Burkina Faso: military junta’s escalating media crackdown leads to journalist arrests

(Nairobi) – Human Rights Watch reported today that the military junta in Burkina Faso detained three journalists on March 24, 2025, for their reporting on the government’s intensifying suppression of media freedom.

In Ouagadougou, the capital, authorities apprehended Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba, who serve as the president and vice-president of the Association of Journalists of Burkina (AJB) respectively, along with Luc Pagbelguem, a reporter for the private television station BF1. The current whereabouts of these three individuals remain undisclosed, prompting serious concerns about potential enforced disappearances.

“The arbitrary detention and subsequent disappearance of these three journalists clearly indicate the Burkina Faso junta’s desperate attempts to manipulate information and ensure military officials can perpetrate abuses without accountability,” stated Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The military junta must promptly act to ascertain the whereabouts of and release these three journalists.”

Since its 2022 coup d’état, the military junta led by President Ibrahim Traoré has consistently suppressed independent media, political opponents, and peaceful forms of protest. Against a backdrop of escalating Islamist insurgency, the junta has leveraged sweeping emergency legislation to quell opposition and illicitly compel critics, reporters, civil society advocates, and even judges into military service.

On March 21, the AJB convened a press conference to condemn the military junta’s curbs on free expression and call for the release of journalists held without due process. Three days later, on March 24, plainclothes individuals claiming to be police officers from Burkinabe intelligence apprehended Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba. Separately, two intelligence agents detained Luc Pagbelguem for his reporting on the AJB’s press event. The following day, the Minister of Territorial Administration and Mobility officially disbanded the AJB.

According to their colleagues, lawyers attempted to locate Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba at various police stations and gendarmeries across the capital, but without success, and authorities have provided no official response to inquiries about their whereabouts. On March 25, intelligence personnel reportedly brought Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba to their residences for police searches before transporting them once more to an undisclosed site.

BF1 television reported that National Security Council agents had given assurances that they “only wished to interview our colleague,” yet Luc Pagbelguem’s location remains undisclosed. The station subsequently issued a formal apology for airing the press conference.

In a separate incident on March 18, individuals identifying as gendarmes apprehended notable political activist and journalist Idrissa Barry in Ouagadougou, whose current location is also unknown. Barry is affiliated with the political organization Servir et Non se Servir (SENS), which, just four days prior to his detention, had released a statement condemning “lethal attacks” by government forces and allied militias against civilians near Solenzo, in western Burkina Faso, on March 11.

In June 2024, security forces detained Serge Oulon, the distinguished director of the investigative newspaper L’Événement, alongside television commentators Adama Bayala and Kalifara Séré. Authorities initially denied their custody until October 2024, when they eventually admitted that the trio had been forcibly enlisted into military service. Their current locations also remain undisclosed.

In April 2024, Burkina Faso’s media regulator, the Superior Council of Communication (CSC), imposed a two-week suspension on the French television channel TV5 Monde and several other news organizations. This action followed their coverage of a Human Rights Watch report detailing alleged crimes against humanity committed by the army against civilians in Yatenga province. Additionally, the CSC blocked the Human Rights Watch website within the country.

Many journalists have been compelled to seek refuge outside Burkina Faso, facing threats of imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearance, and forced military enrollment as a direct consequence of their professional activities.

Following Idrissa Barry’s arrest, one journalist informed Human Rights Watch, “I have departed from Ouagadougou with no plans to return. Independent media has ceased to exist in this nation – only state propaganda is now heard.”

This recent surge in suppression targeting independent media coincides with a nationwide intensification of conflict. In the last fortnight, the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM, also known as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimin, JNIM) launched assaults on military positions across various regions, resulting in casualties among both soldiers and civilians. Local accounts indicate that on March 15, GSIM combatants attacked the military base in Séguénéga, northern Burkina Faso, claiming the lives of seven civilians and at least four soldiers who were fighting alongside local militias. Human Rights Watch confirmed the authenticity of a video depicting GSIM fighters overrunning a fortified hilltop complex in central Séguénéga.

An exiled Burkinabe journalist lamented, “Burkina Faso’s relentless slide into widespread violence is not garnering the domestic attention and press coverage it warrants, largely due to the silencing of independent media outlets. Recent tragedies, including the fatal assault on civilians in Solenzo and other locations, are either entirely ignored by pro-government media or presented with a clear bias.”

International human rights frameworks explicitly forbid arbitrary limitations on freedom of expression, encompassing the detention or enforced disappearance of journalists. Burkina Faso, as a State Party to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, adheres to a definition of enforced disappearance that includes the arrest or detention of an individual by state agents, subsequently followed by a denial of their deprivation of liberty or a refusal to disclose their fate or location.

Ilaria Allegrozzi emphasized, “The necessity for independent media within Burkina Faso has reached an unprecedented level of urgency.” She urged, “Authorities must reverse their current trajectory and cease their harsh suppression of journalists, dissenting voices, and political adversaries.”