Since Zongo’s announcement, no evidence has emerged to confirm that the three journalists were indeed conscripted — they may be locked up, or worse. Yet, four months after his statement, on 24 March, three more journalists, Guezouma Sanogo, Boukari Ouoba and Luc Pagbelguem, were abducted from their respective workplaces in Ouagadougou, the capital… On 2 April, just over a week after their disappearance, all three showed up in a video circulating online wearing army uniforms and bearing shaved heads, in what appears to be a military zone.
Since he came to power, Captain Ibrahim Traoré has been trampling on Burkina Faso’s renowned culture of journalism with his repressive military boots, from banning news outlets to exiling reporters in the name of nationalism. Now, he’s resorting to a deeply alarming new tactic to stifle press freedom hardly seen anywhere else on the African continent: journalists who criticise the government are being forcibly conscripted into the army.
A dramatic development in June 2024 thrust the situation into the spotlight: four news professionals — Serge Oulon, Adama Bayala, Kalifara Séré and Alain Traoré — were abducted in the space of ten days. All of them had made public statements that displeased the authorities. Oulon was one of the last Burkinabè journalists to cover security issues and had revealed suspicions of embezzlement within the army in his investigative newspaper, L’Événement. News commentators, Bayala and Séré, were known for dissenting government policy on the private television channel, BF1. Traoré was an outspoken critic of the authorities on his satirical radio show “Le Défouloir.” Their abductions followed a chilling pattern: all were intercepted in their homes, their workplaces, or in traffic by individuals who presented themselves as intelligence agents.
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The government was completely silent about these disappearances for months. Then, on 24 October 2024, Marcel Zongo, director general of Human Rights at Burkina Faso’s Ministry of Justice, announced that Oulon, Séré and Bayala had been conscripted under the general mobilisation decree. Zongo made no comment about radio host Traoré, whose fate and whereabouts remain completely unknown to this day.
Since Zongo’s announcement, no evidence has emerged to confirm that the three journalists were indeed conscripted — they may be locked up, or worse. Yet, four months after his statement, on 24 March, three more journalists, Guezouma Sanogo, Boukari Ouoba and Luc Pagbelguem, were abducted from their respective workplaces in Ouagadougou, the capital.
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On 2 April, just over a week after their disappearance, all three showed up in a video circulating online wearing army uniforms and bearing shaved heads, in what appears to be a military zone.
A few days before his abduction, Sanogo, president of the Burkina Faso Journalists Association (AJB), condemned the junta’s “total stranglehold” on the country’s public media, which he alleged had been transformed into “propaganda tools,” at an AJB extraordinary congress session. Ouoba, AJB’s deputy chairman, was sitting next to Sanogo and remained silent during Sanogo’s speech. Still, both were abducted three days later from their workplace, the Centre National de Presse – Norbert Zongo, the national press centre named after the renowned investigative reporter murdered in 1998.
This situation cannot continue. The lack of reliable information in Burkina Faso and the rest of the Sahel, mainly due to repressive measures in the name of the “patriotic treatment of information,” makes it difficult to analyse the security situation within the Alliance of Sahel states. Now, the situation is worsening and has direct repercussions on Western African countries, including Nigeria.
By overtly seizing two prominent journalists in such a symbolic location, the authorities were clearly issuing a death warrant for the country’s press freedom. As if that weren’t enough, Luc Pagbalguem, a journalist who covered the AJB’s Extraordinary Congress for the private channel, BF1, was abducted the same day. Captain Traoré’s policy of silencing journalism via terror goes hand in hand with his open rejection of democracy. Using the pretext that Burkina Faso is at war and undergoing a “revolution,” Traoré is enforcing the “patriotic treatment of information,” meaning that news coverage should not criticise the government in power to avoid sowing dissent among citizens and members of the military.
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The Captain may aim to appear as an inspiring young leader, but no revolution can justify his appalling violations of human rights and press freedom. The one domain in which he is a visionary is finding new ways to oppress those who keep citizens informed during wartime, when the public needs trustworthy news the most.
This situation cannot continue. The lack of reliable information in Burkina Faso and the rest of the Sahel, mainly due to repressive measures in the name of the “patriotic treatment of information,” makes it difficult to analyse the security situation within the Alliance of Sahel states. Now, the situation is worsening and has direct repercussions on Western African countries, including Nigeria.
For several months, Nigeria has been one of the main countries targeted by pro-Traoré propaganda and disinformation, produced using artificial intelligence and unverified facts.
Neighbouring governments must now hold the Burkina Faso government to account — starting with the Nigerian authorities.
Sadibou Marong is the Subsaharan Africa Director for Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and he writes from Dakar Senegal.
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