Burkina Faso junta arrested 3 journalists in latest media crackdown, rights group says

DAKAR, Senegal — Burkina Faso's ruling military junta arrested three prominent journalists, escalating its crackdown on media freedom in the West African country, according to a Human Rights Watch report released Thursday.

Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba, the president and vice president of Burkina Faso’s Journalists Association, and Luc Pagbelguem of the local television station BF1, were arrested on Monday and their locations are unknown.

On March 21, the Journalists Association held a press conference to protest the junta restrictions on media freedom and called on the authorities to release other detained journalists. Mr. Pagbelguem covered the press conference.

The three journalists were arrested on Monday by plainclothes policemen and taken to an unknown location, according to HRW. The Journalists Association was dissolved the following day.

The arrests are part of a wider trend in the newly formed Alliance of Sahel States, AES, comprising Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. All three countries have undergone coups in the past four years, shifting their policies away from longstanding associations like ECOWAS, the regional economic bloc, and embracing Russian security support, particularly the Wagner Group, to combat a growing jihadist insurgency across all three countries.

The AES coalition has silenced critical media, while continuing to promise a new path towards normalcy that so far has actually increased the number of civilian combat deaths compared to the pre-coup security environment, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit.

Burkina Faso arrested prominent activist and journalist Idrissa Barry earlier this month, and in April of last year authorities blocked several major media outlets for reporting on alleged human rights violations against civilians.

"Dozens of journalists have been forced to flee Burkina Faso under threat of imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearance, and forced conscription because of their work,” according to the HRW report.

Following Barry’s arrest, a journalist told HRW, “I’ve left Ouagadougou and won’t return. Free media is dead here; only government propaganda remains.”

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