Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders Annual Report 2002 - Burkina Faso

Pressure on UIDH and MBDHP16

The 1995 headquarters agreement between the Burkinabe government and the Inter-African Union for Human Rights (UIDH) was challenged in 1999, and the situation has not changed since.

Furthermore, magistrates who are members of the Burkinabe Movement for Human and Peoples' Rights (Mouvement burkinabé des droits de l'Homme et des peuples – MBDHP) and were on leave of office, have still not had their careers revalidated. Examples are Mr. Halidou Ouédraogo, Chairman of the MBDHP and the UIDH, and Mr. Christophe Compaoré, an MBDHP officer and secretary of the UIDH. Mr. Ouédraogo is coming to the end of his period of detachment, the Justice minister having told him to either return to his post, resign or take early retirement. The African Commission of Human and Peoples' Rights had issued a statement in late 2000, asking the Burkinabe authorities to settle these temporary leave and reclassification questions rapidly.

In early 2002 the authorities, Security Minister Djibril Bassolet in particular, ran a smear campaign and issued threats against Mr. Ouédraogo and Mr. Chrysogone Zougmore, General Secretary of the MBDHP, after the MBDHP's annual public conference at the American Cultural Centre, where Mr. Zougmore denounced the perpetration of at least 106 extra-judicial killings in November and December 2001.

In a tense political situation, MBDHP members are being intimidated by telephone calls, messages to their families, patrols around their homes. Sometimes they are questioned by the police. Mr. Ouédraogo, for example, was called in for questioning on 18th December 2002 following his public statements on radio about the one-month prison sentence on Bertrand Meda, chairman of the Burkina Faso National Students' Association (ANEB), and ANEB members Yacouba Bologho and Pierre Wend Kouni Zagré. The three were arrested in November, along with three other people after a students' general meeting about the doubling of college fees.


[Refworld note: This report as posted on the FIDH website (www.fidh.org) was in pdf format with country chapters run together by region. Footnote numbers have been retained here, so do not necessarily begin at 1.]

16. See Annual Report 2001.

Disclaimer:

This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.