(Nairobi) – The military junta governing Burkina Faso detained three journalists on March 24, 2025, for reporting on the government’s escalating suppression of media, Human Rights Watch announced today.
Authorities apprehended 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, in the capital city, Ouagadougou. The current whereabouts of these three individuals remain unknown, raising serious concerns about potential enforced disappearances.
« The arbitrary detention and disappearance of these three journalists reveal the Burkina Faso junta’s desperate attempts to control information and ensure military authorities can commit abuses without accountability, » stated Ilaria Allegrozzi, 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 independent media, political opposition, and peaceful dissent. Amidst a growing Islamist insurgency, the military regime has utilized expansive emergency legislation to silence critics and unlawfully conscript dissenting journalists, civil society activists, and magistrates into the armed forces.
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 individuals identifying themselves as police officers from Burkina Faso’s intelligence services arrested Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba. Two intelligence agents subsequently apprehended 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 unsuccessfully searched for them across various police stations and gendarmeries in the capital, with authorities providing no official response to their inquiries. On March 25, intelligence services brought Sanogo and Ouoba to their homes for police searches before taking them once again to an undisclosed location, according to their colleagues.
BF1 channel stated that agents from the National Security Council assured them they “only wished to interview our colleague,” yet Luc Pagbelguem’s whereabouts remain unknown. The channel formally apologized for broadcasting the press conference.
In another recent incident, on March 18, men claiming to be gendarmes arrested prominent political activist and journalist Idrissa Barry in Ouagadougou. His location is also currently unknown. Idrissa Barry is a member of the political group Servir et Non se Servir (SENS), which had, four days prior to his arrest, published 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 renowned journalist Serge Oulon, 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 the three men had been conscripted into military service. Their current locations are still undisclosed.
In April 2024, the Superior Council of Communication (CSC), which oversees media in Burkina Faso, 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 army-committed 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 due to threats of imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearance, and forced conscription for their professional activities.
« 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 surge in repression against independent media coincides with an escalation of conflict across the nation. Over the past fortnight, the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM, or Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen, JNIM) has launched attacks on 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 combatants 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 warrants because independent media has been silenced, » remarked an exiled Burkinabè journalist. « Recent events, such as the deadly attack on civilians in Solenzo and other areas, are either completely ignored by pro-government media or covered with 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 Forced 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 emphasized. « Authorities must change course and cease their brutal repression of journalists, dissidents, and political opponents. »