Dori: Official calls for respect for prisoners’ rights
Dori, July 18, 2022(AIB)-“The rights of detainees will not be respected, as long as the justice services of Dori remain relocated to Ouagadougou”, estimated the Regional Director of Human Rights for the Sahel, Zakarya Bayoula who also wishes , a section for minors, a section for women and a section for serious offenders.
Nelson Mandela International Day or “International Day for the Rights of Detainees” was celebrated on Monday, July 18, 2022, at the Dori Remand and Correctional Center, through board games, a community meal and a donation of clothes. , organized by the regional directorate of human rights and civic promotion of the Sahel, the provincial section of the Burkinabe movement for human and peoples’ rights (MBDHP) of Séno and the Dori remand center.
On November 10, 2009, UNESCO proclaimed the date of July 18 of each year, “Nelson Mandela International Day”, in honor of the former South African president of the same name.
This date corresponds to the commemoration of the anniversary of Nelson Mandela, an anti-apartheid activist who spent twenty-seven years of his life in South African jails.
The objective targeted through the organization of this day, according to Mr. Zakarya Bayoula, regional director of human rights and civic promotion for the Sahel, is to “allow the decentralized authorities and the population to visit detainees in order to touch their condition of detention, to arouse patriotism within the prison population and to offer the residents moments of relaxation”.
It enabled Mr. Bayoula and his guests to observe that “the conditions of detention have improved markedly over the years for the detainees of the Dori remand and correction center, both in terms of the maintenance of the premises and relations between prison staff and inmates”.
However, listening to Mr. Bayoula, difficulties still remain in terms of categorical separation in order to have a section for minors, a compartment for women and a section for prisoners who have committed offenses of a certain gravity, without forgetting respect for prisoners’ health rights.
“The rights of detainees will not be respected as long as the justice services of Dori remain relocated to Ouagadougou, because there are internees who are waiting to be heard by an investigating judge, to be tried or to be remedies,” concluded the regional director of human rights and civic promotion for the Sahel.
As a reminder, due to the deterioration of the security situation, the Dori court and others across Burkina Faso have relocated their services.
For Mr. Yattara Hama, a member of the provincial section of the Burkinabe Movement for Human and Peoples’ Rights (MBDHP) of Séno, the organization of this day is an opportunity to “remember that detainees have rights, even if sometimes they are stigmatized, and that they must benefit from our daily gaze in order to facilitate their post-prison social reintegration”.
For the benefit of the residents of the Dori remand center, “we are distributing food and raising awareness on human rights” added Mr. Yattara.
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