Photo Credit: File Photo
Burkina Faso is currently under the rule of a military junta that came to power through a coup in 2022. Their aim was to put an end to the Islamist insurgency in the country. However, the violence has not ceased and instead, it has intensified. At present, more than a third of Burkina Faso is under the control of jihadist groups.
The government of Burkina Faso has suspended several foreign media outlets over their coverage of an alleged massacre, in which hundreds of civilians were allegedly killed by the Burkinabe army. This decision came after the military regime suspended the BBC, Voice of America, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) for their reports on the matter, thereby halting broadcasts and blocking websites. The suspension of these media outlets, including The Guardian, Le Monde, TV5Monde, Deutsche Welle, and Agence Ecofin, was announced in a statement over the weekend. Access to their websites has been blocked until further notice.
According to one of the burned media groups, the Burkinabe troops killed at least 223 people, including 56 children, in attacks on two villages in the country's north on February 25th. The report accused the military of a widespread campaign against civilians accused of collaborating with Islamist armed groups, and suggested that these killings may amount to crimes against humanity. Villagers reportedly claimed that the attacks were reprisals for an earlier jihadist attack on a military camp near the villages.
In response to these allegations, the Burkinabe authorities accused foreign media of carrying out a "media campaign" to discredit their fighting forces. Burkina Faso's communication minister also dismissed HRW's report, calling it baseless and accusing the organization of having a "boundless imagination."Burkina Faso's Communications Minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo released a statement on Saturday, strongly rejecting and condemning baseless accusations made against the government. The minister expressed his surprise that despite an ongoing inquiry to establish the facts and identify the culprits, HRW has managed to identify 'the guilty' and pronounce its verdict using boundless imagination.
These suspensions are just the latest in a series of media restrictions imposed by the junta led by Ibrahim Traoré, who became Africa's youngest leader after a coup in September 2022. French media have been particularly targeted as relations between the former colonial power and French-speaking Africa continue to sour. Traoré's rise to power came amid insurgent violence that began seeping in from neighboring Mali in 2015, leading to political instability across the Sahel region. More than 2 million people have been displaced, and thousands of civilians and security personnel have been killed in Burkina Faso. Even the change of political order has failed to extinguish the conflict, with an uptick in violence in 2023 resulting in 8,000 deaths that year, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled). As a result, the army and state-backed vigilantes have been accused of torturing or killing villagers suspected of harboring or aiding the rebels.
