Hundreds protested outside the US embassy in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou on Friday, against Washington’s reaction to Human Rights Watch accusations of an army massacre of civilians, an AFP journalist saw.
On Monday, Britain and the United States said they were “gravely concerned” a few days after HRW published a report accusing soldiers of killing at least 223 people, including 56 children, in revenge attacks on two villages on February 25.
London and Washington jointly urged Ouagadougou to “thoroughly investigate these massacres and hold those responsible to account”.
The military rulers of Burkina Faso dismissed the report as “baseless”.
Shopkeepers and private-sector workers marched towards the embassy mid-afternoon, draped in Russian and Burkinabe flags, chanting anti-imperialist slogans. The embassy was protected by riot police.
“We have come to deliver a message to the Americans to put an end to these accusations against our armed forces who are defending the country at the cost of their lives,” Mahamadou Ouedraogo, spokesman for the “Burkind Faangfmeenga (liberation) Federation of pan-Africanists”, which organised the demonstration, told AFP.
In response, Burkina suspended a swathe of international news organisations for airing accusations of an army massacre of civilians, including the British BBC and the US Voice of America.
The government on Thursday summoned the charge d’affaires of the US embassy, Eric Whitaker, over the reaction, according to Burkina’s state news agency AIB.
“Where are these human rights defenders when terrorists are massacring our populations? What are they doing?” asked Halidou Ouedraogo, a member of the liberation federation.
The West African nation has been battered by an insurgency that swept in from neighbouring Mali in 2015.
Thousands of civilians, troops and police have been killed, two million people have fled their homes, and anger within the military at the mounting toll sparked two coups in 2022.