Koglweogo / Olivier Papegnies
25 January - 23 February 2019
Koglweogo, miroir d’une faillite d’Etat is a project that was hailed as one of the best photojournalistic subjects by Visa pour l’image in 2018, and it is being exhibited here for the first time.
Accompanied by journalist Valentine van Vyve, Olivier Papegnies set off to meet the Koglweogo, those self-defense groups in Burkina Faso, which are as necessary as they are controversial. The result is these black and white prints, which sit somewhere between reportage and artistic project.
Since 2015, these groups have been setting themselves up as ‘guardians of the forest’, forming a transverse social movement across Burkina Faso society. Originally coming from the countryside, they have now reached the cities and the nation’s capital. These groups have been spawned by a population who are fed up with being victims of gangsters, highway bandits, robbers and terrorists, and who have made up their minds to take back control of their security. These ‘militias’ describe themselves as actors for peace and defenders of the common good, and they seek to combat two problems: injustice and corruption in law enforcement. Supported by the population, who seem to have regained a certain measure of calm, the Koglweogo have commandeered the right of arrest and judgement, handing down sometimes savage punishments after trials by people’s courts (physical brutality and humiliations). So they do not respect the law and are becoming hard to control, which worries the defenders of human rights, who fear a threat to the rule of law. The Koglweogo enjoy such a level of popular support that the politicians cannot move against them openly.