23 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Burkina Faso authorities held an act this Thursday in the capital, Ouagadougou, for the reburial of the remains of former President Thomas Sankara, assassinated after being overthrown in a military coup in October 1987.
The ceremony took place at the Thomas Sankara Memorial –formerly the Council of the Entente– despite the family’s refusal to accept this site as the resting place for the remains of the former president, a Marxist revolutionary who led the country between 1983 and 1987.
The Burkinabe Prime Minister, Apollinaire Kyelem de Tambela, as well as the President of the Transitional Legislative Assembly, Ousmane Bougouma, and several ministers were present at the event, according to the Burkinabe state news agency, AIB.
Sankara’s family announced this week that they would not attend the event due to their disagreement with the place chosen by the authorities and proposed other alternative spaces. Thus, he maintained that the burial of the remains of the former Burkinabe president in the place where he was assassinated would mean his “second death”.
In this sense, Sankara’s sister, Blandine, has called the ceremony a “circus”. “The same thing they have done with our family, this attempt to divide, is what they have done with other families,” she denounced in statements given to the French radio station Radio France Internationale.
Blandine Sankara has also disavowed his brother Valentin, who has been present, and has stressed that he has attended “in a personal capacity”. “They are trying to divide thirteen families,” she said, before stressing that at least the situation has allowed “a recovery of the name and memory of Thomas.”
Sankara was assassinated in 1987 along with twelve officers after being captured after a coup. His corpse was dismembered and buried in an anonymous grave. Former President Blaise Compaoré, who succeeded Sankara after the coup and fled the country in 2014 amid protests against his intention to amend the Constitution to run for re-election, was sentenced to life imprisonment in July 2022.
