Arouna Loure, a vocal critic of Burkina Faso’s ruling military junta, received a conscription order on September 7 last year requesting that the anaesthesiologist start a month of military service four days later.

The order did not specify a date or location for the doctor to report for duty. Days later, on September 13, two armed men intercepted Mr. Loure between operating theatres at a hospital in the capital Ouagadougou, forced him into a vehicle, and drove to a military camp near the northern city of Kaya, he said.

Mr. Loure, 38, had denounced the violence linked to Burkina Faso’s almost a decade-long fight against Islamist insurgents in the West African country.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have accused Burkina Faso’s junta of kidnapping and conscripting some of its critics, citing victims and civil society groups. Reuters could not find any public response by authorities to the reports and the junta did not reply to requests for comment.

Mr. Loure, who was released after three months of forced military service, said he was conscripted at the same time as eight other government critics and activists at the Kaya camp.

“They want to silence us,” he said during a telephone interview in March. “These conscriptions are arbitrary and punitive.”

In the beginning of June, the national order of doctors in Burkina Faso issued a statement saying Mr. Loure had gone missing again. Two civil society sources confirmed the information. He has not reappeared since.

Four victims who spoke after their release said they were snatched from their workplace or the street by armed police or military officials. Their kidnappers were either wearing Burkina Faso Army uniforms or were men in civilian clothing who verbally identified themselves as police or military, they said.

When Mr. Loure arrived at the military camp in Kaya in September, there were five other conscripted activists already there and three more were brought in during his five-week stay at the camp.

Three of the activists spoke to Reuters after they were discharged from the military on condition of anonymity, citing fears of retribution. They said that, before they arrived in Kaya, men in military uniform tortured them for days in an ex-ministerial villa in the Ouaga 2000 neighbourhood of Ouagadougou.

They saw other prisoners during their stay, some with severe injuries. Reuters was not able to confirm independently the details of their accounts.

Tearing up, one activist said soldiers held his nose and mouth under an open faucet and tied plastic bags over his face.

During torture sessions, all were accused of conspiracy against the state and plotting to overthrow the junta.

Once at the Kaya base, they were made to clean toilets, do laundry and wash dishes. Soldiers bullied and fired guns at some of them. They suffered daily humiliation and exhausting sports drills the older conscripts struggled to follow, they said.

“They treated us like animals,” one of them said.

Junta spokesperson Jean-Emmanuel Ouedraogo, Interior Minister Emile Zerbo, State Minister Bassolma Bazie and Army spokesperson Isidore Noël did not respond to several requests for comment on the testimonies.

The abductions are part of junta leader Ibrahim Traore’s efforts to silence critics since he seized power in a September 2022 coup — the second that year — with a promise to restore security, analysts said.

‘Authoritarian drift’

“The regime’s authoritarian drift is clear,” said Mathieu Pellerin, a Sahel expert for the International Crisis Group. He said the government was hardening its stance towards internal critics as its position became more “fragile”.

Burkina Faso’s Army has only made incremental gains despite spending millions of dollars on the war and boosting its ranks with thousands of volunteer auxiliaries known as VDPs, analysts and humanitarian groups said.

Frustrations about authorities’ failure to shield civilians from the insurgency stoked the first military coup that ousted President Roch Kabore in January 2022, and then the toppling of Mr. Traore’s predecessor eight months later.

In Burkina Faso, more than 6,500 civilians have been killed since the start of 2020, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, a global source of data on political violence. More than half died under the current government.

Earlier this year, the junta suspended several foreign media outlets for covering a HRW report accusing the Army of extrajudicial killings.

The conscription of junta critics began in March 2023 with Boukare Ouedraogo, the visually-impaired president of a civil society group in Kaya.

Mr. Ouedraogo, 32, had spoken at a press conference that month about feeling let down by Mr. Traore.

Five days later, Mr. Traore visited Kaya, summoned Mr. Ouedraogo and ordered his arrest, said Moussa Sawadogo, a colleague who attended the meeting.

Just after Mr. Ouedraogo’s arrest, in April 2023, the junta issued an emergency decree that grants authorities the right to conscript citizens above the age of 18.

“It marked the start of a trend,” said Ousmane Lankoande of the Balai Citoyen, a prominent citizens movement that played a key role in 2014 protests that ousted president Blaise Compaore, who had ruled Burkina Faso for nearly three decades. “We used to feel so hopeful about the future,” Mr. Lankoande said, describing the mood after the 2014 uprising restored civil liberties. “Today that freedom has been stolen.”

Meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Alliance of Sahel States
| Photo Credit: X@BakaryYaou

Junta-run Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have finalised plans to form a confederation after turning their backs on former colonial ruler France to seek closer ties with Russia.

Their Foreign Ministers met Friday in Niger’s capital Niamey to agree on a text establishing the Confederation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).

“The objective was to finalise the draft text relating to the institutionalisation and operationalisation of the Confederation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES)”, said Niger Foreign Minister Bakary Yaou Sangare as he read the final statement late Friday.

He said the text would be adopted by the heads of state of the three countries at a summit, without specifying the date.

“We can consider very clearly, today, that the Confederation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) has been born,” Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop said after meeting General Abdourahamane Tiani, the head of Nigerien military regime.

The third Foreign Minister at the meeting was Burkina Faso’s Karamoko Jean-Marie Traore.

The Sahel region has been subject to deadly jihadist violence for years, which they accused France of not being able to curb.

The three countries said late January they were quitting The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which they said was under French influence, to create their own regional grouping.

File picture of mural in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
| Photo Credit: AP

Burkina Faso suspended the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Voice of America (VOA) radio stations for their coverage of a report by Human Rights Watch on a mass killing of civilians carried out by the country’s armed forces.

Burkina Faso’s communication spokesperson, Tonssira Myrian Corine Sanou, said late on April 25 that both radio stations would be suspended for two weeks, and warned other media networks to avoid reporting on the story.

According to the report published by Human Rights Watch on April 25, the army killed some 223 civilians, including 56 children, in villages accused of cooperating with militants. The report was widely covered by the international media , including the Associated Press.

“VOA stands by its reporting about Burkina Faso and intends to continue to fully and fairly cover activities in the country,” the network said in a news article reporting on its suspension.

The BBC did not respond to a request for comment.

File picture of a mural in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Military forces in Burkina Faso killed 223 civilians, including babies and many children, in attacks on two villages accused of cooperating with militants, Human Rights Watch said in a report
| Photo Credit: AP

Military forces in Burkina Faso killed 223 civilians, including babies and many children, in attacks on two villages accused of cooperating with militants, Human Rights Watch said in a report published on Thursday.

The mass killings took place on February 25 in the country’s northern villages of Nondin and Soro, and some 56 children were among the dead, according to the report. The human rights organisation called on the United Nations and the African Union to provide investigators and to support local efforts to bring those responsible to justice.

“The massacres in Nondin and Soro villages are just the latest mass killings of civilians by the Burkina Faso military in their counterinsurgency operations,” Human Rights Watch Executive Director Tirana Hassan said in a statement.

“International assistance is critical to support a credible investigation into possible crimes against humanity.”

The once-peaceful nation has been ravaged by violence that has pitted jihadis linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group against state-backed forces. Both sides have targeted civilians caught in the middle, displacing more than 2 million people, of which over half are children. Most attacks go unpunished and unreported in a nation run by a repressive leadership that silences perceived dissidents.

The HRW report provided a rare firsthand account of the killings by survivors amid a stark increase in civilian casualties by Burkina Faso’s security forces as the junta struggles to beat back a growing jihadi insurgency and attacks residents under the guise of counterterrorism.

Earlier in April, The Associated Press verified accounts of a November 5 army attack on another village that killed at least 70 people. The details were similar — the army blamed the villagers for cooperating with militants and massacred them, even babies.

Witnesses and survivors told HRW that the February 25 killings were believed to have been carried out in retaliation for an attack by Islamist fighters on a military camp near the provincial capital Ouahigouya, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) away.

The toll of civilian deaths was higher than first described by local officials. A public prosecutor previously said that his office was investigating the reported deaths of 170 people in attacks carried out on those villages.

A Burkina Faso government spokesperson didn’t respond to requests for comment about the February 25 attack. Officials previously denied killing civilians and said jihadi fighters often disguise themselves as soldiers.

More than 20,000 people have been killed in Burkina Faso since jihadi violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group first hit the West African nation nine years ago, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a United States-based nonprofit.

Burkina Faso experienced two coups in 2022. Since seizing power in September 2022, the junta led by Capt. Ibrahim Traoré has promised to beat back militants but violence has only worsened, analysts say. Around half of Burkina Faso’s territory remains outside of government control.

Frustrated with a lack of progress over years of Western military assistance, the junta has severed military ties with former colonial ruler France and turned to Russian instead for security support.

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso:

Around 170 people were “executed” in attacks on three villages in northern Burkina Faso a week ago, a regional public prosecutor said Sunday.

Aly Benjamin Coulibaly said he received reports of the attacks on the villages of Komsilga, Nodin and Soroe in Yatenga province on February 25, with a provisional death count of “around 170 people executed”.

The attacks left others wounded and caused material damage, the prosecutor for the northern town of Ouahigouya added in a statement.

He said his office ordered an investigation and appealed to the public for information.

Survivors of the attacks told news agency AFP that dozens of women and young children were among the victims.

Local security sources said the attacks were separate from deadly incidents at a mosque and a church in northern Burkina Faso that also happened a week ago.

Authorities have yet to release an official death count for those attacks.

Burkina Faso has been grappling with a jihadist insurgency waged by rebels affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group that spilled over from neighbouring Mali in 2015.

The violence has killed almost 20,000 people and displaced more than two million in Burkina Faso, one of the world’s poorest countries situated in the Sahel, a region wracked by instability.

Anger at the state’s inability to end the insecurity played a major role in two military coups in 2022. Current strongman Ibrahim Traore has made the fight against rebel groups a priority.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Around 170 people were “executed” in attacks on three villages in northern Burkina Faso a week ago, a regional public prosecutor said on March 3.

Aly Benjamin Coulibaly said he received reports of the attacks on the villages of Komsilga, Nodin and Soroe in Yatenga province on February 25, with a provisional toll of “around 170 people executed”.

The attacks left others wounded and caused material damage, the prosecutor for the northern town of Ouahigouya added in a statement.

He said his office ordered an investigation and appealed to the public for information.

Survivors of the attacks told AFP that dozens of women and young children were among the victims.

Local security sources said the attacks were separate from deadly incidents at a mosque and a church in northern Burkina Faso that also happened a week ago.

Authorities have yet to release an official death toll for those attacks.

Burkina Faso has been grappling with a jihadist insurgency waged by rebels affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group that spilled over from neighbouring Mali in 2015.

The violence has killed almost 20,000 people and displaced more than two million in Burkina Faso, one of the world’s poorest countries situated in the Sahel, a region wracked by instability.

Anger at the state’s inability to end the insecurity played a major role in two military coups in 2022. Current strongman Ibrahim Traore has made the fight against rebel groups a priority.