On June 24, 2024, unidentified men in civilian clothes took Serge Atiana Oulon, publishing director of the privately owned bimonthly newspaper L’Événement, from his home and seized his computer and two phones as part of a media crackdown by the military government, which took power in a 2022 coup.
On October 24, 2024, Marcel Zongo, Director General for Human Rights at the Ministry of Justice, told the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights that Oulon and two other journalists, Adama Bayala and Kalifara Séré, who also went missing in June, had been conscripted.
CPJ was unable to independently confirm Oulon's conscription, but a person familiar with the case told CPJ in September 2025, on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisals, that the journalist was being held in a secret location in the capital, Ouagadougou.
On June 19, the regulatory High Council for Communication (CSC) had ordered a one-month suspension of all of L’Événement’s publications, including via social media.
The regulator alleged that Oulon’s June 10 report, which provided an update on the outlet’s 2022 investigation into alleged embezzlement of funds intended for civilian fighters supporting the army called Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland, was defamatory.
On June 20, L’Événement announced that it would challenge the decision in court.
In a February 2023 interview with the national broadcaster RTB, President Ibrahim Traoré criticized L’Evènement’s investigation, saying the outlet either did not have “the right information” or was acting in “bad faith” and the report had installed a “climate of mistrust” between soldiers and army volunteers.
In a July 2024 speech, Traoré said an unnamed journalist had been “recently conscripted” because of his reporting. This followed an emergency general mobilization in 2023 to support the government’s fight against Islamist armed groups.
Soon after Oulon’s disappearance, CSC communications director Gildas Ouédraogo told CPJ by messaging app that he was seeking authorization to answer questions. CPJ’s calls and text messages to the police and gendarmerie went unanswered.
After columnis Alain Traoré was seized by masked men in July 2024, CPJ wrote to President Traoré, expressing concern and requesting assistance in investigating the four journalists’ whereabouts. The letter received no response.
CPJ’s October 2024 calls and text messages to request comment from the then government spokesperson, Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo, and the Ministry of Justice went unanswered.
Additional calls in April 2025 to Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo, who had become Prime Minister, government spokesperson Pingdwendé Gilbert Ouedraogo, and the Ministry of Defense also went unanswered.
Séré was released on July 11 and Bayala and Alain Traoré on September 16, 2025.