The former Burkinabè president, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré has been under house arrest for two months since the coup that brought the military to power.
There are growing calls for his release by the Burkinabè people. Sources close to the former president say he is not being held in fixed residence but moved around regularly under the guard of armed men.
At the beginning the junta had said it was for security reasons. Alassane Bala Sakandé president of the former majority party MPP, says, “Today only his doctor, his aides, his children and his wife can see him for an hour. What did he do to deserve this?”. A declaration that led to Sakandé’s arrest.
In Ouagadougou, opinions differ on the subject.
“We don’t see why we keep him there? We don’t hear anything from him. Why not release him? Since they took power, we haven’t seen any change,” said a resident. Another resident opposed to Kaboré’s house arrest said “the Junta must ensure his safety. They must allow his doctor to see him regularly to check his health because if something bad happens to him, they will be responsible”.
Fear of revelations?
More and more voices from political, customary and religious authorities, civil society actors and other citizens, are calling his release.
In the opinion of Alexandre Sankara, former deputy and vice-president of the United Progressives for Renewal, his imprisonment is so that he cannot share information that would disturb many people. “The argument of his own security put forward to justify his detention does not hold water. The real reasons in my opinion are to be sought elsewhere. I rather think that the new strong men want to establish their power before taking the risk of freeing President Kaboré. Freed, he could make revelations that could worry the new regime, particularly on the true conditions of his fall, the real motivations for his surrender, on the involvement, role or responsibility of certain current actors foe the failures in the fight against insecurity, like the Inata dossier.”
The regime in place could, according to various sources, negotiate with Roch Marc Christian in order to obtain his silence once free.
Translated from Deutche Welle’s French service by Allafrica’s Michael Tantoh