Coup d’etat in Burkina Faso: the country suspended from ECOWAS – Le Monde

Burkina Faso, where Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba took power on Monday, was suspended on Friday January 28 from the Community of West African States (ECOWAS) after a virtual summit of this organization which has not yet decided on other sanctions.

The virtual summit, which lasted about three hours, also decided to send a mission to Ouagadougou on Saturday by the chiefs of staff of the ECOWAS armies, which will be followed on Monday by a ministerial mission.

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ECOWAS, which has demanded the release of the ousted President, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, placed under house arrest, as well as the other officials arrested, will hold a new summit on February 3 in Accra, this time in the presence of the Heads of State of the region. Participants will study the record of these missions to decide whether or not to impose further sanctions, as he did for Mali and Guinea, where the military also took power.

” Zero tolerance “

“Every time you have a coup, it’s a democratic setback for the country and the region” and “ECOWAS’s response has always been very firm and very consistent, it’s zero tolerance”, said Jean-Claude Kassi Brou, President of the ECOWAS Commission, in an interview with Agence France-Presse.

“It is also an international requirement”, added Jean-Claude Kassi Brou, considering that “the period of the coups of the 1970s is over”. According to the principles of ECOWAS, “the army must be republican and apolitical”.

He recalled that his organization was “always willing to accompany” the countries where putschists have taken power, “to go into a process of returning to constitutional order”.

“Legitimate doubts” about the coup

On Thursday evening, in his first address since taking power on Monday, Burkina’s new strongman, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, told national television that his country had “more than ever needs its partners”.

saying understand the “legitimate doubts” aroused by the coup, he assured that Burkina ” continue to[it] to respect international commitments, in particular with regard to respect for human rights”, specifying that the independence of the judiciary would also be “insured”.

Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba also pledged “back to a normal constitutional life”, “when the conditions are met”, without specifying an agenda.

Spiral of violence

In the wake of Mali and Niger, Burkina Faso is caught in a spiral of violence attributed to armed jihadist groups, affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, which have killed more than 2,000 people and forced at least 1 .5 million people to flee their homes.

The population criticized in particular the ousted president, Roch March Christian Kaboré, for not having succeeded in stemming the deterioration in security since 2015, particularly in the north and east of the country.

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Since taking power, Mr. Damiba has consulted the overthrown ministers as well as the unions. Several organizations seem inclined to work with him. “We have an interest in seeing this army succeed in stabilizing the country”, affirms the Sauvons le Burkina Faso association, which ardently demanded the resignation of Mr. Kaboré.

Several opposition parties to Mr. Kaboré, including the most important, the Congress for Democracy and Progress (CDP) close to Blaise Compaoré – ex-president chased by the street in 2014 after twenty-seven years in power – also marked “their availability to appreciate the vision that will be submitted to them” by the junta.

Roland Bayala, spokesman for the Coalition of African Patriots of Burkina Faso (COPA / BF) which supports the putsch and had called for demonstrations against the passage of a French military convoy in the country in November, asked ECOWAS “to pay attention to its sanctions against the people of Burkina Faso”, who does not go “let go”.

The question of Mr. Kaboré’s future should also arise soon. Under house arrest, he is in good health, according to several sources, and has a doctor at his disposal.

The World with AFP