By Baba Ahmed, BAMAKO Mali
Mali’s government has ordered the U.N. peacekeeping mission’s human rights chief to leave the country by Tuesday, declaring him persona non grata in the latest sign of tensions between Mali’s leaders and the international community.
A government statement Sunday
criticized Guillaume Ngefa-Atondoko Andali (pictured above) for choosing someone who represented
Malian civil society at a U.N. Security Council briefing. The communique
accused the human rights director of “destabilizing and subversive actions.”
The U.N. peacekeeping mission
known as MINUSMA said in a statement Monday that it “deeply regrets this
decision.”
“MINUSMA reaffirms its
commitment to continue to work impartially to implement its mandate to promote
and protect human rights, which is an important component of Mali’s
stabilization efforts,” the statement said.
Mali’s government has taken
issue in particular with the choice of Aminata Dicko to appear at the U.N.
hearing late last month. Dicko, the vice president of a human rights NGO called
Kisal, denounced alleged killings by the Malian army and the shadowy Russian
military contractor the Wagner Group.
Andali’s expulsion announced
Sunday comes as Mali’s government faces growing questions about its human
rights record and its relationship with the Wagner mercenaries.
Last week independent human
rights experts working with the U.N. called for an investigation of possible
abuses, war crimes, and crimes against humanity committed by Mali’s government
forces and Wagner mercenaries.
“We are particularly worried
by credible reports that over the course of several days in late March 2022,
Malian armed forces accompanied by military personnel believed to belong to the
Wagner Group, executed several hundred people, who had been rounded up in
Moura, a village in central Mali,” the experts said in a statement.
Mali has been battling an
Islamic insurgency since 2012 and has seen its international partners dwindle
since a 2020 military coup. Last year France withdrew its forces after nine
years of helping to fight Islamic extremists in its former colony amid rising
tensions with the country’s military leaders.
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