Burkina Faso’s government has opened investigations into allegations of human rights abuses by its security forces after a video surfaced that appeared to show the extrajudicial killing of seven children in the country’s north.
“The conclusions of the said investigations will lead, if the facts are established, to legal proceedings against the persons responsible for these acts,” government spokesperson Jean-Emmanuel Ouedraogo said in a statement issued Thursday. “There will be no impunity for the proven perpetrators of human rights violations in Burkina Faso.”
The announcement was in response to calls from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to investigate the video, which circulated on chat groups starting in mid-February.
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The Associated Press this month published its own findings about the video. AP’s investigation determined that Burkina Faso’s security forces killed the children in a military base outside the town of Ouahigouya. Relatives of one of the boys, 16-year-old Adama, said he had come from feeding cows when security forces detained and later killed him.
Jihadi fighters linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have waged a violent insurgency in Burkina Faso for seven years. The violence has killed thousands of people, displaced some 2 million, and destabilized and divided the once peaceful country, leading to two coups last year.
A video allegedly depicting Burkinabè security forces extrajudicially killing seven children has led to an internal investigation into human rights abuses. (AP Photo, File)
Since Capt. Ibrahim Traore seized power in September during the second coup, extrajudicial killings of civilians have increased and civic freedoms have shrunk, according to rights groups and residents.
The government’s pledge to bring perpetrators to justice marked a stark shift from its initial response to the killings captured in the video.
At the time of the AP investigation’s…