Mali has responded to accusations by the United Nations that its security forces were engaged in human rights abuses, saying the reports were false.
The Malian foreign ministry on Saturday, said the country is denying the accusations in its entirety as its forces have never been found to indulge in human rights violations.
The UN mission to Mali, MINUSMA, had, on Friday. released its quarterly note on human rights, and while accounting for the period between April 1 and June 30 of this year, said it had recorded several cases of human rights abuses and violations in the West African country.
The UN report said during that period in review, the violations were committed both by Islamist militant groups and state security forces.
It added that it has documented “serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law” by government forces.
In the report, the UN said tensions between Malian forces and MINUSMA in recent months have led to the country’s security forces clashing with members of the mission including the arrest of 49 soldiers from Ivory Coast who had arrived as support for a UN contingent on their arrival at Bamako’s airport, after accusing them of being mercenaries, in July.
A fallout of the arrest saw the MINUSMA’s spokesperson expelled from the country after he made comments on Twitter claiming the UN had notified the Malian government of the soldiers’ arrival.
The Malian government also denied the UN’s access to the Moura region in April, where it wanted to carry out a human rights investigation into an alleged massacre committed by Malian forces working with Russian mercenaries, the report noted.
But the country’s foreign ministry, in a statement on Saturday, called the allegations against the state security forces biased and made without “tangible proof and under the threat of terrorist groups, with an objective to tarnish the image of state security forces.”
In an 11-page statement posted on the website of Mali’s foreign ministry, the country denied all allegations leveled in the UN note that implicated Malian state security forces.