Dakar, March 26, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on authorities in Burkina Faso to urgently disclose the whereabouts of journalists Guézouma Sanogo, Boukari Ouoba, and Luc Pagbelguem, who were arrested on Monday, and release them unconditionally.
Intelligence officers took the Association of Burkinabe Journalists (ABJ) president Sanogo and vice-president Ouoba to an unknown location after Sanogo criticized the intimidation and “kidnapping” of journalists at the media group’s March 21 meeting.
Two National Security Council intelligence agents also arrested Pagbelguem at the privately owned channel BF1 TV’s offices in the capital, Ouagadougou, to question him about his report on the ABJ meeting.
“Given the worrying pattern in Burkina Faso of journalists being detained and disappearing under murky circumstances, it is imperative that authorities reveal what has happened to Guézouma Sanogo, Boukary Ouoba, and Luc Pagbelguem,” said Moussa Ngom, CPJ’s Francophone Africa representative. “Four Burkinabe journalists went missing last year, and only months later did the public learn that at least three of them had been conscripted into the military.”
On March 26, the regulatory Superior Council of Communication fined BF1 TV 500,000 CFA francs (US$822) and suspended Pagbelguem — who was still missing — from audiovisual activity for two weeks, as it condemned his report as “insulting, defamatory, and malicious.”
At the media association meeting, Sanogo also criticized authorities’ “total control” over the state-owned “propaganda” outlets RTB and AIB press agency, and said that “attacks on press freedom have reached an unprecedented level.” Sanogo works for the national broadcaster Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina (RTB) and Ouoba with the privately owned newspaper Le Reporter.
On March 25, the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Mobility said that the association had been considered “dissolved or non-existent” since 2019 for alleged non-compliance with the law, and anyone who sought to support or maintain a dissolved association would face sanctions.
Under Ibrahim Traoré, who took control of Burkina Faso in a September 2022 coup, authorities have cracked down on the press, with journalists disappearing, foreign correspondents expelled, and broadcasters suspended or banned.
CPJ’s calls to request comment from government spokesperson Pingdwendé Gilbert Ouedraogo were not answered.