The repression of dissenting voices is intensifying in Burkina Faso. In Ouaga 2000, an upscale district of the capital, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ablassé Ouédraogo, was kidnapped from his home on Sunday, December 24, by hooded strangers, claiming to be “the national police”, reports his party, Le Otherwise, in a press release published three days later. The latter also reports having since “no news from his president” and not knowing “exactly where he is”.
Mr. Ouédraogo, 70, stood out in October for his criticism of the military regime, denouncing in an open letter “the restrictions on individual and collective freedoms, the muzzling of the press” and “the decline of democracy.” , since the September 30, 2022 coup d’état by Captain Ibrahim Traoré. His arrest comes at a time when the former deputy director of the World Trade Organization (WTO) had been under requisition by the authorities since November 5, ordering him to join the front in order to participate in the fight against Islamist groups. armed.
Around ten personalities from civil society in Burkina Faso were also on the “requisition list”, according to the former editor-in-chief of the newspaper L’Evénement, Newton Ahmed Barry. All having the common point of having expressed a dissident voice to the putschists in power.
In reaction, Le Faso otherwise denounced, on November 10, a “sanction (…) for its objective and constructive positions and analyzes on governance and the national situation in our country”. Since the first coup d’état in January 2022, Mr. Ouédraogo has regularly written columns in the local press. “While everyone is afraid to share their opinion, he was one of the few politicians who still freely expressed his thoughts,” underlines Newton Ahmed Barry.
Liberticide tendency of power
As with other requisitioned people, his lawyers challenged the legality of this measure in court. The Ouagadougou administrative court ended up ruling in their favor on December 6, considering that these forced recruitments as part of the “general mobilization”, decreed in April 2022, are “illegal”. A decision which surely convinced Ablassé Ouédraogo to return from a trip to Madagascar, the former minister of foreign affairs believing himself to be “protected” by the justice system, according to a relative.
The kidnapping of Mr. Ouédraogo confirms the liberticidal tendency of the Burkinabe government. Imams, businessmen, whistleblowers, journalists, political leaders: around ten personalities have been missing since March 2022. Five of them, according to the sources of “Monde Afrique”, were sent to the front, to like Daouda Diallo, 2022 winner of the Martin-Ennals prize for human rights defenders.
Not all requisitions, however, are forced. Following the recruitment campaign for volunteers for the defense of the homeland (VDP), civilian auxiliaries intended to support the army in the anti-jihadist fight, launched in October 2022, many citizens responded to the junta’s call . While the government’s objective was to recruit 50,000 VDPs, the authorities ultimately announced that they had succeeded in enlisting, in just three weeks, 90,000 people.
“The use of civilians for security missions is not something new” in Burkina Faso, recalls Romane Da Cunha Dupuy, doctoral student at the International Research Center (CERI) at Sciences Po Paris. Since 2010, self-defense groups, called koglweogo, have worked with the government to secure villages prey to Islamist attacks.
Increase in jihadist attacks
This delegation of security prerogative to civilians draws, moreover, from the heritage of the committees for the defense of the revolution (CDR) set up by Thomas Sankara. From 1983 until his assassination in 1987, the Burkinabé revolutionary established committees in each workplace, drawing inspiration from the defense committees of the Cuban revolution. On a voluntary basis, CDR members were “responsible for ensuring security in the villages”, according to Romane Da Cunha Dupuy.
But, in the meantime, the security context has deteriorated significantly. Since 2015, Burkina Faso has faced an increase in attacks by jihadist groups. The resulting violence caused more than 10,000 civilian and military deaths and at least two million displaced people, according to NGOs.
Benefiting from only fourteen days of civic and military training, the VDP were then armed and sent to the front, where they paid a heavy price, particularly in the North and East. The latter were, moreover, accused of multiple abuses. A year ago, army auxiliaries were accused of the massacre of 28 people in Nouna, in the northwest of the country, by a local human rights organization. When contacted, the Burkinabe authorities, who suspended the broadcast of Le Monde on December 2, did not respond to our requests.