Violent Protests Topple Government in Burkina Faso

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — The government of Burkina Faso collapsed on Thursday as demonstrators protesting President Blaise Compaoré’s plans to stay in office after 27 years surged through the streets of Ouagadougou, the capital, overrunning state broadcasters, setting fire to Parliament and burning the homes of the president’s relatives.

Authorities imposed martial law, according to a communiqué from the presidential palace.

After several hours of increasingly violent protests, a government spokesman announced that a bill to extend the term of Mr. Compaoré had been dropped, or at least delayed. Yet the protests continued, and later in the day, Mr. Compaoré announced that the government had been dissolved and promised more talks with the opposition “to end the crisis,” according to a statement read on a local radio station.

Still later, according to The Associated Press, he spoke briefly on television and vowed to remain in office.If the protests do unseat Mr. Compaoré, it will be the first time since the Arab Spring that a popular movement has succeeded in removing an autocrat in sub-Saharan Africa. When the wave of Arab Spring protests first swept northern Africa, analysts predicted they would spread south, where some of the world’s most entrenched leaders continue to cling to power.

“In 1987, when Blaise Compaoré took office I was 17 years old,” said Hamidou Traore, a student in computer studies, who was one of around two dozen citizens of Burkina Faso protesting outside the country’s consulate in New York on Thursday. “I am now a father myself, and all this time, he has stayed in power. In fact my oldest daughter is now about to give birth to her own child — so we have had the same president for almost three generations. In these 27 years, you could have had as many as seven presidents in America. Why should we continue to accept this?”

Gen. Honoré Nabéré Traoré, the chief of staff of Burkina Faso’s armed forces, said at a news conference Thursday night that a transitional authority would lead the country to new elections within 12 months. He did not say who would form the interim government. He also announced that a dusk-to-dawn curfew would take effect.

The government sealed the country’s borders — part of the security protocol in West African countries during times of turmoil, according to officials at the country’s diplomatic mission in New York, where a reporter’s visa was denied Thursday on the grounds that the international airport was closed.

Posts on social media sites had earlier shown images of a statue of Mr. Compaoré being toppled and dragged from its plinth. Television footage showed huge crowds coursing down broad thoroughfares of Ouagadougou (pronounced wah-gah-DOO-goo), some riding in hijacked vehicles, as armed police officers in pickup trucks retreated before them.

The venting of rage was the most serious challenge to Mr. Compaoré’s grip on power since he took office in 1987. His whereabouts Thursday night were unknown, and a senior adviser to the president of neighboring Ivory Coast — a longtime ally of Mr. Compaoré — said he believed that the leader’s days were numbered.

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“I am giving him 24 to 48 hours before he is forced to step down,” said the official, who requested anonymity to speak about an ally. “I don’t see how he can continue to hold power.”

At the presidential palace, soldiers fired live rounds and used tear gas to repel crowds seeking to storm the building, witnesses said. Several people were killed by gunfire, news reports said.

Elsewhere in the city, opposition leaders demanded the resignation of Mr. Compaoré, a former soldier who seized power in a coup and then won several elections, the most recent in November 2010.

There have been outbreaks of violence against Mr. Compaoré at least six other times since 1999, most recently in 2011, with government buildings defaced and protesters taking to the streets. Mr. Compaoré has always managed to stay in office through a combination of negotiation, conciliation and restrained use of firepower. But it was not clear whether his late afternoon concessions on Thursday would be enough this time.

“I’m pledging from today to open talks with all the actors to end the crisis,” Mr. Compaoré said in the statement broadcast on the radio, continuing his practice of rarely appearing in public, particularly in moments of crisis.

In a statement on Thursday, France, the colonial power that once ruled Burkina Faso and still has a special-forces base there, said it deplored the violence and urged calm.

France regards Mr. Compaoré as a crucial ally in its efforts to confront Islamic militants in the broader Sahel region with ties to Al Qaeda. Burkina Faso, formerly called Upper Volta, is home to about 3,600 French citizens.

The American Embassy in Ouagadougou said in a statement that the United States was “deeply concerned” by the violence and urged “all parties, including the security forces,” to seek a peaceful outcome.

In the years just after Burkina Faso’s independence in 1960, power changed hands in a series of coups, but more recently, the country has achieved some stability. But its citizens have grown increasingly restive over the past few months as the president’s allies tried to persuade Parliament to scrap a constitutional limit on presidential terms.

Alain Édouard Traoré, the communications minister, said the government had shelved the plan to change the Constitution. But that did not calm the crowds.

Initial reports said demonstrators had broken through police lines to take over the Parliament building and to prevent lawmakers from voting on the contentious proposal, which would have overturned a provision that limits the president to two terms.

Black smoke was later seen rising from the building. State-owned radio and television stations suspended broadcasts after demonstrators took over their headquarters, looting equipment, news reports said.

Protesters also set fire to cars and to the homes of several of Mr. Compaoré’s relatives and advisers, and to the offices of the governing party.

Three motionless bodies were seen in the street near the home of Mr. Compaoré’s brother, Reuters reported, after troops there fired live rounds and used tear gas as a crowd approached.

The unrest this week recalled the days of early 2011, when Mr. Compaoré faced down a series of rampages by mutinous soldiers. Then, as in the earlier outbreaks of dissent from 1999 to 2008, he survived by presenting himself as somehow above the fray. But the causes of disaffection in his sweltering land just below the Sahara have not gone away.

When Mr. Compaoré took power, the country’s population ranked among Africa’s poorest, and it has remained so, with widespread illiteracy and no large, educated middle class.

“It’s been 27 years and 15 days — exactly — since Blaise Compaoré has been in office,” said Boubacar Bah, 41, an auto mechanic who had shown up outside the Burkina Consulate with a megaphone. “I am hoping for change.”