AA/Ouagadougou/Dramane Traoré
Fearing a new demonstration next Friday against the French Embassy in Burkina Faso, French Ambassador Luc Hallade asked embassy employees to stay at home and favor teleworking, adding that French schools in Burkina Faso will be closed on Friday.
“In application of a precautionary principle, non-essential agents (outside the crisis organization chart) are invited to stay at home and for those who can to telework”, wrote the French diplomat in an internal note whose l ‘Anadolu Agency got a copy.
“I invite French operators both in Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso to do the same. French institutes and educational establishments will be closed (passage to EAD) and nationals invited to limit their movements and to avoid any gathering or procession “, he added.
Since September 30, the date of the second military coup in 2022 in Burkina Faso, which marked the coming to power of Captain Ibrahim Traoré, demonstrations hostile to France have been frequently organized in the country.
French diplomatic rights had even been targeted at the beginning of October by demonstrators.
Since then, the services of the French Embassy have been closed to the public.
The Delegation of the European Union to Burkina Faso deplored in a letter addressed to the Ministry in charge of Foreign Affairs of Burkina Faso “the absence of an appropriate reaction from the Burkinabe security services” following the protest movement of November 18, 2022 which once again targeted the diplomatic compound of the French Embassy in Burkina Faso.
At the end of the demonstration of November 18, the Burkinabè government called on the populations to calm and exercise restraint, “at the risk of plunging our country into a cycle of endless demonstrations, detrimental to our objectives of peace, stability and security, sought for our populations”.
The Burkinabè government “will not derogate from the rules and principles of protection due to diplomats and diplomatic representations present on Burkinabè soil”, assured Jean-Emmanuel Ouédraogo, government spokesman.
– Towards the withdrawal of French troops from Burkina Faso?
Burkina Faso’s Transitional Prime Minister Apollinaire Joachimson Kyelem de Tambela told MPs last Saturday that Burkina Faso was committed to diversifying its partnership relations and wanted “sincere and frank” cooperation in the fight against terrorism.
“How to understand that terrorism has plagued our country since 2015, in indifference, if not with the complicity of some of our so-called partners”, he said without naming a country.
He maintained that in recent times his country has been doing without the support of French troops on its soil in the fight against terrorism.
According to the head of the Burkinabè government, the French army intervened to support the Burkinabè soldiers at the request of the Burkinabè authorities, but that “lately the Burkinabè authorities have done without it and prefer to organize the fight with their own means to safeguard our sovereignty”.
In the process, France announced, for its part, that it did not exclude the possibility of withdrawing its troops present in Burkina Faso, according to its Minister of the Armies, Sébastien Lecornu, in an interview with the JDD (Sunday newspaper) .
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