Burkina: civil society denounces forced recruitment into volunteers for the defense of the homeland

Here, during a recruitment in Ouagadougou, November 16, 2022 (illustration image). © Olympia de Maismont / AFP

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2 min

Burkinabe civil society is concerned about possible cases of forced recruitment of volunteers for the defence of the homeland (VDP). Since the disappearance on 22 March of Boukari Ouédraogo, president of the Kaya Call movement, human rights organizations have denounced the arrest of two other members of civil society on the weekend of 25-26 March. Without news since, they fear that they have been forcibly recruited into the VDP.

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In mid-March, at a press conference, Boukari Ouédraogo, president of the Kaya Call movement, encouraged Captain Ibrahim Traoré to visit the Centre-Nord region to assess insecurity in the area. Less than a week later, he was arrested in Kaya after a meeting with the president of the transition, who was visiting the city. And according to witnesses, the order was given to enlist him in the VDP.

An assertion that seemed to confirm the next day the head of state himself, in a speech to the living forces of the Centre-North. Captain Ibrahim Traoré believed, without quoting him, that Boukari Ouédraogo was playing into the hands of armed groups: "Someone said that Lake Dèm is a nerve center of Kaya. So the enemy understood this. The one who did this was immediately arrested by a fighter and we hired him immediately to be VDP. »

« Their families have not heard from them."

According to Daouda Diallo, head of the Collective against Impunity and Stigmatization of Communities, two other members of civil society suffered the same fate last Saturday. "Their families have not heard from them since they were arrested, hence the growing concern at the national level and hence the mobilization today by all movements of civil society organizations. Because the Burkinabè cannot defeat the dictatorship of Blaise Compaoré to switch to another dictatorship," he said.

In his speech, Captain Ibrahim Traoré said that those who refuse to engage "must be content to eat, sleep and let others work".

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Read on on the same topics:

• Burkina Faso
• Ibrahim Traoré