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27-05-2024
OUAGADOUGOU: Burkina Faso’s ruling junta will remain in power for another five years after participants in national talks on Saturday proposed extending the transition back to democracy by 60 months from July, according to the text of an approved new charter.
The military authorities seized power in a 2022 coup and promised to hold elections in July this year to restore civilian rule but also said that security considerations would take priority.
According to the new charter, signed by military leader Ibrahim Traore, the transition is set at 60 months from July 2.
“The elections marking the end of the transition may be organized before this deadline if the security situation so permits,” it added.
The substantial delay is likely to deepen concerns about democratic backsliding in West and Central Africa, where there have been eight coups over the past four years. The charter also allows Traore to run for president when the elections take place.
Violence in West Africa’s Sahel region fueled by a decade-long fight with Islamist groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State has worsened since respective militaries seized power in Burkina Faso and neighboring Mali and Niger.
Burkina Faso experienced a severe escalation of deadly attacks in 2023, with more than 8,000 people reportedly killed, according to U.S.-based crisis-monitoring group ACLED.
Meanwhile, Burkina Faso’s military junta announced late on Saturday that an investigation was opened into the alleged killing of at least 223 villagers in February.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) had accused the military of carrying out mass killings in the villages of Nondin and Soro in the Northern Yatenga province.
The human rights watchdog said that 56 children were killed in the attacks in the report published Thursday, which cited eyewitnesses, civil society and others.
“The government of Burkina Faso strongly rejects and condemns such baseless accusations,” Communications Minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo said in a statement.
“The killings at Nodin and Soro led to the opening of a legal inquiry,” he said.
“These mass killings, among the worst army abuse in Burkina Faso since 2015, appear to be part of a widespread military campaign against civilians accused of collaborating with Islamist armed groups,” HRW said.
Witnesses and survivors of the killings, which reportedly took place on February 25, told HRW that the killings appeared to come in response to an Islamist strike on a military base near Ouahigouya, just 25 kilometers (15 miles) away.
A similar army massacre raid was carried out in another village on November 5, in which at least 70 people were killed, among them babies, after the army accused the villagers of collaborating with militants, the Associated Press news agency reported, citing verified accounts.
The junta announced late Sunday that it was suspending international news media outlets, including Deutsche Welle, for reporting on the HRW report.
French newspaper Le Monde and broadcaster TV5 Monde, as well as British daily The Guardian, were among those banned.
On Thursday, the junta suspended both the BBC and Voice of America.
Mass executions in the West African state began escalating amid jihadi violence linked to al-Qaeda and the so-called “Islamic State” group almost a decade ago, sweeping in from neighboring Mali in 2015.
More than 20,000 people have been killed since then, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. (Int’l News Desk)
