On March 24, 2025, intelligence officers took the president of the Association of Burkinabe Journalists (AJB), Guézouma Sanogo, and Vice President Boukari Ouoba to an unknown location after Sanogo criticized the intimidation and “kidnapping” of journalists in public remarks made during the AJB’s March 21 meeting.
Two National Security Council intelligence agents also arrested Luc Pagbelguem at the privately owned channel BF1 TV’s offices in the capital, Ouagadougou, to question him about his report on the AJB meeting.
The journalists’ whereabouts were not publicly known until early April 2025, when they appeared wearing military uniforms in a brief video posted online, apparently having been conscripted.
On March 26, the regulatory Superior Council of Communication fined BF1 TV 500,000 CFA francs (US$822) and suspended Pagbelguem from what it called “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 what he called “propaganda” outlets — the national broadcaster Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina (RTB) and AIB press agency, which are both state-owned — and said that “attacks on press freedom have reached an unprecedented level.” Sanogo works for RTB and Ouoba with the privately owned newspaper Le Reporter.
The day before the meeting, the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Mobility had said in a statement that it considered AJB to be “dissolved or nonexistent” since 2019 because of its alleged noncompliance with the law, and that anyone who sought to support or maintain a nonfunctioning association would face sanctions.
In the two-minute video of the journalists in uniform, published in early April 2025 by several Burkinabe Facebookaccounts, Ouoba, Sanogo, and Pagbelguem appear in an undisclosed location with armed men, some in Burkinabe army uniforms, behind them. A representative from AJB who requested anonymity for safety reasons confirmed to CPJ that they were the three journalists who had been missing since they were arrested.
CPJ’s calls in April 2025 to Prime Minister Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo, government spokesperson Pingdwendé Gilbert Ouedraogo, and the ministry of defense for comment were not answered.
Under Ibrahim Traoré, who took control of Burkina Faso in a September 2022 coup, authorities cracked down on the press, with journalists disappearing, foreign correspondents expelled, and broadcasters suspended or banned.
Sanogo was released unconditionally on July 21, 2025. Pagbelguem and Ouoba were released just before him, on July 17.