Paul Sankara: “The best way to ask for forgiveness was to respond to justice”
Audio 01:02
Thomas Sankara at a press conference on September 2, 1986, during the non-aligned summit in Harare. He was 33 when he came to power.
© AFP/Dominique Faget
Text by: RFI Follow
A delegation from the Ivorian government was received on Tuesday, July 26, 2022, in Ouagadougou by the president of the Burkinabe transition.
A delegation carrying a letter from Blaise Compaoré in which the former president asks forgiveness from the people of Burkina Faso for all the acts he may have committed during his mandate, more particularly to the family of his "brother and friend" Thomas Sankara, the former head of state assassinated on October 15, 1987. In April, Blaise Compaoré, who had not participated in the trial, was sentenced to life in this case.
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I believe that the best way to ask for forgiveness was to respond to the summons of justice, here he was tried in absentia.
At the same time, it is not a way of saying that we are not for forgiveness, unity and reconciliation.
No, far from it.
It's the manner, the form, that's what we put into it.
I think that by sending an Ivorian minister and his own daughter to represent him, there are several questions that arise at this level: is he himself the initiator of the letter?
Does he really know about the letter?
And then the ideal would still have been that, even remotely, he made a video, that would have been more acceptable.
The question of forgiveness lies in a fundamental question, who did what to whom?
Because until then, it's books, it's articles, it's in 34 years films, documentaries,
and what else do I know that have been done.
Why we speak of the triptych, it is not an empty slogan "truth, justice and reconciliation", it is the foundations that every nation uses and will use to move forward.
Paul Sankara, younger brother of Thomas Sankara
Sebastien Nemeth
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Burkina Faso
Blaise Compaore
Thomas Sankara