NGOs denounce at least 40 civilians executed at the hands of alleged soldiers in Burkina Faso

Aug. 14 (EUROPA PRESS) –

A Burkinabe NGO has denounced the execution of at least 40 civilians at the hands of alleged soldiers in the community of Tougouri, in north-central Burkina Faso, after the discovery there of several dozen bodies on August 8.

The general secretary of the Collective against Impunity and the Stigmatization of Communities (CISC), Daouda Diallo, has reported that the NGO’s workers have found “more than 40 bodies (which) were found along the Taffogo highway – Bouroum piled up in groups of five and ten corpses,” according to a statement collected by the Koaci news portal.

The NGO has testimonies that point to those responsible as “elements of the Defense and Security Forces (FDS) dressed in black uniforms and hoods,” according to Diallo.

The person in charge of the organization assures that this massacre is not an isolated event and has taken the opportunity to denounce another massacre that he attributed to the Burkinabe military on August 2, when they executed eight civilians while patrolling between the communities between Gorom and Oursi.

Another NGO, the Observatory for Human Dignity (ODH), raises the number of deaths in Tougouri to more than fifty, almost all of them from the Fulani ethnic group, including women and children. “Some victims were assaulted in the Tougouri market and others at their home,” according to the note.

The group has demanded that “certain elements of the SDF cease the practice of kidnapping civilians with their own hands followed by summary and extrajudicial executions under the false pretext of fighting terrorism.”

Likewise, the Burkina Faso NGOs ask the Government to rethink the actions of these soldiers who reduce the fight against terrorism to “a simple extermination of the towns occupied by a certain community”.

Other NGOs, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), had already accused Burkina Faso’s security forces of “extrajudicial executions” in 2020, during anti-terrorist operations, after the discovery of “mass graves containing at least 180 bodies” in Djibo , capital of the province of Soum, one of the most affected by the jihadist attacks.

Burkina Faso, led by a military junta since a coup in January this year, has generally experienced a significant increase in insecurity since 2015, leading to a wave of internally displaced persons and refugees to other developing countries. the region.

The attacks, the work of both the Al Qaeda affiliate and the Islamic State affiliate in the region, have also contributed to increasing inter-community violence and have caused self-defense groups to flourish, to which the Burkinabe government has added ‘volunteers ‘ to help in the fight against terrorism.