Thousands rally in Mali to protest against ethnic violence

Thousands of people have rallied in Mali’s capital, Bamako, to protest President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s failure to stem a surge of intercommunal violence in the centre of the country.

The demonstration on Friday was called for by Muslim religious leaders, opposition parties and civil society groups, including organisations representing the mainly Muslim Fulani herding community. 

Organisers said 15,000 people were part of the march and a mass prayer ceremony, which came nearly two weeks after the massacre of at least 153 people in the Fulani village of Ogossagou, near the town of Mopti in central Mali. Police put the number of demonstrators at 10,000.

The Ogossagou slaughter was allegedly carried out by members of the Dogon ethnic group – a hunting and farming community with a long history of tension with the nomadic Fulani over access to land – and marked the deadliest act of ethnic bloodshed in West Africa’s Sahel region in living memory.

Keita responded to the attack on the Fulani villagers by disbanding a vigilante group, whose fighters are suspected of being behind the killings.

Instability grips central Mali

Critics argue the Malian leader has not done enough to prevent intercommunal violence and on Friday called for him to “get out” of office, while also demanding the withdrawal of the United Nations MINUSMA peacekeeping mission present in the country.

The UN has more than 16,000 personnel on the ground in the country, including a contingent of 12,418 troops made up of forces from countries including Burkina Faso, Senegal, Niger, Togo and Chad.

“Our children, our husbands and our parents are dying because of the bad government of IBK and his clan,” Mariam Fomba, the widow of a soldier, told the AFP news agency.

“Enough is enough, we cannot continue with this regime,” Fomba said.

Mali has struggled to return to stability since armed groups linked to al-Qaeda took control of the country’s north in early 2012, prompting a military intervention by France.

Although the militias were driven back, they have since spread into the ethnic mosaic of central Mali and across the wider Sahel, an arid region between the Sahara desert and Africa’s savannas, to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

UN human rights office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said the massacre last month marked a surge in “violence across communal lines and by so-called ‘self-defence groups’ apparently attempting to root out violent extremist groups” in central Mali.

More than 200 people have been killed by the vigilante groups since the start of this year, according to the UN, which has dispatched human rights experts to investigate the March attack.