BUJUMBURA, Burundi May 3 – A Burundian court on Tuesday upheld the 10-year prison sentence handed to journalist Floriane Irangabiye in January, her lawyer told AFP, in a case that has sparked concerns for press freedom in the East African nation.
Irangabiye, who was arrested last year, was sentenced to a decade in prison and fined around $500 for allegedly “undermining the integrity of the national territory”.
The Court of Appeal in the economic capital Bujumbura confirmed the sentence in a ruling issued on Tuesday, her lawyer Eric Ntibandetse told AFP by phone.
“We deplore this decision which did not take our arguments into account”, he said, vowing to appeal again to “have this unjust decision overturned”.
Armel Niyongere, head of the human rights group ACAT Burundi, told AFP the ruling was “a disgrace for the Burundian justice system”.
In March, the United Nations voiced alarm over Burundi’s treatment of human rights activists and journalists, urging the authorities to release those arrested.
“This crackdown on civil society comes as we are also seeing an assault on press freedom in Burundi,” UN human rights office spokeswoman Marta Hurtado said, citing the case of Irangabiye, who was in prison “simply for doing her job”.
The ruling follows the release on Friday of five human rights campaigners who were in prison for over two months on allegations of rebellion and undermining state security.
Burundian intelligence agents had arrested the five activists in February, detaining them in Bujumbura’s central prison before they were tried in the presence of several Western diplomats.
Campaigners including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had called for the unconditional release of the activists, saying the charges against them were baseless.
Despite concerns about the rights situation, both the European Union and the United States last year resumed aid flows to the landlocked nation, citing political progress under President Evariste Ndayishimiye.
Ndayishimiye has been praised for slowly ending years of Burundi’s isolationism under former leader Pierre Nkurunziza’s chaotic and bloody rule.
But he has failed to improve its wretched record on human rights and the African Great Lakes nation of 12 million people remains one of the poorest on the planet.
Burundi had been under US and EU sanctions over a bloody crisis that erupted in 2015 when Nkurunziza made a controversial bid for a third term in office.
The turmoil claimed the lives of 1,200 Burundians and saw 400,000 flee the country.
