(Nairobi) – The military junta governing Burkina Faso detained three journalists on March 24, 2025, for their reporting on the government’s ongoing crackdown on media, Human Rights Watch announced today.
Authorities in the capital, Ouagadougou, apprehended 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. The current whereabouts of these three individuals remain undisclosed, raising serious concerns about potential forced disappearances.
« The arbitrary arrest and disappearance of these three journalists demonstrate the Burkina Faso junta’s desperate attempts to control information and ensure military authorities can commit abuses with impunity », 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 systematically suppressed independent media, political opposition, and peaceful dissent. Amidst a growing Islamist insurgency, the junta has leveraged a broad emergency law to silence dissenting voices and unlawfully conscript critics, 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 to demand the release of arbitrarily detained journalists. On March 24, plainclothes men identifying as police from Burkinabè intelligence services arrested Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba. Two intelligence agents apprehended Luc Pagbelguem for reporting on the AJB 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, and that authorities have provided no official response to inquiries about their whereabouts. According to their colleagues, intelligence services escorted Guezouma Sanogo and Boukari Ouoba to their homes on March 25 for police searches, then took them to an undisclosed location once more.
BF1 channel stated that agents from the National Security Council had assured them they « only wished to speak with 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 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 issued a statement condemning « deadly attacks » perpetrated by government forces and allied militias against civilians near 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 finally acknowledged that the three men had been conscripted into military service. Their current locations also remain unknown.
In April 2024, the Superior Council for Communication (CSC), Burkina Faso’s media oversight body, 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 alleged crimes against humanity committed by the army against 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, forced disappearance, and forced conscription for their professional work.
« I have 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 wave of repression targeting independent media has coincided with an escalation of conflict across the nation. 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 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 has verified a video showing 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 », an exiled Burkinabè journalist commented. « Recent events, such as the deadly attack on civilians in Solenzo and elsewhere, are either entirely ignored by pro-government media or covered with a significant bias. »
International human rights law, including the right to freedom of expression, prohibits arbitrary restrictions, such as the detention or forced disappearance of journalists. The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Forced Disappearance, to which Burkina Faso is a state party, defines forced 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 affirmed. « Authorities should reverse course and cease their brutal repression against journalists, dissidents, and political opponents. »