(Nairobi) – The military junta governing Burkina Faso detained three journalists on March 24, 2025, for their reporting on the government’s escalating crackdown on media, Human Rights Watch announced today.
Authorities 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, in the capital city of Ouagadougou. 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 illustrate the Burkina Faso junta’s desperate attempt 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 these journalists. »
Since seizing power in a 2022 coup, President Ibrahim Traoré’s military junta has systematically suppressed media outlets, political opposition, and peaceful dissent. Amidst a growing Islamist insurgency, the military junta has utilized broad emergency legislation to silence dissent and unlawfully conscript critics, journalists, civil society activists, and magistrates into the army.
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. On March 24, plainclothes men identifying themselves as police intelligence officers arrested Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba. Two intelligence agents detained 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 unsuccessfully for them across various police stations and gendarmeries in the capital, with authorities failing to officially respond to their inquiries. On March 25, intelligence services brought Sanogo and Ouoba to their homes for police searches, then relocated them to an undisclosed location, according to their colleagues.
BF1 stated that agents from the National Security Council had assured them they « only wished to question our colleague », yet Luc Pagbelguem’s whereabouts remain unknown. The television channel formally apologized 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 location also remains unknown. Idrissa Barry is a member of the political group Servir et Non se Servir (SENS), 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 renowned 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 eventually acknowledged that the three men had been conscripted into military service. Their current whereabouts also remain undisclosed.
In April 2024, the Conseil supérieur de la 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 the army’s alleged crimes against humanity targeting civilians in the 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, enforced disappearance, and forced enlistment as a direct consequence of their professional work.
« I 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 the deaths of both soldiers and civilians. Local sources reported that on March 15, GSIM fighters assaulted the military base in Séguénéga, in the country’s north, killing seven civilians and at least four soldiers fighting alongside local militias. Human Rights Watch verified a video depicting GSIM fighters storming a fortified hilltop complex in central Séguénéga.
« Burkina Faso’s relentless descent into widespread violence is not receiving the national attention and media coverage it deserves because independent media have been silenced », an exiled Burkinabè journalist commented. « Recent events, such as the deadly attack on civilians in Solenzo and elsewhere, are either never covered by pro-government media or are reported with a severe 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 reveal the person’s fate or whereabouts.
« The necessity for independent media in Burkina Faso has never been more critical », Ilaria Allegrozzi asserted. « Authorities should reverse course and end their brutal repression against journalists, dissidents, and political opponents. »
