Children saved from 'slavery'

2004-05-08 18:30

Ouagadougou - Police in Burkina Faso have rescued about 30 victims of child traffickers, aged between eight and 17, on the west African country's border with Mali, a police officer said on Friday.

Two men behind the trade, both fake traditional healers of Burkinabe nationality living in Mali, were arrested at Bobo-Dioulasso, the country's second city, and in Faramna, just as they were trying to sneak the children into Mali.

The traffickers had managed to win the confidence of the children's parents by convincing them that the youngsters were to be taken to Mali to study the Qu'ran, a police officer told reporters.

Many Muslim children from Burkina Faso undergo religious studies in neighbouring country.

The official daily Sidwaya reported that the real fate of such victims, snatched in several provinces in Burkina Faso, was to work on agricultural plantations during the day and left to forage for their own food at night.

Since rebels seized control of the northern half of Ivory Coast in a civil war launched in September 2002, child traffickers operating out of Burkina Faso to the north have abandoned their former routes, according to national organisations set up to fight the trade.

Such regional activity is now concentrated in Burkina and its northern neighbour in the southern Sahara.

- AFP