have watched the demonstrations without taking action to stop them or support them. Occasionally, they have cleared barricades away, but on most days the troops have been cheered by the protesters, who saw them as a silent ally.

Mr. Nkurunziza has insisted that he has a legal right to a third term and he declared himself a candidate in the June 26 presidential election. But he took his authority from a constitutional court ruling, and his claim was undermined by the court's vice-president, who fled the country and disclosed that the judges had been under heavy pressure to support the President, with death threats issued against them if they failed to comply.

A wide range of international leaders – including those of the United States, the European Union, the African Union and South Africa – had also voiced their strong opposition to Mr. Nkurunziza's bid for a third term, and he seemed to be increasingly isolated. European countries had begun to cut off aid to Burundi this week.

Roméo Dallaire, the retired Canadian general who headed the United Nations peacekeeping force in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide and is now an activist on child-soldier issues, says he is worried that the crisis in Burundi could trigger the deployment of the ruling party's youth wing, known as the Imbonerakure, which is believed to have received weapons from the government.

"Should it ever be deployed, we'd end up in a catastrophic scenario where the army would have to intervene," said Mr. Dallaire, who visited Burundi in late April to discuss child-soldier issues with the government because of the presence of former child soldiers in the youth wings of the main political parties.

"You'd get shooting in the streets, you'd get shooting of kids," he said in an interview on Wednesday. "You can't let that force be deployed, because it's so indoctrinated that once it's deployed, you lose control of it, and then you're into mass atrocities. Once you see child soldiers deployed, you can bet it's an early warning to mass atrocities and worse."

He said he's also worried that the crisis could endanger Burundi's support for peacekeeping missions across Africa, since the country is currently supplying six battalions in peacekeeping forces in Somalia and elsewhere.