Advocacy group urges release of journalists in Burkina Faso

Ishika Tanwar

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called on Burkina Faso authorities on Friday to immediately releasethree journalists detained last month. The call came after videos surfaced on social media showing the three in military uniforms. Guézouma Sanogo, Boukari Ouoba and Luc Pagbelguem were arrested amid escalating concerns over press freedom in the country. In a two-minute video posted by multiple Burkinabé Facebook accounts, the trio is seen wearing military attire in an undisclosed location with armed men in uniform positioned behind them.

CPJ’s francophone Africa representative Moussa Ngom stated: “The video…reinforces fears about the fate of the seven journalists kidnapped since June, six of whom are now certain to have been forcibly conscripted into the army.”

Sanogo and Ouoba, president and vice president respectively of L’Association des journalistes du Burkina (AJB), have been vocal critics of the junta’s growing control over the media. In what are believed to be statements made under duress, the video shows Pagbelguem Ouoba lamenting that “the real information on the ground” is being distorted and that “no one can report on the security situation while being in Ouagadougou.”

The incident follows a series of detentions and kidnappings that have plagued Burkina Faso’s media landscapeover the past year. Journalists, including Serge Atiana Oulon, Adama Bayala and Kalifara Séré, have been forcibly conscripted after they went missing in June. Another journalist, Alain Traoré, whose whereabouts remain unknown since his abduction in July, has further fueled concerns that the military junta is using coercion to stifle independent reporting.

This incident underscores a broader crackdown on independent reporting under the current junta led by Captain Ibrahim Traoré Burkina Faso’s military junta has applied an emergency law to target those it views as opponents. In November 2023, security forces sent written notices and made telephone calls journalists, civil society activists and opposition members, informing them that they would be drafted to take part in government security operations nationwide. The transitional military authorities claim that these draft orders are allowed under the April 13 “general mobilization” plan, which grants the president broad powers to fight the Islamist insurgency, including the right to requisition people and goods and to limit civil liberties.

The CPJ and other press freedom advocates argue that the forced conscription of journalists is part of a systematic effort to silence dissent and manipulate information about the country’s security situation and are calling for immediate action to secure the safe release of these journalists and to restore an environment in which reporters can work without fear of retribution.

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