News outlets suspended for reporting on massacre
OUAGADOUGOU: Burkina Faso has suspended a swathe of international news organisations in recent days for airing accusations of an army massacre of civilians, a move sparking concern on Monday.
Among those named are French newspaper Le Monde, British publication The Guardian, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) and French broadcaster TV5 Monde.
They were suspended for reporting on a Human Rights Watch (HRW) statement accusing soldiers of killing at least 223 people in revenge attacks on two villages on Feb 25.
Other news media named by the communications regulator CSC in an order dated on Saturday were French regional newspaper Ouest-France, African website APAnews and the Swissbased Agence Ecofin.
Already on Thursday, the CSC announced it had directed internet service providers to suspend access to the BBC, VOA and HRW from Burkinabe territory for two weeks.
On Monday, Britain and the United States issued a statement saying they were “gravely concerned” by reports of the killings and the subsequent media suspensions.
Referencing the HRW report, London and Washington jointly urged Ouagadougou to “thoroughly investigate these massacres and hold those responsible to account”.
The Western allies added that they “strongly oppose the suspensions of media outlets” and noted “free and independent media must be permitted to conduct investigations and goodfaith reporting without fear of reprisals”.
The European Union expressed its “firm condemnation” of the reported massacre and called on authorities to launch an “independent and impartial” investigation. Regarding the media suspensions, the EU said: “Liberty of expression and the right to information are essential elements of the rule of law.”
DW managing director of programming Nadja Sholz called on Burkinabe authorities to “unblock the website as quickly as possible”. The blocking of news coverage “means the people there are being deprived of the important right to independent information,” Ms Scholz said.
The military rulers of Burkina Faso have dismissed as “baseless” the HRW report on the massacre, which found 56 children were among the dead.
“The killings at Nodin and Soro led to the opening of a legal inquiry,” communications minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo said in a statement late on Saturday.
He expressed his surprise that “while this inquiry is underway to establish the facts and identify the authors, HRW has been able, with boundless imagination, to identify ‘the guilty’ and pronounce its verdict”.