Burkina Faso army heads for capital to disarm coup leaders

Military commanders in Burkina Faso said on Monday that the West African nation’s armed forces were converging on the capital Ouagadougou to disarm the elite presidential guard, which staged a coup against the government last week.

Burkina Faso had been preparing for polls on Oct. 11 meant to restore democracy following last year’s overthrow of longtime leader Blaise Compaore when the 1,200-member unit took the interim president and several cabinet ministers hostage on Wednesday.

The statement, signed by several military chiefs, said the regular armed forces were seeking the surrender of the presidential guard, known as the RSP, “without bloodshed”.

“We ask them to immediately lay down their arms and go to Camp Sangoule Lamizana,” read the statement, referring to a barracks in Ouagadougou. “They and their families will be protected.”

Coup leader General Gilbert Diendere, Compaore’s former spy chief and right-hand man, reacted in a statement, warning against what he said was the risk of “chaos, civil war, and massive human rights violations”.

In the statement, distributed to journalists ahead of its broadcast on state-owned television, he said he would free Prime Minister Yacouba Isaac Zida as a sign of goodwill to regional mediators.

Witnesses in the towns of Dedougou, Fada N’Gourma, Kaya, Ouahigouya, Koudougou and the second-largest city, Bobo-Dioulasso, saw soldiers on Monday afternoon heading in the direction of Ouagadougou aboard tanks, trucks and pick-ups, surrounded by cheering crowds.

“I saw the second column leave Bobo-Dioulasso. People came out to accompany the soldiers to the edge of town. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said resident Moussa Traore.

Soldiers from the presidential guard were largely absent from Ouagadougou’s streets for the first time since Wednesday’s coup, and it was not clear where Diendere was.

FAILED MEDIATION

“There’s a potential civil conflict there now,” said Rinaldo Depagne, West Africa project director for the International Crisis Group. “If (Diendere) stays, the people will fight him.”

Mediators from the West African bloc ECOWAS had on Sunday announced a draft agreement aimed at ending the crisis that was to be presented to regional heads of state at a summit in Nigeria on Tuesday.

French President Francois Hollande said on Sunday that he backed ECOWAS’s efforts and issued a stern warning to anyone tempted to reject the mediation effort in the former French colony.

French ambassador Gilles Thibault issued a tweet on Monday reading: “I solemnly ask all the Burkinabe people to show restraint and talk. Blood must not flow.”

However, the ECOWAS proposal, which included an amnesty for the coup leaders, was swiftly rejected by civil society and opposition politicians, who said they had not been informed of the document’s contents before they were announced.

And in his first public statement since he was ousted, interim president Michel Kafando also rejected the proposal.

Kafando said he remained under house arrest and told French RFI radio: “I was not associated with the negotiations at Hotel Laico … It does not take into account the interests of the Burkinabe people.”

Demonstrators protesting against the ECOWAS deal erected barricades and burned tyres in several neighbourhoods across Ouagadougou on Monday, and large protests also took place in several other towns.

As most of the capital’s residents abandoned the streets and sought refuge at home upon hearing news of the approaching troops, young men opposed to the coup remained at improvised roadblocks waiting for the soldiers’ arrival.

“We don’t agree with what ECOWAS decided,” said protester Ahmed Zio in the Zone One neighbourhood. “We don’t want an amnesty for the general and his putschists. They are terrorists. We don’t want to hear about the RSP any more.” (Additional reporting by Joe Penney in Ouagadougou and Emma Farge and Makini Brice in Dakar; Writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

 

Reuters