Le Monde, Liberation, RFI … In Burkina Faso, the junta extinguishes the voices of the French media

The junta in power in Burkina Faso continues its work of undermining the French media. The correspondents of two major French dailies, Sophie Douce du Monde and Agnès Faivre of Liberation, were expelled from the country on Saturday April 1, five days after the suspension of the France 24 television channel and four months after that of Radio France Internationale (RFI). ). These expulsions only concern French media for the time being, a new sign of the deterioration of the press and relations with France, in this country bruised by jihadist violence.

These expulsions were notified orally, without justification. In fact, they intervene after the coverage by these newspapers of war crimes committed by Burkinabé soldiers in the name of the fight against the terrorists who destabilize large parts of the territory. Liberation had notably published an investigation into a video showing children and adolescents executed in a military barracks, by at least one soldier. The authorities had immediately qualified the article as “manipulations disguised as journalism to tarnish the image of the country of honest men”.

The pretext: a chronicle

Again taking the pretext of subjects related to terrorism, the junta which came to power in September 2022 had interrupted “sine die” on March 27, 2023 the signal of France 24, the French television channel of international information. The pretext: a chronicle dated March 6 of excerpts from written responses from the head of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) to questions asked by a journalist from the channel. Accused of having acted “as a communication agency for terrorists”, France 24 specified in a press release that the channel “never gave the floor directly” to the head of AQIM, “taking care to relate its words in the form of a chronicle allowing the necessary distancing and contextualization”.

The suspension was anything but a surprise for the channel’s journalists who had been subjected to threats and pressure from the authorities. It is in the logical continuation of the ban on broadcasting from Radio France Internationale, decided on December 3, 2022, for very similar reasons. These two media, which are widely followed in French-speaking Africa, have already been banned in Mali since the spring of 2022. Here again, the air suspensions had been strongly linked to the deterioration of diplomatic relations between France and the Malian authorities, against a backdrop of rapprochement. with Russia.

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