Burkina Faso’s transitional government on Wednesday elevated former president and father of Burkina Faso’s revolution, Thomas Sankara, to the status of ‘national hero’ in the October 15 coup d’état.
The Council of Ministers adopted a decree recognizing the late Captain Isidore Thomas Noel Sankara as a national hero, the minutes sent to SIG website.
The awarding of the status of national hero to Thomas Sankara is aimed at upholding the core values on which the republic is founded, the government said.
Thomas Sankara, a pan-African icon who seized power in a coup in August 1983, was murdered by number two Blaise Compaoré on October 15, 1987.
On that day, the President of Burkina Faso was meeting at the headquarters of the “Conseil de l’Entente” (“Council of Accord” or “Council of Understanding”) when the coup mastermind’s special forces arrived and shot him and his associates dead.
National Hero status was created in June 2022 to honor individuals who have distinguished themselves by extraordinary courage in defense of the cause of the nation or extraordinary honorable courage in the name of the nation.
The bodies of Thomas Sankara and his 12 companions were first buried in a cemetery outside Ouagadougou and exhumed on May 25, 2015, for legal procedures, before a memorial was erected at the murder site.
After Sankara’s death, Blaise Compaoré remained in power until a popular uprising overthrew him in 2014.
In April 2022, after a six-month trial, a military court in Ouagadougou sentenced Compaoré to life in prison in absentia for his role in the murder of Thomas Sankara.
On October 15, 2023, National and international memorial services for the victims will be held by the government to honor the memory of the victims.
The Transitional President Captain Ibrahim Traore since seizing power on 30 September 2022 has regularly paid tribute to Thomas Sankara.