Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday accused Burkina’s ruling junta of stepping up kidnappings of government critics and using “increasingly brutal” methods to silence dissident voices.
Since Captain Ibrahim Traore took power in a September 2022 coup, there have been several reported kidnappings of people deemed hostile to the military regime.
“The Burkinabe authorities are using increasingly brutal methods to punish and silence perceived critics and opponents,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, Sahel researcher for HRW.
Guy Herve Kam, a renowned lawyer and co-founder of a grassroots movement, was amongst six dissidents HRW reported as having been abducted by men in civilian clothes since November in the country’s capital Ouagadougou.
On February 15, lawyers in Burkina Faso stopped working and paralysed courts to demand Kam’s release.
“We are paralysed by fear,” said an anonymous member from Kam’s grassroots movement “Balai Citoyen” (Citizen Broom).
“Even holding a press conference, one of our basic rights, becomes a heroic act.”
In April 2023, Traore declared a year-long “general mobilisation” decree to give authorities power to requisition “youth 18 years and older” if needed in the fight against jihadists.
“In early November, the Burkinabe security forces, using a sweeping emergency law, notified at least a dozen journalists, civil society activists, and opposition party members… that they would be conscripted to participate in government security operations across the country,” the NGO added.
Traore’s coup was the country’s second in just eight months — both triggered in part by discontent at failures to stem a raging jihadist insurgency that swept in from Mali in 2015.
Nearly 20,000 people have died in the violence with more than two million internally displaced.