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Protest organizer Gringo Iradukunda leads demonstrators in the streets of Bujumbura.Geoffrey York/The Globe and Mail

As a teenager in a time of war, Gringo Iradukunda was consumed by his hatred of the Hutus. His grandparents were slaughtered by a machete-wielding Hutu, and so he joined a Tutsi vigilante mob, attacking and torching Hutu houses. "I had such a heavy anger, deep in my heart," he says. "I swore to kill a Hutu."

Today, some of his closest comrades are Hutus, and he risks his life every day for a new multiethnic vision of his country. As an organizer of the street protests that have rocked Burundi, he spends 20 hours a day on the barricades, dodging police bullets and cheering the ethnically integrated soldiers who now seem to represent peace. He has even befriended the man who killed his grandparents.

The protesters, thousands of whom have occupied large sections of Burundi's capital city for the past two weeks, are motivated by frustrations over government corruption and economic hardship, but they are also driven by a belief in democracy and ethnic reconciliation and a fear of renewed civil war – the same beliefs that led Gringo Iradukunda to remake his life after the violence of his youth.

Last month, President Pierre Nkurunziza announced that he would be seeking a third term, despite evidence that this would violate both the constitution and the Arusha accords, the historic agreement that ended the 12-year civil war in which about 300,000 Burundians were killed. That re-election bid is what the protesters are determined to stop. The Arusha agreement led to the ethnic and political integration of Burundi's army – which explains why the protesters see the army as their unofficial ally – but that crucial progress could be in jeopardy if Burundi continues falling into political chaos.

Africa's democratic hopes, bolstered by the surprise defeat of powerful presidents in Nigeria, Senegal and Burkina Faso, are now turning to this small country of 10.4 million in the heart of the continent, one of the world's poorest, hungriest and most war-ravaged nations. If democracy and reconciliation can triumph here, it will send ripples across Africa, accelerating a trend that has gained unexpected strength in recent years.

But if the thousands of Burundian protesters are vanquished, or if the dangerous stalemate with the government persists, the consequences could be far-reaching. It may embolden some of Africa's most autocratic leaders, in capitals from Kinshasa and Brazzaville to Kigali and elsewhere, encouraging them to extend their rule by hook or by crook. It could trigger new refugee flows and revive old regional tensions and ethnic grievances, spilling across Burundi's borders and into one of the most volatile regions of the world, where millions have died in wars and genocide over the past 21 years.

"Burundi could become a very dangerous Pandora's box for the entire Great Lakes region in the near future," said Filip Reyntjens, a scholar at the University of Antwerp who has outlined several scenarios in which the conflict could spread violence into countries such as Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

This week, Burundi's constitutional court upheld Mr. Nkurunziza's attempt at a third term – an outcome that did not surprise anyone, especially after the court's vice-president fled the country and revealed that most of the judges were facing heavy pressure to support the President.

Such tactics are common here. This, after all, is the country that banned jogging groups last year. The reason? Some opposition political parties had a habit of discussing politics during their morning runs.

It was a foreshadowing of the heavy-handed crackdown that began on April 26. The government banned the street protests, denouncing the participants as "terrorists" and "insurrectionists," while police have repeatedly fired on the demonstrators with live ammunition. At least 17 people have died during the protests so far, and more than 200 have been injured. The police and intelligence agency have arrested several opposition activists, along with about 600 other protesters. Most are still being held without charges, and many have been ill-treated or tortured, according to human-rights groups. But the repressive tactics have been counter-productive, angering the protesters and fueling their daily demonstrations.

'Get up … It's time to kick out Nkurunziza'

Mr. Iradukunda – whose mother named him Gringo because she had lived in Spain and liked the word – sleeps for just two or three hours a night these days, usually between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. Then he gets up, dons a jacket and scarf to guard against the night chill, and heads out onto the quiet streets, where other protest leaders are finishing their three-hour shifts.

He's a short, stocky 37-year-old with a shaven head, a thin mustache and a friendly manner. His day job is in the market, where he sells electrical supplies and does repairs. But today, his first task is to monitor the movements of the police, the army, and the ruling party's youth faction, the notorious Imbonerakure ("those who see far" in Kirundi, the official language of Burundi), who are known to have weapons and have a history of attacking opponents.

By 5 a.m., just before dawn, the first protesters are blowing their whistles and rousing supporters. "Get up, get up, it's time," they shout. "It's time to kick out Nkurunziza."

In their neighbourhoods, they have put up crude checkpoints, using rope or twisted plastic bags and mosquito nets, that are monitored by supporters who watch for police spies or youth militia infiltrating at night. At around 5:30 a.m., Mr. Iradukunda orders the barriers to come down, so that the residents can move around for their daily tasks – but he reminds them they are still on strike and shouldn't go to work. It's an effective tactic, but not necessarily a fair one, since some residents are prevented from earning the money they need to feed their families. (While most people in Bujumbura seem to support the protests, human-rights groups are concerned that some residents are being prevented from working, against their wishes.)

By 6 a.m., smoke is rising from a barricade on a neighbouring street, where one of his comrades is in charge. Two young men, suspected of being Imbonerakure spies, are observing the street activity and speaking into cellphones. Mr. Iradukunda keeps a close eye on them.

A few minutes later, the first half-dozen police officers show up on the street, moving casually and chatting with two soldiers who are already there. Soldiers are posted up and down the street, every 30 or 40 metres, quietly watching the protesters and police.

"I feel secure here because of the soldiers," Mr. Iradukunda says. "If the soldiers weren't here, the police would be harassing us." (The police force and the intelligence agency, unlike the military, have fallen under the direct control of the President, so they generate widespread distrust.)

At 6:40 a.m., police reinforcements arrive. They march up the street slowly in single file, carrying Kalashnikovs. The protesters whistle and sing political songs, calling more supporters from their homes, while Mr. Iradukunda studies the faces of the police, looking for any with angry or aggressive expressions. Those are the ones who could shoot, he says, making a mental note of their faces. (He later said he witnessed one of these angry-looking policemen shooting at the protesters.)

Each protest organizer has a highly specialized task; some are in charge of security, or watching a street corner, or waking up protesters for their shifts. A man named Hamza Djuma is "in charge of burning tires," his comrades say. He has burned at least 50 tires at the barricades since the protests began, filling them with fuel and grass tinder.

"If I find a tire in your car, I could burn it," he says, only half-joking.

Another organizer, Abedi Kiza, is a Hutu who would have once been an enemy of Mr. Iradukunda. Now they are on the same side, and both are worried that the ruling party and its youth militia could revive the old ethnic hatred. Last week Mr. Kiza says he heard an Imbonerakure member shouting: "You Tutsis, we will kill you." He shakes his head. "I'm a Hutu who is fighting against all of this," he says. "It brings me pain. It would bring us back to ethnic war."

By now, the streets are full of people, but few are heading to work, and there are few cars on the road, except for the occasional army or police vehicle, or Red Cross ambulance. Mr. Iradukunda gazes at the main police barricade in the distance, while staying alert for anyone who might point him out to the police as a potential arrest target.

By 8 a.m., most shops are still closed, although the protesters allow some street vendors to go to work. A man from the ruling party drives out of his house, and Mr. Iradukunda confronts him. "Where are you going?" he says. "You should join us." The man refuses. "Leave me alone, go on your way," he retorts.

The protesters are growing more numerous, and by 8:30 a.m. they are ready to march. They head towards the police lines, singing and dancing, and Mr. Iradukunda joins them, pulling out a pink whistle to add to the noise.

The rest of the day is a blur of burning barricades and turmoil. Both sides apply pressure on each other. The police eventually charge the crowd and point their guns at the protesters, who flee down a side street. Then the demonstrators creep forward again, taunting and insulting the police.

A constant game of push and pull

In its efforts to crush the protests, the Burundi government has shut down a popular radio station, restricted other media, closed the biggest university, and even tried to ban social media sites such as WhatsApp and Facebook, where protesters share information and exchange photos and videos of their actions – and the police reaction.

But when the social-media shutdown was imposed in Burundi in late April, the protesters soon found a way around it.

Jean-Regis Nduwimana, a university teacher at Université du Lac Tanganyika and a self-styled citizen journalist who builds networks of contacts and information sources on WhatsApp and Facebook, got a call last week from a contact at a local cellphone company, explaining that the company was shutting down all access to social media from cellphones (the most common way that Burundians access those platforms). "We're done, man," the friend told him.

Mr. Nduwimana simply went to Google and asked it a question: "How to unblock the Internet." He soon learned about VPNs (virtual private networks) – the same solution protesters under other regimes, such as China and Iran, have used – and downloaded a free VPN app onto his phone. Since then, word of this work-around has quickly spread.

It takes only a few seconds for them to bypass the government's block and get crucial information on WhatsApp. "It's how the organizers tell people the plans for the next day, and it's how you can find out if the police are coming to your neighbourhood to arrest people," Mr. Nduwimana says.

For his part, Mr. Iradukunda uses WhatsApp and his VPN to keep in close touch with the protest barricades in many other neighbourhoods of Bujumbura. "It shows us what's happening in other places, and it helps us to see how the police behave," he says.

That's valuable information. As a protest organizer, he needs to decide when to confront the police lines and when to retreat from the likely threat of police bullets. It's a constant game of push and pull, and it goes on around the clock. While the VPNs are high-tech tools for the protesters, most of their materials are low-tech: whistles to mobilize supporters, burning tires and tree branches to form barricades, and huge amounts of courage.

A fear of a return to the 'old days'

Many observers are worried that the chaos in Burundi could spread across the region. Nearly 40,000 refugees have already fled to neighbouring countries.

The U.S. government has openly expressed sympathy for the protesters, saying it "applauded the courage" of the constitutional-court judge who fled the country after refusing to bow to the President's third-term bid. Britain and Canada have also criticized the Burundi government. But the country's immediate neighbours, where presidents are seeking to extend their own rule, have remained largely silent.

As the stalemate continues, there are warning signs that ethnic conflict might flare up again. In the countryside, some Tutsis have received written death threats under their doors, allegedly from the Imbonerakure. In the capital, protesters have been violently attacking many suspected Imbonerakure members, even killing one of them on the street. And the Rwandan government is complaining that Hutu extremist rebels could be exploiting the chaos to infiltrate Burundi from Congo.

"The police and the Imbonerakure are trying to divide us and send us back to the old ethnic divisions," Mr. Iradukunda says.

"I'm afraid they'll take us back to those old days. But I don't see the Hutus as bad guys any more. They are our brothers, they are Burundians as we are, and we have to share what we have and live together in this land. The Hutus and Tutsis need to sit and talk, because all of us have a sad story."

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