BAMAKO, Mali
Civilian deaths and rights abuse attributable to the Malian armed forces and backed by “foreign military elements” have surged in the first quarter of 2022, a United Nations report has said, with the killings seeing a 324 percent rise during the previous quarter.
“Malian Armed Forces,
supported on certain occasions by foreign military elements, increased military
operations to combat terrorism … some of which sometimes ended in serious
allegations of violations of human rights,” the UN’s Malian mission, known as
MINUSMA, said in the report released on Monday.
The report did not identify
the “foreign military elements” supporting the army.
The total number of people
killed in the first quarter of 2022 by all parties in the conflict – rebels,
self-defence groups and security forces – quadrupled during the last three
months of 2021, rising from 128 to 543.
A total of 248 civilian deaths
were attributable to the defence and security forces, the report said.
MINUSMA documented 320 human
rights violations by the Malian military in the January-March period, compared
with 31 in the previous three months.
The report comes just as Mali
cut ties with former colonial power France and as Wagner Group, a Russian
private military contractor, was roped in to help the government fight an armed
rebellion.
The most notable case was in
the town of Moura, where witnesses and rights groups say the Malian army
accompanied by white fighters killed dozens of civilians they suspected of
being rebels.
“In addition to summary
executions, security forces also allegedly raped, looted, arrested and
arbitrarily detained many civilians during the military operation,” MINUSMA
said.
MINUSMA is conducting an
investigation but has been refused access to the town. MINUSMA said its request
will only be considered once the government has conducted its own
investigation.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has
said that Malian soldiers and white foreign soldiers executed 300 civilians in
Moura, in the centre of the country, between March 27-31.
Mali’s military, which took power in a 2020 coup, says it “neutralised” 203 rebel fighters in Moura.
The Mali government did not
respond to requests for comment by Reuters. Colonel Assimi Goita led coups in
2020 and 2021 before becoming president of the West African nation.
Wagner Group could not be
reached by Reuters.
The landlocked Sahel country
has been hit by violence since 2012 when armed groups took over the country’s
north. France intervened to drive them away from the region, but by 2015 they
had regrouped and unleashed a wave of attacks in the central part of the
country.
They have since spread into
Niger and Burkina Faso, raising concerns of regional instability.
The army has developed closer
ties with Russia, bringing in personnel that it describes as military
instructors, but which France and others say are operatives of Wagner, the
controversial Kremlin-linked security firm.
Western powers strongly
opposed Wagner’s intervention, warning that it could stoke violence in Mali and
neighbouring countries where communities face growing levels of drought,
malnutrition and poverty. - AFP
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