OXFORD, England — Hundreds of thousands of people have been
forced out of their homes in Burkina Faso as Christian communities are targeted
in a spiral of Islamist killings.
The surge of attacks has forced some families to flee and leave
everything behind, and the violence is threatening to spread to other
countries, said Jennifer Overton, West Africa regional director for Catholic
Relief Services.
"Burkina Faso is home to some of the world's poorest
communities — even without this violence, people face chronic food shortages,
high unemployment, climate change and environmental degradation," Overton
told Catholic News Service Feb. 28.
She said dozens of Catholic schools had been forced to close
after their teachers fled.
Overton, who toured affected areas, said she had met a farmer in
the northern Kaya Diocese who had allowed more than 500 displaced families to
settle on his land and another once-prosperous landholder who was living in a
lean-to with his children after escaping repeated shooting sprees.
A Christian woman had taken shelter with her daughters at a
government encampment in a large town, Overton said, only to be driven out when
an armed gang attacked the facility and shot up the local church.
"We want people to have productive lives, set up work and
send their kids to school," she said. "But that won't happen if all
we see is more chaos and crisis, with more people needing help. It's in
everyone's best interest to stop this violence before it gets worse."
Security has rapidly deteriorated in largely arid Burkina Faso,
Mali and Niger, with more than 4,000 killings by armed groups in 2019,
according to a Feb. 21 statement by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees,
which said counter-campaigns by national armies had been marred by poor
equipment and rights violations.
The statement said more than 4,000 people were now fleeing their
homes daily in Burkina Faso, with 150,000 "terrified residents"
uprooted in February alone.
On Dec. 1, a Protestant church was attacked by armed men on
motorcycles that left 14 dead in Hantoukoura, Burkina Faso, while Feb. 10
Islamists stormed the northern town of Sebba, abducting and murdering a
Protestant pastor and four congregation members.
The Vatican-based Fides agency reported Catholics had been among
24 killed when attackers opened fire on a prayer meeting at nearby Pansi Feb.
16. The agency said Feb. 20 the church's northern Dori Diocese had closed three
of its six parishes "due to terrorism."
Overton said armed groups were "exploiting religious and
ethnic differences" to fuel conflict, but added that the root cause of
violence needed addressing through continued development to offset poverty and
lack of opportunity.
"This isn't a religious conflict, and Burkina Faso has long
been a place of interfaith tolerance," she said. "But the terrorists
are preying on community strains, attacking places of worship belonging to both
faiths and seeking to bring down Christian and Muslim leaders, who are pillars
of strength in their communities."
Catholics make up a fifth of the 16.5 million inhabitants of
Burkina Faso, whose president, Roch Christian Kabore, signed a 19-point accord
with the Vatican last July guaranteeing the church's juridical status and
public activities.
In January, the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need said
Immaculate Conception sisters had taken in hundreds of refugees at convents in
Ouagadougou and other towns.
In a Feb. 19 appeal, Burkina Faso's bishops' conference confirmed
that Catholic parishes, schools and dispensaries had been forced to close
because of the "widening field of action of terrorism." It added that
the church faced a critical situation and urged Catholics to continue
"announcing Jesus Christ without exposing pastoral workers too much."
The Regional Episcopal Conference of West Africa also warned Feb.
21 that 2020 elections in several West African countries necessitated
"wisdom and a spirit of responsibility" when many countries faced
"a loss of their cultural and ancestral patrimony, displacement,
unemployment, famine, exodus and migration."
Overton said a lack of attention to sub-Saharan and West Africa
risked exacerbating the violence and driving more countries "into the
hands of extremists."
"We have a real opportunity to stop this violence and push
the extremists out, if we support communities and address grievances easily
manipulated by these militant groups. This means going beyond military
intervention and investing more in the region — a robust global humanitarian
response which addresses long-term peace and stability," she said.
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Editors: Coverage of international religious freedom issues by
Catholic News Service is made possible in part by Aid to the Church in Need-USA
(www.acnusa.org).