The president, Pierre Nkurunziza, used the traditional New Year's radio address to promise the country peace and reconciliation (a common theme in his speeches), which is also a pillar of the country's "Vision 2025" policy document (see Economic policy). Yet, over the last few months government security forces continued to harass members of the Alliance des démocrates pour le changement (ADC-Ikibiri; the Democratic Alliance for Change), which groups together the opposition parties that boycotted presidential and parliamentary elections in mid-2010 in protest at what they claimed to have been widespread fraud (The political scene, November 2010). Edouard Ndiwumana, the interior minister, has asserted, unconvincingly, that the ADC-Ikibiri alliance is an illegal grouping, and there have been no formal meetings between ADC-Ikibiri parties and the CNDD-FDD since it won the disputed polls. Instead, several opposition leaders have fled into hiding, and many of their followers have been arrested and detained on questionable grounds.

Human-rights observers of the UN Integrated Office in Burundi (BINUB) documented the arrest of 280 opposition political activists between May 24th and September 7th 2010, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW), the New York-based lobby group, entitled Closing Doors? The Narrowing of Democratic Space in Burundi. Moreover, HRW's report claims that BINUB judged that at least 25% of documented arrests between May and July could be considered "politically motivated". The report maintains that activists belonging to the Forces nationales de libération (FNL)-the leader of which, Agathon Rwasa, went into hiding in June (August 2010, The political scene)-have been particularly targeted, many of whom have been charged with "participation in armed groups". According to HRW, three FNL members arrested by the police on October 2nd were later found dead in the Rusizi River, while six other FNL detainees are still "missing". The police subsequently claimed the three dead activists had been released from custody, alive, on October 4th.

In November a local human-rights non-governmental organisation (NGO), the Association Burundaise pour la Protection des Droits Humains et des Personnes Détenues (APRODH), alleged that 22 FNL members had been killed, apparently by the security forces, since September. The government established a panel of inquiry in November to investigate these claims, which was supposed to report its findings a month later, but nothing has been heard from it publicly so far. Meanwhile, members of the opposition Mouvement pour la sécurité et la démocratie (MSD), the leader of which, Alexis Sinduhije, fled the country in July, have also been picked upon by the security forces, according to HRW's new report, although the MSD spokesperson, François Nyamoya, who was arrested in late September, has since been released on bail. The main author of HRW's report was deported from Burundi back in May 2010, forcing HRW to rely heavily on information from local NGOs and from telephone interviews. The government has angrily rejected the report's findings and recommendations, saying the organisation is seeking "vengeance" for having been expelled from the country.