(Nairobi) – Human Rights Watch reported today that the military junta in Burkina Faso apprehended three journalists on March 24, 2025, for their reporting on the government’s severe restrictions against media outlets.
Authorities took into custody Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba, who serve as president and vice-president of the Association of Journalists of Burkina (AJB), respectively, along with Luc Pagbelguem, a journalist from the private television channel BF1. These arrests occurred 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 subsequent disappearance of these three journalists clearly demonstrate the Burkina Faso junta’s desperate attempt to control information and ensure that military authorities can commit abuses without accountability,” stated Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The military junta must act immediately 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 growing Islamist insurgency, the junta has leveraged sweeping emergency legislation to silence critics and unlawfully conscript opponents, journalists, civil society activists, and magistrates into military service.
On March 21, the AJB held a press conference to condemn the 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. Additionally, two intelligence agents detained Luc Pagbelguem for his coverage of the AJB press conference. The following day, March 25, the Minister of Territorial Administration and Mobility officially 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, and that authorities have provided no official response to inquiries about their whereabouts. On March 25, intelligence services reportedly escorted Sanogo and Ouoba to their homes for police searches before taking them again to an undisclosed location, according to their colleagues.
BF1 television channel stated that agents from the National Security Council assured them they “only wished to question our colleague,” yet Luc Pagbelguem’s location remains 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 current whereabouts are also unknown. Idrissa 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 denouncing “deadly attacks” by government forces and allied militias against civilians near Solenzo, in western Burkina Faso, on March 11.
In June 2024, security forces apprehended 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 locations also remain undisclosed.
In April 2024, the Superior Council of Communication (CSC), Burkina Faso’s media oversight body, suspended the French television channel TV5 Monde and several other media outlets for two weeks. This action followed their reporting on a Human Rights Watch report that documented the army committing crimes against humanity against 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 due to threats of imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearance, and forced conscription as a direct consequence of their professional work.
“I have departed Ouagadougou and have no intention of returning,” a journalist told Human Rights Watch after Idrissa Barry’s arrest. “Free media is dead in this nation – all one hears is government propaganda.”
This latest surge in repression targeting independent media has coincided with a dramatic escalation of conflict across the country. Over the past 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) has launched attacks on army positions in multiple regions, resulting in the deaths of both 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 who were fighting alongside local militias. Human Rights Watch has 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 deserves because independent media has been silenced,” commented an exiled Burkinabè journalist. “Recent events, such as the deadly attack on civilians in Solenzo and other locations, are either entirely ignored by pro-government media or covered with a significant bias.”
International human rights law expressly 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 person’s fate or whereabouts.
“The necessity for independent media in Burkina Faso has never been more critical,” Ilaria Allegrozzi asserted. “Authorities must reverse course and cease their brutal repression against journalists, dissidents, and political opponents.”
