Ethnic cleansing in Azawad

Ethnic cleansing in Azawad
Malian junta and Wagner mercenaries responsible for crimes against humanity.

For several months now, the Malian army, carrying out the orders of the ruling junta, supported by Wagner’s Russian militias, has been committing the worst atrocities in Azawad, systematically targeting Tuaregs and Moors. Assassinations by bullets, decapitations, burning, bombardment, etc. are the lot reserved for civilian populations. are the lot reserved for civilian populations by the Malian army and the Wagner militias. This barbarity does not seem to worry the international community, which allows a junta that came to power in a coup to commit the worst atrocities with complete impunity.

The Kal Akal association has denounced “a large-scale massacre at Amassin” near Kidal, in Azawad, on 19 May 2024. Malian army soldiers (FAMA) supported by Russian mercenaries from Wagner murdered at least thirty people in appalling conditions. For the CSP-DPA (Strategic Framework for the Defence of the People of Azawad), “this appallingly cruel barbarity” against the population of Amassin is part of a series of crimes and “massacres orchestrated by the military junta in Bamako […] as part of a campaign of systematic ethnic cleansing directly targeting theTouareg and Peul communities”. Among the victims of the massacres on 19 May were Ahmed Ag Hamzata and Lamin Ag Bassada, two highly influential notables from Adghagh. Both their fathers were killed in the same circumstances in 1967 by the Modibo Keita regime, which had the bloodthirsty Captain Diby Sillas Diarra as its executor.

According to sources close to the rebellion reported by RFI, “the soldiers immediately took up position at the water tower and killed the villagers who came there to fetch water“. The same sources report that shops were looted and houses set on fire and that the victims, all civilians, were mostly shot or burnt to death in their homes, while four had their throats slit.

Pierre Boilley, in an article published in “Droits et Libertés” (No. 205, April 2024), explains how the Malian army, on its march towards Kidal in November 2023, created terror by “using drones to bomb villages and camps, killing indiscriminately, beheading civilians and trapping their bodies”. Fearing that they would be targeted, the Tuaregs and Moors fled Kidal to take refuge in neighbouring countries. For P. Boilley, the abuses committed can easily be described as “war crimes” or “crimes against humanity”, and he goes so far as to say that “the targeting of victims, who number in the hundreds”, is reminiscent of “ethnic cleansing”.
As a reminder, on 17 March 2024 in Amasrakad (near Gao), two drone strikes carried out at night by the Malian army killed at least 13 civilians, including seven children aged between 2 and 17, according to Amnesty International, which considers that “killing civilians who are not taking a direct part in hostilities constitutes a violation of international humanitarian law and the right to life”.

While deploring the silence of the international community, particularly neighbouring states, on the serious human rights violations committed by the Malian junta and Wagner, the CSP-DPA “launches an urgent appeal to independent international jurisdictions and human rights organisations to take an interest in these odious crimes of which the population of Azawad is a victim so that the perpetrators do not go unpunished”.