Audio recordings, posted mainly on WhatsApp, invite the “indigenous” populations to attack by the murder in the Peuls of their region.
Le Monde with AFP
The government of Burkina Faso strongly condemned and warned Thursday, August 18 against calls “to murder” and “ethnic purification” recently relayed on social networks, targeting the country’s Peul minority.
These calls, in the form of audio recordings posted mainly on the WhatsApp network, invited the “indigenous” populations to attack the murder and the abuses to the Fulani of their region, in particular in the southwest of the border country of Côte d’Ivoire.
“These are extreme gravity remarks that have equivalence only the drifts of the Radio Hills Radio which led to the Rwandan genocide [in 1994], one of the worst tragedies of humanity and from which We must know how to learn from lessons, “writes Lionel Bilgo, spokesperson for the Burkinabé government, in a statement adopted by the Council of Ministers.
“It is a question of direct and active calls for murder, mass killings, ethnic purification and sedition: the tone and the words used give cold in the back and testify to the gravity of the Situation “, he adds.
” The risk of a real civil war “
According to Mr. Bilgo, “it is indeed hateful, subversive, dangerous and unacceptable discourse in a rich and diversified country like Burkina Faso”, which impose “to act resolutely and firmly before the irreparable occur “. They call for “unreserved and unambiguous condemnation”.
Peuls who have joined jihadist groups that bloody Burkina Faso for seven years, the amalgamation “Peul equal terrorist” is regularly established, which stirs up tensions between communities.
In a forum published Tuesday, Alpha Barry, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, overthrown in January by a military putsch, alerted him to “the risk of a real civil war”, after the broadcast of These recordings.
To avoid it, he called on policies, religious, intellectuals, customary chiefs and other leaders to “go to the field, meet the populations, carry out strong actions to advocate cohesion and living together which are the cement of our nation “.
The 1 er January 2019, unidentified armed individuals had attacked the village of Yirgou, in northern Burkina Faso, killing 6 people, including the village chief. This attack had immediately been followed by reprisals targeting the Fulani which had killed 50 people according to the official assessment, at least 146 according to civil society organizations.