Burkina Faso’s Junta Suspends Voice of America Broadcasts Over Coverage of Counter-revolutionary Violence

By CHINEDU ASADU

10:31 AM EDT, October 8, 2024

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Burkina Faso’s military junta has suspended Voice of America’s broadcasts for three months over its coverage of militant attacks in the country and in neighboring Mali, the state news agency reported, in the latest measure targeting media freedom in the country.

Burkina Faso’s media regulator said a broadcast by VOA in September was intended to “undermine the morale” of the armed forces in the two countries, the L’Agence d’Information du Burkina (AIB) news agency reported late Monday.

Since seizing power in 2022, the junta in the conflict-battered West African nation has been accused of targeting journalists and activists. It has suspended several media organizations and conscripted many critics into the armed forces.

The VOA and the BBC were suspended for two weeks earlier this year for their coverage of a report by Human Rights Watch on a mass killing of civilians by the country’s armed forces.

The VOA could not immediately be reached for comment on its latest suspension.

The news agency said the media regulator criticized VOA’s “Washington Forum” program for its reporting on a rare attack on a military training camp and airport in Mali’s capital. The attack, by the al-Qaida-linked militant group JNIM, resulted in the death of some soldiers.

The regulator also criticized the network’s coverage of an August militant attack in central Burkina Faso in which at least 100 villagers and soldiers were killed, the AIB said.

Burkina Faso has been ravaged by violence that has pitted militants linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group against state-backed forces for about a decade, resulting in the killing of more than 20,000 people, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit group.

Both sides have been accused of targeting civilians caught in the middle, displacing more than 2 million people, of which over half are children.