This was a headline in the daily paper L’Observateur of Burkina Faso on Tuesday 24th of June 2008. We report it here because we agree with the author that “a large scale massacre of the Fulani people” has become a reality. We regret just one thing: the tone is sometimes too polemic, and this at a time when we must bring together as many people as possible to build “a nation where all the various communities can live together in harmony.”

“We have the pleasure of informing you that tomorrow all of our family will be killed.” This was the catch phrase used as a title by Philip Gourvith for his book on the Rwanda genocide. But these words could be spoken by any member of the Fulani ethnic group (Peul in French), given the mechanics of a killing machine which has now been set in motion to slowly but surely  carry out  ethnic massacres in Burkina Faso. “A Fulani is always a Fulani” were the words of Nahité Palé, the brother of a farmer in Pekoura, who died in a clash with a Fulani on May 24^th. He explained that this was why he had gone to a Fulani family and killed a sixty year old and a teenager – two poor and innocent people who had nothing to do with the one involved in the clash. They just happened to belong to the same ethnic group – Fulani, like the man who killed the farmer.

This was sufficient justification for Nahité Palé to kill them.  “A Fulani is always a Fulani” was the password among the death squadrons set up by Perkoura farmers after the killing, as they started out on their lethal crusade. They executed five Fulani women cold-bloodedly to protest against the police detention of members of their family. In Bouroum Bouroum another group assassinated four Fulani. One of the bodies was encased in a termite hive, as is done with a snake.

In Darkoura another group killed two Fulani. One was an old man of sixty and his body was thrown into an abandoned well. The killings were followed by breaking into homes, robbing and raping. In all,  fifteen men lost their lives only because they were Fulani, not counting all those who disappeared and whose bodies might also have been buried in termite hives, their houses being burnt, their belongings stolen and their cattle herds diminished. And why? Simply because they were of the same ethnic group as the man who killed Kpièwènami Palé. “A Fulani is always a Fulani” that is the mortal equation, which seems to serve as a justification for the annual man hunts organised all over Burkina Faso. Last year in Gogo, three people were killed and thousands were displaced, belongings were scattered around, all in revenge for the death of a farmer. Then there was the pogrom of Mangodara near the Cascades and another one in Baléré in the eastern part of the country. Again the pretext given was that “a Fulani is always a Fulani”. Therefore an entire community had to pay for a crime committed by one single individual and innocent people were slain offhand.

But the Burkinabè prefer hiding these pogroms by using subtle evasive rhetoric, they persist in talking about “disputes between farmers and herders” although they know fully well that the massacres were sparked off essentially for ethnic reasons and not on the grounds of   professional activities. They refer to “appeasement” to excuse the negligence of the judiciary and to  “reconciliation” in order to absolve the killers … And the press and the civil society, in repeating such falsified truths, become themselves guilty of the law of silence, the omertà surrounding the recurrent massacres of the Fulani.

We do not deny the existence of conflicts between farmers and cattle herders. But at present their disputes have been taken as a pretext for the assault of an ethnic group and not specifically of a profession. It is the bad management of such conflicts by the politicians that have then spawned ethnical cleansing. In denying the rule of law and in replacing legal action by sterile reconciliation ceremonials, the leaders of the 4th Republic have (unwittingly?) given the killers free reins to proceed with their wrongdoing. Hence these massacres swell each year. Now they have become a monster with a thousand heads, like a hydra surging before our eyes. Unfortunately there is no Hercules that Burkina can call upon to decapitate these heads.

We know that such conflicts have occurred at all times. There have always been rows between those who work the land and those who raise cattle.  Ordinary expressions of racism between ethnic groups have always existed, each group building its specific identity to distinguish itself from others. The cultural differences of the Other are considered a disability. Barbarian is not a Greek invention.

Each ethnic group is a Barbarian to the other. The Bobo is said to be a drinker, the Mossi a thief, the Gouronsi  of slack morality, the Bissa  an outcast and the Fulani  a monkey. It is remarkable that the Fulani, in this contest to downscale the value of the Other, is the only one to lose his very humanity in the process. Thus, for the others the Fulani is not a human, an equal who also has his flaws, but he is simply expelled from the human race. This goes to show that the Fulani is ostracised by others,  because his morphology is supposedly different and his pastoralist culture is the opposite of the sedentary culture of the others.

Let it be remembered that all ethnic cleansings begin by the negation of the humanity of a given group: the Tutsi were beetles to the Hutu, the Jews were rats to the German Nazi. The Fulani, incidentally, are the only ones deprived of an individual identity and without a professional role in the eyes of the majority of the Burkinabè. They are simply referred to as “Poulo”.  Such ordinary racism is considered quite convenient: Because for Nahité Palé as for  the majority of the Burkinabè “A Fulani is a Fulani”. It is these daily expressions of racism that lay the basis for the contempt with which the majority of the Burkinabè view the seasonal outbursts of massacres of the Fulani.

The Fulani are more liable to segregation than any other group in Burkina Faso. Therefore the first manifestations of a pogrom should be reported and condemned by politicians and the civil society.  But all remain silent. As if not to name the massacres would suffice to make them non existent.  Neither the press – usually so avid for all that reeks of the macabre, but suddenly terribly prude – nor the human rights movements, the opposition, the intellectuals and even less the Government have said a word.

All of the great and the good, capable of making a wig from a single strand of hair, remain amazingly silent. Thus the civil society and in particular the MBDHP (Human Rights Movement of Burkina Faso) and the GERDDES(Research and Study Group on Democracy and Economic and Social Development), generally so quick to protest against any violation of the rights of citizens, remain strangely silent when Fulani are quartered by machete. Perhaps the Fulani are not considered humans by these two organisations. And since neither the MBDHP, nor the GERDDES have a PA division of their own (Animal Protection) the Fulani will be kept waiting. What about our “intellectuals”? Those who submerge the papers with torrential floods of “thoughts about the state of the society”? Radio silence.  

These graphomaniacs, erroneously called “intellectuals” because they avail themselves of this title without taking on the responsibilities that go with it, write but do not speak. Oblivious of the fact that the term “intellectual” was coined to indicate men of letters who condemned the anti-Semite kabala contrived against Captain Dreyfus. But not for those who kept silent or those who howled with the wolves of segregation. Even the Burkinabè novelist ,who took part in the Fest’Africa caravan, after having lived in Rwanda in 1998 following the genocide, in order to write because “Memories oblige” and who subsequently became a Human Rights Minister, has said nothing and done nothing about all these massacres. It would apparently take the killing of 10 000 people a day, as in Rwanda, to deserve the Minister’s attention.

As for the supreme power, the government, its stance is obvious. It has brandished social peace as its unique triumph during the two decades it has ruled the country. The massacre is the negation of that much self-applauded peace. It prefers ignoring the massacre -  a blemish on the peaceful image of the country it likes to project to the international community. Thus the compassion of Burkina manifests itself mainly towards its neighbours.

Towards Mali refugees for example. A full casting of Touareg refugees (the legal state of which is denied by the Government in Bamako) was rallied to fill the  Fourth-of-August Stadium for the cameras. At the same time a real tragedy takes place on its soil. One might be inclined to think that the spectacle of charity towards war refugees might attract the attention of donors and will have the High Commissioner for Refugees and the Red Cross drop their dollars in the Government’s purse, whereas the massacre of their own Fulani requires a genuine policy of land ownership and a free judiciary system -  something which apparently is beyond the strength of  the State. It is now in the throes of rising living costs and incapable of a political vision of substance. This is why the Government of Mr Tertius turns its eyes elsewhere, while Fulani are being chopped to pieces on its territory.

I am too pessimistic, you may say. Why then am I writing? I am a citizen of Burkina, and first and foremost a human being. I do not wish to see this country opening up a Pandora’s box (of division) which will endanger national unity: I want to see a country where all  communities live together in harmony and I expect it to protect and help all its citizens. When you witness the killing of women, children and the elderly, guilty only of belonging to a particular ethnic group, it is hard to remain indifferent. To have to die because “a Fulani is always a Fulani” is unacceptable. To any human.  

I also write so that no one will be able to say one day that they were unaware of what the Fulani are going through in this country. We are heading, slowly but surely, towards a guilty collective silence and therefore also certainly towards a large scale massacre of the Fulani people. A genocide. That is the proper word. A genocide of the Fulani. Do not be surprised then, if one of these days a Fulani child takes your hand and tells you:” We have the pleasure of informing you that tomorrow all of our family will be killed.” Because if things remain unchanged, if our politicians continue to hinder the rule of law for the sake of appeasement and if we continue to cover up each massacre under the shroud of our silence, that child and its entire family might be exterminated one day in Ouagadougou or Fada or somewhere else, merely because a Fulani herdsman has had a fight with a farmer somewhere in Burkina. Now we have been warned.

Barry Saïdou

Teacher

L’OBSERVATEUR

June 24^th 2008