But not only Christians are persecuted in Burkina Faso. Anyone who disagrees with the ideology and policy of the regime is a victim of cruel repression.
July 26 (DPnet).– Upper Volta changed its name to Burkina Faso in 1984, which means "land of straight people", under a new regime oriented to Marxist radicalism. 
Since the coup in 2022 and since the most recent one perpetrated in 2024, freedom of expression was curtailed with foreign journalists expelled and media suspended by authorities in the context of the recent post-coup transitional regime and the armed conflict. Armed groups and government forces committed unlawful attacks. Several public figures were victims of enforced disappearances and women and girls were victims of abduction. Armed groups severely restricted the economic and social rights of civilians in towns and villages under siege, mostly in the northern and eastern regions.
Army forces together with the Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland (VDPs) –an auxiliary force– and Ansaroul Islam are perpetrating crimes against humanity with a special emphasis on Christian communities.
Roughly 1.7 million people in Burkina Faso have been forced to flee from Islamist groups that had invaded the neighboring countries of Mali and Niger since 2016.
Christians have been a primary target of their campaign since April 2019. Among many other repressive actions, militants attacked a village killing a local pastor and four deacons. The militants often target church leaders in Burkina Faso because they hinder the establishment of an Islamic state.
Two days after that attack, about 40 armed men rode into the same village on motorcycles around 9 pm and made it known they were looking for the village pastor. A friend immediately called the pastor, named Pierre, to warn him. “He told me they want to kill me,” Pierre said.
Pierre’s wife, who was cooking, dropped everything and ran with him into the woods. From their hiding place, they watched as the armed men searched the village for them. “They didn’t find us in our house,” Pierre said. “They went to our neighbors, and they killed two men.”
Pierre and his wife eventually located their eight children, some of whom had been tending to their animals in the fields. The family then fled on foot, walking 40 km to reach safety.
The Islamists have been attacking dozens of villages since 2019, forcing hundreds of thousands of inhabitants in the region to flee their homes and seek shelter farther south, near Burkina Faso’s capital city, Ouagadougou. In addition, an estimated 3 million Burkinabé are suffering from hunger due to this dire situation. Among those affected, nearly 650,000 individuals are facing extreme hunger (Integrated Acute Food Insecurity Phase Classification 5), meaning people are already starting to die from a lack of food.
Even in the relative safety of his new location, however, Pierre still occasionally encounters Islamic militants. “Three days ago, we went to a village to evangelize,” he said. “When I was coming back the terrorists and the military were shooting."
Burkina Faso is just one example of what is going on throughout the world, much to the convenient blindness of democratic governments and the media.