Burkina Faso’s military regime has rejected “baseless accusations” of the execution in February of at least 223 civilians by the army in the north of the country, made in a report by the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Last week, HRW accused Burkina Faso’s armed forces, at war with armed jihadist groups for nearly a decade, of “summarily executing 223 civilians, including at least 56 children,” in raids on two villages in the north. Sahel country on February 25.

“The government of Burkina Faso strongly rejects and condemns” these “baseless accusations,” Communications Minister Rimtalba Jean-Emmanuel Ouedraogo said in a press release over the weekend.

“The killings in Nodin and Soro are under judicial investigation,” he continued, expressing his astonishment that “in the midst of the investigation” to “find out the facts and identify the perpetrators, HRW was able, with its boundless imagination, to identify the ‘culprits’ and make public its verdict”.

According to the statement, the “orchestrated media campaign around these accusations shows the unacknowledged intention of its authors to defame our forces who are fighting in the field of honor, at the risk of their lives, to restore security to the territory and to protection of citizens (…) against terrorist attacks”.

According to the government representative, “all accusations of violations” of human rights in the context of “the fight against terrorism” are “systematically investigated” by both the government and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Burkina Faso, ruled by the military after the 2021 coup, suspended for two weeks the broadcast of foreign media content, notably the BBC, Voice of America (VoA), TV5 Monde and various international media news sites (the Deutsche Welle, Le Monde, Ouest-France, The Guardian etc.), because they referred to the non-governmental organization’s report.

The suspension of the broadcast of the content of these foreign media follows restrictions, temporary or permanent, imposed on several others, especially French-language ones, after Captain Ibrahim Traore took power in September 2022.

Burkina Faso has been faced since 2015 with attacks by jihadist organizations that pledge allegiance to either Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. The action of the jihadists and the retaliatory actions of the army and auxiliary forces have claimed the lives of some 20,000 people and forcibly displaced more than two million civilians.