Blaise Compaoré
During his presidency, Blaise Compaoré faced many challenges from an increasingly dissatisfied and tense population, prominently the 2011 Burkinabé protests which saw several months of army mutinies, street protests, labour strikes, arson attacks, and so on. Blaise Compaoré briefly fled the capital of Ouagadougou, taking shelter in his hometown Ziniaré – it is unknown if his wife followed him there. The protests were quelled by a combination of force, but marked a turning point in the decade-long Compoaré regime.