STATEMENT OF MARIAM SANKARA 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.