Burkina Faso says HRW massacre accusations are ‘unfounded’ | Human rights news

A Human Rights Watch report on Thursday accused the military of executing residents in Nodin and Soro, including at least 56 children.

Burkina Faso said a Human Rights Watch report alleging that soldiers killed at least 223 villagers in two attacks on February 25 made “unfounded accusations”.

O HRW Report on Thursday accused the military of executing residents of Nodin and Soro, including at least 56 children, as part of a campaign against civilians accused of collaborating with rebel fighters. The New York-based group said its report was based on telephone interviews with witnesses, civil society and others.

“The government of Burkina Faso strongly rejects and condemns such unfounded accusations,” Communications Minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo said in a statement on Saturday night.

“The deaths in Nodin and Soro led to the opening of a legal inquiry,” he said.

The minister expressed his surprise at the fact that “while this investigation is ongoing to establish the facts and identify the perpetrators, HRW has managed, with boundless imagination, to identify ‘the culprits’ and pronounce its verdict”.

HRW described the massacre as “one of the worst military abuses in Burkina Faso since 2015”.

“These mass killings… appear to be part of a widespread military campaign against civilians accused of collaborating with Islamic armed groups and may constitute crimes against humanity,” HRW said on Thursday.

“The authorities in Burkina Faso should urgently carry out a full investigation into the massacres, with the support of the African Union and the United Nations to protect their independence and impartiality,” he added.

According to the Burkina Faso statement: “The media campaign orchestrated around these accusations fully shows the undeclared intention… to discredit our fighting forces.”

“All allegations of human rights violations and abuses reported in the context of the fight against terrorism are systematically subject to investigations” followed by the government and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, he stated.

On Thursday, Burkina Faso suspended broadcasts on the BBC and Voice of America radio networks after they aired the report that accused the army of attacks on civilians in the battle against rebels.

Violence in the region, fueled by a decade-long fight with armed groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS), has worsened since their respective militaries seized power in Burkina Faso and neighboring Mali and Niger in a series of 2020 coups d’état. to 2023.

Burkina Faso saw a serious escalation of deadly attacks in 2023, with more than 8,000 people reportedly killed, according to the US-based crisis monitoring group Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED).