By BBC Africa and Voice of America (VOA) have been suspended in Burkina Faso over their coverage of a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report accusing its military of abuses against civilians.
Broadcasts have been stopped and access to their websites and digital platforms restricted. HRW has also been banned.
It comes after HRW released a report accusing the Burkinabè army of massacring at least 223 civilians on 25 February in the north of the country.
The bans are in place for two weeks.
In a statement on Thursday, the West African nation’s media regulator warned all local media outlets against covering the HRW report, threatening sanctions against those who do so, state-owned news agency Agence d’Information du Burkina (AIB) reported.
In an article on Friday, VOA said it “stands by its reporting about Burkina Faso and intends to continue to fully and fairly cover activities in the country”.
The HRW report detailed the findings from their investigation into mass killings committed earlier this year. It alleged that Burkina Faso’s military killed 179 people in Soro and 44 others in the nearby Nondin, villages in the country’s north.
The mass killings are believed to be retaliation by the military, which accused the villagers of aiding armed Islamist fighters.
HRW called the mass killings the country’s “worst army abuse” in nearly a decade.
Supporters of the military junta have previously criticised the media for reporting alleged atrocities, saying that reporting is designed to hit the morale of Burkina Faso’s armed forces.
In December 2023, the West African nation suspended French daily Le Monde, accusing it of biased reporting.
It also suspended three other international media outlets at varying times last year, including French-language magazine Jeune Afrique, French TV channel La Chaîne Info (LCI) and French state-owned media organisation France24.
The Sahel country is ruled by a military junta, which seized power in a coup in 2022, promising to end an Islamist insurgency.
The violence has however continued to escalate, with more than a third of Burkina Faso controlled by jihadist groups.
International and human rights groups including the European Union and UN have accused Burkina Faso of serious human rights violations in its fight against insurgency, including the indiscriminate killings and forced disappearances of dozens of civilians.
Soure: BBC
