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

In Ouagadougou, the capital, authorities detained Guezouma Sanogo, president of the Association of Journalists of Burkina (AJB), Boukari Ouoba, its vice-president, and Luc Pagbelguem, a journalist with the private television channel BF1. The current location of these three individuals remains undisclosed, raising serious concerns about potential forced disappearances.

« The arbitrary detention and disappearance of these three journalists reveal the Burkina Faso junta’s desperate attempts to manipulate information and ensure military authorities can act with impunity », stated Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch. « The military junta must take immediate action to locate and secure the release of these three journalists. »

Since seizing power in a 2022 coup, the military junta led by President Ibrahim Traoré has consistently suppressed media freedom, political opposition, and peaceful dissent. Amidst a growing Islamist insurgency, the junta has leveraged broad emergency legislation to silence critics and unlawfully conscript journalists, civil society activists, and magistrates into the military.

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 officers, identifying themselves as Burkinabè intelligence police, apprehended Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba. Separately, two intelligence agents arrested Luc Pagbelguem for his coverage of the AJB’s press briefing. The following day, the Minister of Territorial Administration and Mobility officially dissolved the AJB.

Colleagues of Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba reported that legal representatives unsuccessfully searched for them across various police stations and gendarmerie posts in the capital, with authorities failing to provide any official response to inquiries. On March 25, intelligence services reportedly took Sanogo and Ouoba to their homes to assist police searches, only to then transport them to an undisclosed location, according to their associates.

BF1 stated that National Security Council agents had « only wished to interview our colleague », yet Luc Pagbelguem’s whereabouts remain unknown. The television channel subsequently issued a formal apology for broadcasting the press conference.

In another recent detention, on March 18, individuals claiming to be gendarmes arrested prominent political activist and journalist Idrissa Barry in Ouagadougou. His current location is also unknown. Barry is a member of the political group Servir et Non se Servir (SENS), which, just four days prior to his arrest, had released a statement condemning « deadly 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 detention until October 2024, when they finally acknowledged that all three had been conscripted into military service. Their whereabouts also remain undisclosed.

In April 2024, Burkina Faso’s Superior Council of Communication (CSC), the country’s media oversight body, suspended French television channel TV5 Monde and several other news outlets for two weeks. This action followed their reporting on a Human Rights Watch report detailing the army’s alleged commission of 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, facing threats of imprisonment, torture, forced disappearance, and involuntary conscription due to their professional activities.

« I have left Ouagadougou and do not intend to return », one journalist told Human Rights Watch following Idrissa Barry’s arrest. « Free media is dead in this country – all we hear is government propaganda. »

This latest wave of repression against independent media has unfolded concurrently with an escalation of conflict across the nation. Over the past fortnight, the Al-Qaïda-affiliated Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM, or Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen, JNIM) launched attacks on army positions in multiple regions, resulting in the deaths of both soldiers and civilians. Local sources indicated that on March 15, GSIM fighters assaulted the Séguénéga military base in the north, killing seven civilians and at least four soldiers who were fighting alongside local militias. Human Rights Watch independently verified a video depicting GSIM combatants storming a fortified hilltop complex in central Séguénéga.

« Burkina Faso’s relentless descent into widespread violence is not receiving the national media attention and coverage it warrants, primarily because independent media outlets have been silenced », remarked a Burkinabè journalist in exile. « Recent incidents, such as the deadly attack on civilians in Solenzo and other locations, are either entirely ignored or reported with a distinct bias by pro-government media. »

International human rights law expressly 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 signatory state, defines forced disappearance as the arrest or detention of an individual by state officials or their agents, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or to disclose the person’s fate or whereabouts.

« The necessity for independent media in Burkina Faso has never been more critical », asserted Ilaria Allegrozzi. « Authorities must reverse course and cease their brutal repression targeting journalists, dissidents, and political opponents ».