A video shared on social media shows vehicles being crushed by construction equipment at a mine in Burkina Faso. Some users have claimed a French mining company or the French military had the vehicles destroyed before leaving the country so locals couldn't use them. This is false. The mine was owned by a Canadian mining company, and the people in the video worked for an Australian subcontractor, which said the vehicles were too damaged to continue operating.
Earlier this month, a , formerly known as Twitter, shared a video from TikTok that showed three workers watching as a loader machine crushes two white Toyota pickup trucks under a large, open-air structure. Three other vehicles that are already crushed can be seen in the background.
A caption on the video reads: "France destroys their cars before living mines in Bukinafaso (sic)."
Rating: False
The X post claims "the French destroyed the cars and property they owned in that country so that the Africans would not take advantage of it."
It also ties the actions to the French military, saying, "This is the face of the French army when it prevents theft."
The TikTok account that posted this version of the video has been deactivated, but the clip has been recently by on the platform.
The X post has been liked more than 5,840 times and has more than 680,000 views. One of the TikTok posts has been viewed nearly 137,000 times.
The clip was taken from a that spread online in November 2022. The original source of the video is unknown.
Social media posts at the time made the same claims that French officials were behind the destruction of the vehicles, prompting media outlets to .
Perkoa Mine
The posts identify the location as a mine in the West African country Burkina Faso, and the YouTube post names the Perkoa zinc mine, which was situated in the Sangui茅 Province, about 120 kilometres west of the capital Ouagadougou.
Perkoa Mine was 90-per-cent owned by , a now-defunct company based in Vancouver, through its subsidiary Nantou Mining. The other 10 per cent was owned by the Burkina Faso government. Mining operations were conducted by Australian mining contractor .
A logo visible on the side of one of the vehicles in the video appears similar to the Byrnecut logo.
A licence plate visible in the video appears similar to those .
Operations at Perkoa were after flash flooding in the area on April 16, 2022, led to the deaths of eight workers trapped in the mine.
The miner said it couldn't recover from the incident, and for Nantou began in October of last year.
An unnamed source close to Nantou Mining told Burkinabe media company Omega Media that because they had been damaged in the floods.
Claims that the vehicles were too damaged to continue operating also appear in a report from a on Nov. 16, 2022.
A delegation sent to the site by the minister of energy, mines and quarries was told by mine officials six vehicles were destroyed following the Byrnecut's policy on end-of-life vehicles.
Representatives from Byrnecutdid not immediately respond to a request for comment.
France in Burkina Faso
One of the TikTok posts claims the equipment was being destroyed by a French company called "Perkins Mines," however there is no evidence of a company by that name in Burkina Faso or France.
The French ambassador for public diplomacy in Africa, Anne-Sophie Av茅, stated in last November that France has no mining operations in Burkina Faso or Mali. Av茅 was to the diplomatic post a year ago after spending four years as the ambassador to Ghana.
Burkina Faso saw two military coup d'茅tat's last year, and in February the junta in control of the country with French special forces, halting its work to fight insurgents in the former colony.
France has faced protests against its military presence in the region, and was also last year after the ruling junta there started working with Russian military contractors.
Some social media users last year the Perkoa Mine video, falsely claiming it showed the actions of French troops before they left Mali.
Sources
Claims can be found on X, formerly Twitter, (, ) and ()
Claims can be found on TikTok (, ) and (, )
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