“The Burkina Faso authorities should anchor their counter-insurgency strategy in protecting civilians, respecting human rights and providing accountability for abuses.” “Executions and disappearances by Burkina Faso’s army are not only war crimes, but they breed resentment among targeted populations that fuel recruitment to armed groups,” said Carine Kaneza Nantulya, deputy Africa director at HRW. HRW said all the abuses it had documented involved people from the pastoralist Fulani ethnic group and quoted victims saying they were targeted because soldiers believed they supported al-Qaida and Islamic State-linked militant groups. In a report published on Thursday, HRW said it had spoken to witnesses of three incidents in which nine men were killed and 18 others disappeared in the Séno region since February. Some people told HRW they had been accused of being allied to the militants simply because they had not abandoned their villages in the conflict zones. Human Rights Watch said this week that the army had killed and abducted, or “disappeared”, people during raids on villages, often checking their victims’ identity cards before they were attacked. According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (Acled), 1,694 civilians have been killed over the past year by the army and Islamist militants and the number soared between April and June, after a “general mobilisation” was announced to fight a more aggressive battle against the jihadists.
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