Burkina: Statement of Mariam Sankar following the desacration of President Thomas Sankara's grave

It is with deep emotion and consternation that we, members of the President Thomas SANKARA family, have learned the horrible news of the desecration of

his tomb in the cemetery of Dagnoën in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Faced with such an act of unspeakable horror, we can only express our anger and indignation, and condemn in the strongest terms. Attack what is supposed to be President Thomas SANKARA’S tomb is unquestionably an insult to his memory and that of all those who fell by his side. Everything suggests that the cowardly perpetrators of this barbaric act wanted through this desecration defile this great man that, even dead, clearly continues to embarrass the perpetrators and instigators of his murder. Apart from the ignominy of this act that is contrary to the secular values of the Burkinabè society, it is symptomatic of the denial of justice that continues to surround his murder, but more generally that of impunity which is the bed of the regime of Blaise Compaoré.

It seems equally clear that this desecration, which seems was accompanied by the release of a strange liquid on the grave is undoubtedly to counter the action we have brought before the courts of Burkina Faso so as to demonstrate and certify that the body of President Thomas SANKARA is actually in one of those thirteen graves hastily dug on the night of October 15, 1987.

This action that has been initiated several years ago is to enable us to provide him the effective and inalienable right to a decent burial and to allow all the SANKARA family, my children and myself, to finally start the work of mourning that the perpetrators of this cowardly assassination have prevented us from since.

This despicable and unacceptable desecration confirms a fact already obvious at the time: the Machiavellian mausoleum and rehabilitation project launched at the time by the regime of Blaise Compaoré was only a way to try to lull the vigilance of those, around the world, struggling to shed light on the assassination and allow the outbreak of the truth.

We therefore demand that all means be implemented by the government of Burkina Faso to apprehend and punish the perpetrators of this barbaric act so that this type of behavior does not remain unpunished. We make no illusion of the actions that will be reserved to our request in the light of the impunity that reigns in Burkina Faso. The case of the assassination of President Thomas SANKARA, that of the journalist Norbert Zongo, even more recently the death of young Justin Zongo, and many other dark stories sufficiently demonstrate that impunity.

We call on all the Burkinabé to mobilize against impunity, from which no one is immune.

Montpellier, le 29 juillet 2011

Pour la famille,

Mariam SANKARA