September 24, 2025

The following statement was issued by Arm The Dollsz (ATDz), a New York City-based trans women’s organization.

ATDz unequivocally stands in solidarity with all nations facing Western imperialism through sanctions, propaganda and regime change. We salute President Ibrahim Traoré on his victories in evicting French military and Western intelligence agents out of Burkina Faso, nationalizing natural resources by acquiring control over gold mines and forming an anti-imperialist, Pan-African alliance with other nations in the Sahel, including Mali and Niger.

This historic step towards achieving sovereignty and self-determination was a blow to Washington and all imperialist regimes and a triumph for the global resistance movement against Western hegemony.

Understanding the geopolitical and economic dynamics of the Sahel states is crucial to forming a thorough analysis on the current climate. For years, Western nations, including Canada, France, England and more, have exploited Burkinabé resources by contracting natural resource mines in the region through neocolonial, bourgeoisie networks. This has had detrimental impacts on the overall welfare of the proletariat class in the Sahel, cheating them from universal human rights, including free, accessible and sufficient education, health care and housing.

President Ibrahim Traore’s efforts to nationalize natural resources, namely gold, will exponentially better the daily lives of the workers in Burkina Faso. Thus far, the Burkinabé state has obtained authority over two mines, Boungou and Wahgnion, which were previously operated by English company Endeavor. Since nationalization efforts in 2022, Business Insider Africa has reported an increase in revenue from $1 [billion] to $18 billion annually.

As a result of nationalization, Traoré’s administration has made huge surges of advancements in health care, education, infrastructure and economic restructuring. “For 2025, the government plans to establish 20 communal medical centers, two hemodialysis units, five intensive care units and a cardiac institute, along with introducing innovative products for molecular breast cancer diagnosis.” (Sahel Liberty News) This is part of a larger five-year campaign to open 55 medical centers across the nation.

On Sept. 1, Burkina Faso’s Legislative Assembly passed an updated family amendment code that included declaring homosexual behavior as a criminal offense, punishable by two to five years in prison, fines and possibly deportation for foreign nationals. This mimics the legislature of “Codes of Persons and Families” that the Burkinabé nation has developed since the Western coup and assassination of revolutionary Marxist leader Thomas Sankara in 1987.

Although receiving extensive backlash from the West, this code also “recognizes the legitimacy of ancestral practices which, though deeply rooted in society, had long been relegated to the margins of official law. This legal recognition not only strengthens social cohesion but also highlights local traditions as the foundation of the Burkinabé family.” (Sahel Liberty News, Oct. 8, 2024)

ATDz stands with all LGTBQIA2+ Burkinabé and African folk facing these punishments, while acknowledging that these codes are part of a large-scale project to decolonize the Sahel regions from years of Western social and economic practices.

As Marxist-Leninists, we must routinely highlight Western propaganda that corporate media outlets, such as the BBC, CBS and France 24, devised against President Traoré. This propaganda is analogous to that used against leaders in Venezuela, Iran, Palestine, Syria, North Korea, China, Russia, etc.

Their patterns are clear.

1. Dehumanize the people, culture and society through corporate media against achieving sovereignty and self-determination.
2. Destabilize the economic, social and political climate through sanctions and military control.
3. Implement regime change through whatever means necessary to strengthen Western hegemony.

As Marxists-Leninists, we must always principally analyze global resistance against Western imperialism instead of falling into the traps of colonial practices.