Jihadist groups in Burkina Faso have stepped up attacks on civilians, often in retaliation for communities who have refused to join their ranks or allegedly cooperate with government forces, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.
The West African nation, led by a military junta, has been battling Islamist rebels, some with links to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, since they spread into its territory from neighbouring Mali about a decade ago.
Military leader Ibrahim Traoré has urged civilians to play a role in fighting the rebellion, recruiting thousands of volunteer army auxiliaries. More recently, he has asked civilians to dig defensive trenches.
Human Rights Watch found that the jihadists are retaliating with increasingly deadly attacks on civilians. The organization documented seven jihadist attacks between February and June that killed at least 128 civilians. The militants targeted villages of displaced people and Catholic church worshippers.
The Al-Qaeda-affiliated Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims claimed responsibility for six of the attacks.
Armed groups warn
The group has issued several warnings against civilians seen as collaborating with the military in the past, and witnesses told Human Rights Watch that this was the motivation for the attacks.
Some villagers were killed after authorities forced them to return to areas from which the jihadists had expelled them because some had joined the volunteers. “We are between a rock and a hard place,” a 56-year-old villager told Human Rights Watch.
The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, an affiliate of ISIS, claimed responsibility for the church massacre in February, which was in retaliation against Christians who had not renounced their faith, according to eyewitnesses.
The military council, which had previously condemned Human Rights Watch reports of military forces executing civilians suspected of collaborating with jihadists, sent the organization a rare written response to the report last August.
In a letter, the justice minister rejected Human Rights Watch’s claim that prosecutions for serious crimes have been slow since the beginning of the conflict, and said that all alleged human rights violations and abuses committed by the rebels are being investigated.
The minister also said that the displaced people had voluntarily returned to the areas that the security forces had retaken and secured.
bloody attack
The Human Rights Watch report did not include an attack by JNIM on civilians ordered to dig trenches around the north-central town of Barsalogho in late August. Hundreds of people were shot dead, making it one of the bloodiest incidents in Burkina Faso’s history.
Traoré vowed to do better than his predecessors when he seized power in September 2022, Burkina Faso’s second coup that year, fueled in part by anger at the authorities over worsening violence. But the security situation has deteriorated further under his regime, which has also cracked down on dissent, analysts, human rights groups and humanitarian workers say.
