The doctor was not given a specific time or place to report for duty in the directive, A few days later, on September 13, Loure was stopped by two armed men as he was passing between operating rooms at a hospital in Ouagadougou’s capital. They then pushed him into a 4×4 and took him to a military base close to Kaya in the north.
Loure, 38, had expressed disapproval of the bloodshed associated with Burkina Faso’s nearly ten-year battle against Islamist rebels within the West African nation.
His kidnapping garnered attention in the local media, contributing to a flurry of stories and declarations from civil society about the forced disappearance of scores of activists, journalists, rights advocates, military personnel, and other opponents of Burkina Faso’s military administration over the previous fifteen months.
Citing victims and civil society organizations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have accused Burkina’s junta of kidnapping and conscripting some of its critics.Authorities have not publicly addressed the reports, and the junta has not responded to demands for comment on this subject.
Loure claimed he was conscripted at the same time as eight other activists and government critics in the Kaya camp. He was freed after three months of forced military service.
He declared, “They want to silence us,” in a March phone conversation. “These conscriptions are arbitrary and punitive.”
19 kidnappings have been confirmed since March 2023 based on interviews with family, coworkers, civil society organizations, and freed victims. Using remarks made in public by family members, civil society organizations, and political parties, it discovered four more.
The majority of those kidnapped people are still missing.
After their release, four victims talked and claimed that armed police or military personnel had kidnapped them from their place of employment or the street. They claimed that their kidnappers were either guys dressed in civilian clothes or in Burkina Faso army uniforms, who claimed to be police or military officers.
The four victims gave an account of a brutal system of coercion that included torture and forced military duty.
“AUTHORITARIAN DRIFT”
According to three analysts, Ibrahim Traore, the chairman of the junta, has been attempting to muzzle his critics ever since taking over in a second coup in September 2022 and promising to bring security back. This includes the kidnappings.
According to International Crisis Group expert on the Sahel, Mathieu Pellerin, “the regime’s authoritarian drift is clear.” According to him, the government’s position was becoming more “fragile” and it was taking a more firm stand against internal critics.
“It’s the flip-side of its failure to restore security,” he stated.
According to three analysts and humanitarian organizations, Burkina Faso’s army has only made small progress in spite of spending millions of euros on the conflict and augmenting its numbers with thousands of voluntary auxiliary known as VDPs.
Anger at the government’s inability to protect citizens from the insurgency led to the first military coup in January 2022, which overthrew President Roch Kabore, and the overthrow of Traore’s predecessor eight months later.
Over 6,500 civilian deaths have occurred in Burkina since the beginning of 2020, according to statistics from the Armed Conflict Location & Event statistics (ACLED), a global repository for information on political violence. More than half passed away within the present administration.
Attacks on suspected enemy-collaborating villages and the execution of civilians, including women and children, are attributed to both sides. Reports that soldiers have killed civilians have been refuted by authorities.
The junta shut down a number of international media outlets earlier this year for publishing a Human Rights Watch report that charged the army with extrajudicial killings.
SUMMARY OF CRITICS
Boukare Ouedraogo, the president of a Kaya civil society organization and a visually impaired person, was the first to be drafted into the junta in March 2023.
At a news conference that same month, Ouedraogo, 32, expressed his disappointment with Traore. He complained about the shortage of drinking water and security after rebels demolished a water tower.
A coworker who attended the conference, Moussa Sawadogo, stated that five days later, Traore paid Kaya a visit, called Ouedraogo, and issued a warrant for his arrest.
Following Ouedraogo’s arrest, Traore made a speech in which he claimed, without naming anyone, that he had ordered the conscription of a civilian for having revealed confidential information that led to a jihadist assault. He declared that “all those incapable of defending the homeland” will receive the same treatment.
For over two weeks, Ouedraogo was nowhere to be found. Then a video of him praising the Burkinabe army while wearing a military outfit and holding a firearm appeared.
President Blaise Compaore, who had ruled Burkina Faso for almost thirty years, was overthrown in 2014 by protests organized by Ousmane Lankoande of the Balai Citoyen, a well-known citizens movement. “It marked the start of a trend,” Lankoande stated.
Lankoande remarked, “We used to feel so hopeful about the future,” summarizing the atmosphere following the 2014 revolt that restored civil liberties. “Today that freedom has been stolen.”
The junta enacted an emergency order in April 2023, shortly after Ouedraogo’s imprisonment, allowing authorities to conscript citizens who were older than 18.
The edict has only been used selectively by the junta, which has avoided mass conscription in favor of enlisting volunteers to fight the insurgency even after it became operative.
By the end of September 2023, up to 60,000 volunteers had been recruited, according to a report by the International Crisis Group that included an interview with the commander of the volunteer brigade. The report mentioned further unofficial estimates that put the number closer to thirty thousand.
Following the order, images and videos of prominent critics of Traore who went missing—some dressed in military fatigues—began making the rounds on social media.
Among them were Loure, ex-foreign minister and opposition politician Ablasse Ouedraogo, and well-known rights advocate Daouda Diallo.
Their facial traits allowed for easy identification, but they were unable to verify the time or place of the footage’s capture.
It seemed as though Ouedraogo, 70, and Diallo, 41, were dressed in military garb from Burkina Faso. In the pictures, Loure was dressed in khaki and was shown with a rifle next to a police sign.
After being kidnapped in December, Diallo and Ouedraogo were released in March. A request for comment from Ouedraogo was not answered, and Diallo declined.
ALLEGATIONS OF TORTURE
Five other conscripted activists were already in the military camp in Kaya when Loure arrived in September, and three more were added during his five-week time there, he said.
Citing concerns about retaliation, three of the activists spoke after their release from the military on the condition that they remain anonymous. Two of them were fifty-year-old supporters of Kabore, and one was a youthful militant.
The trio said that they were tortured for days in an ex-ministerial villa located in the Ouaga 2000 neighborhood of Ouagadougou by persons dressed in military uniforms prior to their arrival in Kaya.
During their visit, they encountered other inmates, some of whom had serious wounds. The specifics of their accounts could not be independently verified.
The villa’s presence was confirmed by an analyst and an unnamed former police officer. When questioned about the villa, the junta remained silent.
The teenage activist broke down in tears as she described how troops covered his face with garbage bags and placed his mouth and nose under an open faucet.
The two older guys, who had been kidnapped together, had told of being beaten and having salt applied to wounds on their backs by their kidnappers.
All of them were charged with scheming to topple the junta and conspiring against the state during torture sessions.
Upon arriving at the Kaya base, they shared a filthy, rodent-infested storage with other troops, where they slept on worn-out mats with mosquito netting over them.
They were designed to wash dishes, handle laundry, and clean toilets. Some were mistreated and shot at by soldiers. They said they endured daily humiliation and strenuous sports drills that were difficult for the older conscripts to follow.
One said, “They treated us like animals.”
According to the report, Captain Emmanuel Gnoumou, the head of the camp, oversaw extended whippings upon arrival and other beating sessions, which he occasionally recorded. Gnoumou could not be reached by Reuters for comment.
All four indicated they had only received basic firearms training when questioned about their military training. Requests for comments from the junta were met with silence.
They alleged that Loure and the young activist were deployed to the front lines following a few weeks of training. In addition to being a doctor, Loure was an activist who deployed for three weeks with a regiment of VDPs.
The activist claimed that although his squad did not suffer any losses, there were two attacks during this time, one targeted directly at their camp and the other at a nearby community.
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