Burkina Faso machete video prompts investigation

[Pelican Press 0]

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Burkina Faso machete video prompts investigation

Burkina Faso’s armed forces say they are investigating a gruesome video that purports to show military volunteers hacking apart a ***** body with machetes, while gloating to the camera.

Work is under way to verify the video and the people shown in it “so that they can be held accountable for their actions, if the facts are proven,” the general staff said in a statement.

The West ******** nation is ruled by the military, who seized power almost three years ago promising to end the chronic insecurity that has forced two million people from their homes.

But efforts to defeat armed groups and Islamist fighters have so far *******,

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.

The video in question began circulating at the weekend.

It shows a corpse whose head and arms have been severed, and the stomach cut open.

“We beat them,” one of the men in the video shouts in Burkina Faso’s Dioula language. “It will all end this year. May **** bless the VDP,” shouts another.

VDP is short for the Volunteers for the Defence of the Fatherland.

Burkina Faso has a tradition of armed community militias for whom the government created an official role in 2020,

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Some of the men in the video are wearing military fatigues, but otherwise there is no indication of their names, nor where or when the incident happened.

It is not the first time footage of alleged atrocities by government-affiliated fighters have circulated online.

Back in July, videos appeared on social media showing suspected soldiers and volunteers mutilating ***** bodies, which Burkina Faso’s army publicly condemned.

The county’s armed forces have been accused of atrocities and extrajudicial killings.

According to Human Rights Watch,

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– in a single day earlier this year.

The authorities did not comment on that report.

This latest video has provoked outrage, prompting Burkina Faso’s military general staff to insist it has the nation’s best interests at heart.

In its statement on Sunday, it said: “All operations to reconquer the national territory are conducted with the greatest respect for human rights.”

Burkina Faso is in West *******’s Sahel region, which is considered the new global epicentre of the Islamic State group and is also home to numerous others jihadist groups.

A large deployment of Russian troops arrived in the country in January in a sign of deepening ties, a year after French troops fighting insurgents were kicked out of the country.

The junta-led Sahelian nations of Burkina, Mali and ****** have all turned to Russia for support in recent years in deals that have ******* to improve security and in some cases

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At the weekend, Burkina Faso’s foreign minister

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than the former colonial power France.

As power and influence slips away from the Sahel nations’ traditional Western allies, the ********* Union’s envoy to the region has vowed: “We have to continue to stay by their side.

“There is a reconfiguration of the region which has an impact on all of western ******* and the rest of *******.”

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