Burkina Faso: military junta intensifies media crackdown with journalist arrests

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

Authorities in Ouagadougou, the capital, arrested Guezouma Sanogo, president of the Association of Journalists of Burkina (AJB), Boukari Ouoba, the AJB’s vice-president, and Luc Pagbelguem, a journalist with the private television channel BF1. The current whereabouts of these three individuals remain unknown, raising serious concerns about potential enforced disappearances.

« The arbitrary arrests and subsequent disappearance of these three journalists demonstrate the Burkina Faso junta’s desperate attempt to control information and ensure military authorities can commit abuses with impunity », stated Ilaria Allegrozzi, a 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 consistently suppressed media outlets, political opposition, and peaceful dissent. Amidst a growing Islamist insurgency, the military junta has utilized a broad emergency law to silence dissent and unlawfully conscript critics, journalists, civil society activists, and magistrates into the army.

On March 21, the AJB organized 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 men identifying themselves as police officers from Burkinabè intelligence services arrested Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba. Simultaneously, two intelligence agents detained Luc Pagbelguem for his coverage of the AJB 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 various police stations and gendarmeries in the capital without success, and authorities have not officially responded to inquiries about their whereabouts. On March 25, intelligence services reportedly took Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba to their homes for police searches before transporting them once again to an undisclosed location, according to their colleagues.

BF1, Luc Pagbelguem’s employer, stated that agents from the National Security Council had assured them they « only wished to question our colleague », yet Pagbelguem’s location remains unknown. The channel subsequently issued a formal apology for broadcasting the press conference.

In another recent arrest, on March 18, men claiming to be gendarmes arrested prominent political activist and journalist Idrissa Barry in Ouagadougou. His whereabouts are also unknown. Barry is a member of the political group Servir et Non se Servir (SENS), which, four days prior to his arrest, had published a statement denouncing « deadly attacks » carried out by government forces and allied militias against civilians near Solenzo, western Burkina Faso, on March 11.

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

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. This action followed their reporting on a Human Rights Watch report that detailed the army’s alleged 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 forced to flee Burkina Faso due to threats of imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearance, and forced conscription for their professional activities.

« 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-Qaïda-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 fighting alongside local militias. Human Rights Watch has verified a video depicting GSIM fighters storming a fortified hilltop complex in central Séguénéga.

« Burkina Faso’s relentless descent into widespread violence isn’t receiving the national attention and media coverage it deserves because independent media has been silenced », an exiled Burkinabè journalist commented. « Recent events, such as the deadly attack on civilians in Solenzo and elsewhere, are either entirely ignored by pro-government media or covered with a significant bias. »

International human rights law prohibits arbitrary restrictions on freedom of expression, including through the detention or enforced disappearance of journalists. The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, to which Burkina Faso is a state party, defines enforced disappearance 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 disclose the fate or whereabouts of the person.

« The necessity for independent media in Burkina Faso has never been more critical », Ilaria Allegrozzi affirmed. « Authorities must reverse course and end their brutal crackdown on journalists, dissidents, and political opponents. »