Claude Niyonzima pleads with soldiers to protect him

Jean Claude Niyonzima pleads with soldiers to protect him from a mob of demonstrators in Bujumbura, Burundi.

‘In a scene reminiscent of the lynchings I’d witnessed in the Central African Republic a year before, this young man was chased and beaten by a mob just for being suspected of belonging to Burundi’s ruling party’s Imbonerakure youth militia. He managed to escape death by hiding in a sewer, and was saved by the army. He survived then, but many have died since, as the spectre of civil war and massacres looms over this small African nation.’

Photograph: Jerome Delay/AP