Burundi government officials should halt their intensifying pressure on journalists, Human Rights Watch said. In the last few weeks, journalists have been summonsed by state prosecuting authorities for questioning with increasing frequency in response to radio broadcasts implicating state agents in alleged human rights abuses. Senior government officials, including three ministers, have stepped up public warnings against the media in recent days, threatening them with legal action.

Government-backed death squads have killed more than 300 members of Burundi’s former rebel group and opposition supporters in covert operations over the past five months, a rights group said. The group, Government Action Observatory, a coalition of civil society groups, said the Central African country’s regime and its proxies have waged a systematic campaign of extrajudicial killings against the former rebels, who went back to the bush after pulling out of 2010 polls over fraud claims.

Many teachers in the eastern Burundian provinces of Ruyigi and Cankuzo have fled their homes, fearing for their lives. Rumour has it that a plan, codenamed ‘Safisha’ and allegedly being carried out by the ruling CNDD-FDD party, aims to eliminate all opposition members. In the local dialect, ‘safisha’ means ‘to cleanse’.

Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza has sacked six ministers from his cabinet for poor performance, his spokesman said. When he was sworn in for his five-year second term, President Nkurunziza said that each government official will report on tasks accomplished every six months, adding that those who failed to do so would be fired.