President Thomas Sankara, affectionately referred to as Africa's Che Guevara, was assassinated in Burkina Faso on October 15, 1987. Twenty years later, his assassins remain in power.

Koni Benson and Mukoma Wa Ngugi talked to Aziz Fall, the co-ordinator of the International Justice Campaign for Sankara (ICJS) in this exclusive Interview.

Aziz, can you please tell us the nature of the death threats you received? What do they say? Do you have an idea of where they are coming from?

I've received four death threats since December 2006. Three letters in bubble envelopes left in the mailbox at my front door.

The first one was simple and said "stop or be stopped," the second was similar but didn't mention my name, and the third was a little more explicit, mentioning my name, asking me "to commit suicide or face execution." I filed a complaint with the police in March 2007.

Then, in April, after the screening of a film on Thomas Sankara in Montreal, a young Burkinabé journalist, Sam Kah, who appeared in the film, received a threat, according to the organising committee of the Thomas Sankara 20th anniversary commemorations.

Following the threat against Kah, I decided to tell the committee members about my own death threats, which I had previously hidden from them because I was worried it would have a demobilising effect.

A couple of days later, I received another threat, this time by phone being warned that neither the police nor my lawyers would be able to protect me. At about this time, someone tried, unsuccessfully, to break into my home through the back door.

We don't know exactly who is behind these threats. But we have good evidence that a Frenchman and two Africans have something to hide, because they have been caught in a number of lies and contradictions. The police and CSIS, Canada's spy agency, are still investigating.

It is unacceptable that as an advocate of freedom and justice, I am being physically threatened in a country that promotes these basic values around the world.

Can you briefly talk about the International Campaign Justice for Sankara (ICJS) and GRILA?

Sankara's widow, Mariam Sankara, and his two sons never abandoned their call to the international community to take action to bring his assassins to justice.

Ten years ago, the Group for Research and Initiative for the Liberation of Africa (GRILA, an internationalist and panafricanist group) answered that call by creating an international campaign with a twofold strategy involving a political component and a legal one.

The government of Burkina Faso, under the presidency of Blaise Compaoré, along with a highly compromised judicial system, blocked all efforts by the Campaign to bring the case to court. After exhausting legal recourse within the country, the Campaign brought the case before UN Human Rights Committee.

Just over one year ago, the UN Human Rights Committee ruled in favour of the International Justice for Sankara Campaign, and demanded that the government of Burkina Faso take action to shed light on Sankara's death.

What were some of Sankara's achievements, be it in the emancipation of women, education or rolling back neo-colonialism?

Our organisation (GRILA) and the revolution in Burkina Faso are the exact same age and we have many things in common. So we may sound pretty subjective when it comes to our assessment of what was achieved in those three years.

Sankara tried to put into practice most of the key elements of our own philosophy, including the destruction of all forms of racism and ethnocentrism, with the Bambaata summit and the anti-apartheid struggle; the respect of collective and human rights; the struggle against regimes allied with imperialist interests; a balance between rural and urban incomes; food self-sufficiency; the fulfilment of basic needs.

Are some of these changes still visible or has the Compaoré government managed to erase all of them?

While the Sankarist regime laid the ground for stability and a better form of development, it is clear that the international order ensured that Compaoré's regime did not take the same path.

Compaoré's regime was also involved in the Liberian and Sierra Leonean crises and wars, generating tremendous wealth for itself. Within the framework of the neo-liberal agenda and the French zone of influence among its former African colonies, the regime has been able to establish a formal democracy and to reproduce itself, and in so doing has widened the gap between the haves and the have nots.

How do the people of Burkina Faso regard Sankara today? Is he still part of the political imagination?

In general, people have a lot of admiration for him in spite of the regime's anti-Sankara propaganda and intimidation.

How are these challenges being addressed today-locally and internationally?

For us it is important to continue the work. We will not be intimidated. Locally the Sankarist movement, despite numerous factions, is more united and better organised. In many African countries and in the Diaspora, Sankarist clubs and associations are mushrooming.

A lot of people expect that history will repeat itself in a cyclical fashion. But each society is confronted with new challenges, and will take different roads.

It appears to me that as long as the contradictions of capitalism deepen, and societies continued to be destroyed by the capitalist way of life and production, we have no choice but to invent more progressive and internationalist paths in order to tackle the barbarism of globalisation and the forces that dominate it.

Benson is a researcher at the International Labour Research and Information Group in Cape Town.

Mukoma is the author of Hurling Words at Consciousness (AWP, 2006) Conversing with Africa: Politics of Change.