14-year-old female student in Burundi caned to death by her teacher

Fourteen-year-old Chadia Nishimwe has been brutally caned by her teacher at school in Burundi’s capital, Bujumbura, leading to her sudden death.

The school girl went to school to study, but unfortunately met her untimely death after receiving strokes of caning on the neck and legs.

Following the case which happened on Tuesday, the school has reportedly said “the child succumbed to an epileptic seizure after a caning of students who did not do a given assignment”. However, reports say that Nishimwe was caned for breaking class rules.

Nishimwe’s father Jean-Marie Misago said his daughter was caned on the neck and legs, which caused her to bleed from the nose and ears. “She just died in class after being cruelly beaten by her teacher. They dumped her at the head teacher’s office,” Mr Misago told BBC.

According to her father, the head teacher arranged to get Nishimwe to the hospital – and he rushed there too, only to be told by the doctor that his child was already dead. He buried his daughter on the same day.

Burundi’s New school regulations prohibit physical punishment. Even though there are other forms of punishment such as sending pupils back home and asking them to come back with their parents, no one can ascertain for sure why little Nishimwe had to suffer such ordeal.

Why the said teacher chose to ignore the abolishment of corporal punishment on children and allegedly beat her to death is unknown as efforts by the media to obtain comments from the education department and police failed.