RIGHTS-BURKINA FASO: Wave of Protests Follows Journalist’s Death

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Brahima Ouedraogo and Robert Koundoumie

OUAGADOUGOU, Jan 10 1999 (IPS) - Labour unions, students and human rights groups have been protesting for about a month now against the suspected murder of the director of a weekly that is often critical of the government and against what would appear to be a culture of impunity in the West African nation.

The protesters have been calling on the authorities to throw some light on the death of ‘L’Independant’ director Norbert Zongo (49) and three other persons. The four were found dead in Zongo’s car on Dec. 13 on a roadside some 100 km from Ouagadougou.

Zongo’s death was strongly condemned especially since he was investigating the death of the driver of Francois Compaore, the younger brother of President Blaise Compaore. Francois Compaore had reportedly accused his driver, David Ouedraogo, of stealing 30 million CFA francs (just under 55,000 dollars).

Ouedraogo, who denied the charge, allegedly died while being interrogated in a secret place, but his parents did not receive the corpse nor any information as to where he was buried. Francois Compaore was charged with murder and with hiding the corpse, but he failed to appear in court.

On Jan. 3, hundreds of unionists, human rights activists, students and members of opposition parties staged a demonstration against impunity and called for the suspicious death of Zongo to be clarified.

The demonstrators, whose organisations belong to the ‘Collectif des organisations democratiques de masse et des partis politiques’, an umbrella linking grassroot, rights, labour, political and interest groups, gathered at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception here. However, they were dispersed by police armed with batons and tear- gas grenades.

“We thought the church could be the final refuge for anyone,” said an indignant sexuagenarian. He said that as far as he knew, it was the first time a place of worship had been violated by the security forces in Burkina’s history.

The protesters were to have gone to the Labour Exchange but policemen cordoned off the building after the minister of territorial administration, Boly Yero, declared the demonstration illegal, probably for fear of a repitition of riots that occurred in various towns on the day after Zongo’s death.

The Collectif reacted by declaring a 72-hour general strike on Jan. 4-6 which, according to observers here, was followed throughout the country. In the capital, schools were closed, as was the University of Ouagadougou. The main medical centre here, the Yalgado Ouedraogo Hospital, was almost crippled, with interns taking care of more than 80 percent of its operations.

According to Halidou Ouedraogo, president of the ‘Mouvement burkinabe des droits de l’Homme et des peuples’ (MBDHP – the local human rights movement) three professors of medicine were arrested. Ouedraogo charged that the detainees were abused. “Many of the interrogations were done in an inhuman fashion: people were severely beaten, made to kneel in the sun, and stripped to their underwear,” Ouedraogo said.

Many human rights activists were arrested throughout the country, according to Ouedraogo, who said that police cracked down hard on demonstrations in many towns, including Toma in the northeast where four people suffered gunshot wounds. Tension reigns in Koudougou, Zongo’s hometown, where people reacted to his killing by torching buildings and cars, prompting the authorities to impose a curfew soon after the murder.

Members of the security forces have been deployed around the clock throughout Ouagadougou. Ouedraogo described it as a state of siege.

The early January demonstrations and general strike came on the heels of a report that Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF – Reporters without Borders) issued after a five-day investigation it did into Zongo’s death. The Paris-based press freedom watchdog reported that the precise cause of Norbert Zongo’s death could only be determined after additional ballistic examinations and an autopsy on the body “but everything points towards ruling out the idea of an accident”.

Based on the medical report, the driver’s face had been wounded with a sharp object and the bottom part of each of the other three corpses had been separated from the top. RSF Secretary General Robert Menard said at a press conference that the idea that this “could have been the work of an incendiary grenade is not to be ruled out”

Menard noted that no progress had been made with regard to clarifying the deaths. “The police investigation has been carried out,” he said, “no witnesses have been heard, no investigation has been done in the area 20 days after the death, and all these delays will harm the international inquiry.”

“The longer you wait, the more clues you lose,” he added.

The MBDHP, which also did an inquiry into the incident, came up with conclusions similar to the RSF’s. “Everything leads us to believe that it was not an accident because the vehicle did not hit anything nor did it fall,” it said. “It didn’t even leave the road. Nor were there any brake marks. We have serious reason to believe that it was rather a hateful crime that was apparently well prepared and carried out.”

Most Burkinabe set little store by an official investigation that has not even started. On Dec. 18, the government announced that an independent investigating commission made up of 14 persons, including four selected by the state, would be set up to find out who committed the crime. Many organisations declined an offer to have representatives on the body saying that they preferred to work in a truly independent commission so as not to come under any pressure from the government.

In a Dec. 31 message to the nation, President Blaise Compaore stressed that “no stone will be left unturned to shed some light on this act which brings the question of safety and violence to the forefront of everyone’s preoccupations, particularly the government’s ….”