Burkina gold-site victims were civilians, HRW says

Human Rights Watch says a new investigation shows that an al-Qaeda-linked armed group killed at least 24 civilians at an artisanal gold-mining site in northern Burkina Faso in September, contradicting the group’s claim that the dead were militia fighters.

The group, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, known as JNIM, attacked the site near the village of Soubo, in Yatenga province, on 1 September, HRW said on 4 November. More than 60 fighters on motorbikes opened fire on people sleeping and working there and on those trying to flee, killing 24 and wounding at least 20, the organisation said. They burned hundreds of shelters, motorbikes and tools. HRW said a further three civilians, including a five-year-old boy, were killed on 5 September by an explosion on a dirt track near the village of Mera.

Who the victims were

The two sides disagree. In a 30 September reply to a letter from HRW, JNIM’s Sharia Committee acknowledged that its forces attacked Soubo but said the victims were members of the Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland, a government-allied militia, “and not civilians”, according to HRW. Witnesses told the rights group that soldiers and militia members were neither present during the attack nor stationed at the site, though they sometimes patrolled nearby.

HRW said it interviewed 15 people remotely, including four witnesses to the Soubo attack, and reviewed a list from residents naming 24 victims. It described all of them as civilians: 21 men aged 27 to 45 and three women. Satellite fire data and four geolocated videos corroborate the destruction at the site, HRW said; the identity of the dead rests on the witnesses and the residents’ list. The release does not include a response from the Burkinabè government.

A 37-year-old restaurant owner told HRW that fighters went from shed to shed shooting, killed two of her customers in front of her and set fire to her restaurant. One fighter wanted to kill her, she said, but another told him to let her go because she was a woman. “Tell your husbands not to come here any more,” she recalled being told. “These places are for us.”

A mine that was supposed to be closed

The site should not have been working. In June, a government decree suspended artisanal mining in the surrounding Ouahigouya department from 1 July to 30 September, citing the risk of collapses in the rainy season, HRW said. Residents told the organisation that around 1,000 people, mostly miners but also traders, small restaurant owners and children, were at the site that night, because officials never came to enforce the suspension.

HRW says gold sites are a lucrative source of income for JNIM, which it says taxes and extorts mining communities to raise money, recruit fighters and extend its control of territory.

The road explosion

On 5 September, around 9:30 a.m., an explosion killed a 40-year-old driver, a 65-year-old woman and a five-year-old boy travelling on a motorbike near Mera, HRW said. Residents told the organisation that JNIM had planted an improvised explosive device on the track. HRW said it could not independently determine what type of device it was or how it was set off.

Abuses by state forces

HRW has separately documented abuses by the Burkinabè army and allied militias against civilians, particularly Fulani communities they accuse of backing Islamist armed groups. The latest findings concern JNIM. HRW said the attacks violated international humanitarian law and could amount to war crimes; no court has ruled. It called on the authorities to strengthen protection for threatened communities, investigate abuses and prosecute those responsible, and on JNIM to stop attacking civilians.