Honourable members and Madam Chair, I first want to express my deep gratitude for this opportunity to tell you what has become of my homeland, Burundi, what's happening there in secret, and what the world doesn't know.
Since its independence, Burundi, my homeland, has suffered greatly from inter-ethnic massacres. These massacres can even go as far as genocide. The world has been silent. We've fought to raise our voices. These massacres led me, on October 24, 1993, to stand up like a mother to reject hatred and create a new generation of Hutu, Tutsi and Batwa children. These children are from the Great Lakes region, which has become greatly impoverished. I had believed and hoped that the new generation could stop the cycle of violence. Sadly, after 23 years of fighting to create this new generation, I was placed at the top of the list of criminals and targeted by an international arrest warrant.
Everything that we built, including the large hospital, has been closed. All the households, the 10,000 households in the co-operative that we had established, have fallen into poverty once again. Children are suffering from malnutrition. The microfinance bank that I had created was closed. People are starving to death. We look like beggars sitting on gold ingots, while in Burundi everything is growing.
Burundi has become an open-air prison. There are 500,000 refugees in three countries, including Tanzania. I'll focus on Tanzania right now. I must tell you, honourable members, that the country is turning away my brothers and sisters, your brothers and sisters, and forcibly returning them to Burundi. Once they get there, they're killed in secret. Others are put in prisons.
People are being killed in refugee camps in Tanzania. They had fled after being threatened, but Tanzania didn't protect them. I'd like to cry out in distress like a mother and tell you that Canada must do everything in its power to inform Tanzania that the total lack of concern regarding the death of these refugees is intolerable.
We had demobilized 1,500 child soldiers and helped them rebuild their lives. However, Burundi has just recruited 60,000 young militiamen from the ruling party, who are known as the Imbonerakure. They scour all the hills and instigate terror, violence and death with an air of complete indifference. Many young girls are now being sold. Over 230 young girls were trafficked to the Gulf countries and everyone remained silent. No one raised their voices. Young boys are being tortured and castrated and over 9,000 young people are unjustly in prison.
The Prosecutor General of Burundi has just signed a decision, a letter of expropriation issued to all the families and 32 people unjustly accused of being putschists. Their children, wives and spouses are in the streets because they no longer have a place to live.
They can't even flee the country because they're unable to obtain the necessary documents, since the documents include their parents' names. We're facing a very difficult humanitarian situation. Of the 500,000 Burundians in exile, 60% are malnourished children. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has obtained only 1% of the funding requested to assist them. We're doomed to poverty, but we've refused to accept this. I've refused to accept this status quo.
Thank you for listening to us. We must do something, because Pierre Nkurunziza, the President of the Republic, has become a fascist. It's a fascist regime.
Even international NGOs have recently been made to sign an ethnic quota decree, and the NGOs that can't sign it must leave the country. We're asking parliamentarians to help us so that peace can return, so that justice can return and so that these children can grow up like yours, because they're your children. May the Burundian people regain their dignity. We've taken in 2,000 young people who had to leave university. If these children have no hope, they'll take up arms. These young people must return to school, in full view of everyone.
In Uganda, 7,000 children aren't in school in the 21st century. What will happen to all these children? You'll see them again when they become child soldiers and it will be too late. We wouldn't want another depressed General Dallaire. He cried out, but no one listened to him. I'm now standing here like a mother who's crying out for something to be done before it's too late, before genocide is committed in Burundi.
Madam Chair and honourable members, I would like to express my deep gratitude once again. Thank you for honouring me today. On behalf of all the victims, thank you.