Burkina Faso: journalists apprehended amidst intensifying media crackdown

(Nairobi) – The military junta governing Burkina Faso detained three journalists on March 24, 2025, for reporting on the government’s escalating suppression of media, Human Rights Watch announced today.

Authorities in the capital, Ouagadougou, apprehended Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba, who serve as president and vice-president of the Association of Journalists of Burkina (AJB), respectively, along with Luc Pagbelguem, a journalist from the private television channel BF1. The current whereabouts of these three individuals remain unknown, raising serious concerns about potential forced disappearances.

“The arbitrary arrests and subsequent disappearance of these three journalists underscore the Burkina Faso junta’s desperate attempts to control information and ensure military authorities can commit abuses with impunity,” stated Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The military junta must take immediate steps to locate and release all three journalists.”

Since seizing power in a 2022 coup, President Ibrahim Traoré’s military junta has systematically stifled independent media, political opposition, and peaceful dissent. Amidst a growing Islamist insurgency, the military junta has invoked sweeping emergency legislation to silence dissent and has unlawfully conscripted critics, journalists, civil society activists, and even magistrates into the armed forces.

On March 21, the AJB held a press conference to condemn the military junta’s restrictions on freedom of expression and demand the release of arbitrarily detained journalists. Three days later, on March 24, plainclothes individuals identifying themselves as police officers from Burkinabè intelligence services arrested Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba. Two intelligence agents subsequently arrested Luc Pagbelguem for his coverage of the AJB’s press conference. The following day, the Minister of Territorial Administration and Mobility dissolved the AJB.

Colleagues of Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba reported that lawyers searched numerous police stations and gendarmeries in the capital without success, and authorities have not provided any official response to inquiries about their whereabouts. On March 25, intelligence services took Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba to their homes to facilitate police searches, then transported them again to an undisclosed location, according to their colleagues.

BF1 channel stated that agents from the National Security Council had assured them they “only wished to speak with our colleague,” yet Luc Pagbelguem’s location remains unknown. The channel later formally apologized for broadcasting the press conference.

In another recent case of apprehension, on March 18, men claiming to be gendarmes arrested prominent political activist and journalist Idrissa Barry in Ouagadougou. His whereabouts also remain unknown. Idrissa Barry is a member of the Servir et Non se Servir (SENS) political group, which, four days prior to his arrest, had issued a statement condemning “deadly attacks” by government forces and allied militias against civilians around Solenzo, in western Burkina Faso, on March 11.

In June 2024, security forces detained the distinguished journalist Serge Oulon, director of the investigative newspaper L’Événement, along with television commentators Adama Bayala and Kalifara Séré. Authorities initially denied their detention until October 2024, when they finally acknowledged that the three men had been conscripted into military service. Their current location is also still unknown.

In April 2024, the Superior Council of Communication (CSC), Burkina Faso’s media regulatory body, suspended the French television channel TV5 Monde and several other media outlets for two weeks after they reported on a Human Rights Watch report detailing that the army had committed crimes against humanity targeting civilians in Yatenga province. The CSC also blocked Human Rights Watch’s website within the country.

Dozens of journalists have been compelled to flee Burkina Faso due to threats of imprisonment, torture, forced disappearance, and forced conscription as a consequence of their professional work.

“I have left Ouagadougou and have no intention of returning,” a journalist told Human Rights Watch after Idrissa Barry’s arrest. “Free media is dead in this country – all one hears is government propaganda.”

This latest wave of repression against independent media coincides with an escalation of conflict across the nation. Over the past two weeks, the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM, or Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen, JNIM) has attacked army positions in multiple regions, resulting in casualties among soldiers and civilians. Local sources reported that on March 15, GSIM fighters assaulted the military base in Séguénéga, northern Burkina Faso, killing seven civilians and at least four soldiers who were fighting alongside local militias. Human Rights Watch verified a video showing GSIM fighters storming a fortified complex on a hilltop in central Séguénéga.

“Burkina Faso’s relentless descent into widespread violence is not receiving the national attention and media coverage it warrants because independent media has been silenced,” commented a Burkinabè journalist in exile. “Recent events, such as the deadly attack on civilians in Solenzo and elsewhere, are either completely ignored by pro-government media or covered in a biased manner.”

International human rights law prohibits arbitrary restrictions on freedom of expression, including through the detention or forced disappearance of journalists. The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, to which Burkina Faso is a state party, defines forced disappearances as the arrest or detention of a person by state officials or their agents, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or to reveal the person’s fate or whereabouts.

“The need for independent media in Burkina Faso has never been more critical,” Ilaria Allegrozzi affirmed. “Authorities should reverse course and end their brutal crackdown on journalists, dissidents, and political opponents.”