CNN news 2015-05-22 加文本

cnn news 2015-05-22

A deepening crisis in Burundi, it's our first story this Wednesday on cnn Student News. I'm Carl Azuz. Let's get started.

Burundi is a tiny nation in Central Africa. It's a little smaller than the U.S. state of Maryland. Burundi's population: about 10.4 million. It has an election coming up in June, and President Pierre Nkurunziza is running for a controversial third term. Controversial because he served the two-term limit. But he wasn't elected by the Burundian people for his first term. He was elected by parliament, so, he argues he should be allowed to run again. A Burundian court agrees with him. Many protesters do not. 

There was a recent military coup that failed. Because the nation came out of civil war as recently as 2003, many Burundians fear another one could be ahead.

These refugees onboard the MV Lembera , the lucky ones, they managed to escape this incredibly overcrowded peninsula, which is small fishing community essentially called Kagunga, and that is where as many 50,000 over the last few weeks, Burundian refugees have been bottlenecked trying to escape. The only way out has been across the water on this, which is an old World War I gunship. 

And you can see out here on deck, some of those refugees, mostly women and children. The vast majority of refugees who have fled Burundi for Tanzania are women and children. The ones who are brought onto the boat are those who are particularly weak. Downstairs, there are drips attached to the ceilings to the deck to rehydrate those who are suffering from the symptoms of cholera. And we've had it confirmed by doctors from the UNHCR that they have suffered 14 deaths so far from cholera.

Now, from here, from Kagunga, they will be transported to the stadium in a village called Kigoma, and from there, onto Tanzania's largest refugee center, Nyarugusu. 

Tanzania has a history of accommodating Burundian refugees, but this influx is huge, 70,000+ into Tanzania, and also tens of thousands into the DRC and into Rwanda also. Most of them say that they don't want to wait until their country degenerates into civil war and that if the president runs for a third term, they see no hope for peace. Diana Magnay, cnn, on Lake Tanganyika, Tanzania.