(Nairobi) – Human Rights Watch reported today that the military junta in Burkina Faso detained three journalists on March 24, 2025, for their coverage of the government’s escalating crackdown on media outlets.
Authorities in the capital, Ouagadougou, apprehended Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba, who serve as president and vice-president respectively of the Association of Journalists of Burkina (AJB). Also arrested was Luc Pagbelguem, a journalist with the private television channel BF1. The current whereabouts of these three individuals remain undisclosed, 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 act 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 consistently suppressed independent media, political opposition, and peaceful dissent. Amidst a worsening Islamist insurgency, the junta has utilized a broad emergency law to silence critics and unlawfully conscript opponents, 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 men identifying themselves as police from Burkina Faso’s intelligence services apprehended Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba. Two intelligence agents also arrested Luc Pagbelguem for reporting on 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 for them unsuccessfully across various police stations and gendarmeries in the capital, with authorities failing to provide any official response to inquiries. On March 25, intelligence services brought Sanogo and Ouoba to their homes for police searches, then took them away again 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 channel subsequently issued a formal apology for broadcasting the press conference.
In another recent detention, on March 18, men claiming to be gendarmes arrested prominent political activist and journalist Idrissa Barry in Ouagadougou. His location is 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 condemning « deadly attacks » carried out by government forces and allied militias against civilians around 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 initially denied their detention until October 2024, when they eventually acknowledged that the three men had been forcibly conscripted into military service. Their whereabouts remain undisclosed as well.
In April 2024, the Superior Council of Communication (CSC), Burkina Faso’s media regulator, 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 Yatenga province. The CSC also blocked Human Rights Watch’s website within the country.
Numerous journalists have been compelled to flee Burkina Faso, facing threats of imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearance, and forced conscription due to their professional work.
« I have left Ouagadougou and have no intention of returning, » a journalist told Human Rights Watch following 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. In the preceding 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) 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 verified a video depicting GSIM fighters storming a fortified hilltop compound 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 has been silenced, » an exiled Burkinabè journalist commented. « Recent events, such as the deadly attack on civilians in Solenzo and elsewhere, are either ignored by pro-government media or reported with a distinct 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 Forced Disappearance, to which Burkina Faso is a state party, defines enforced 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 fate or whereabouts of the person.
« The necessity for independent media in Burkina Faso has never been more critical, » Ilaria Allegrozzi affirmed. « Authorities should reverse course and cease their brutal crackdown on journalists, dissidents, and political opponents. »
