The threats to journalists are increasingly alarming in the Sahel, their working conditions increasingly dangerous. Latest illustration of the hostile and poisoned climate in which the media operate, the expulsion by the Burkinabe junta of correspondents from daily newspapers The world et Release, Saturday, April 1. And this, five days after the suspension of the television channel France 24, and four months after that of Radio France Internationale (RFI).
If the official reason for this last expulsion was not notified to the two interested parties, it comes after investigations into war crimes committed by Burkinabe soldiers.
Release notably devoted an article to a video showing children and adolescents murdered in a Burkinabe barracks. The junta immediately qualified this subject as “manipulations disguised as journalism to tarnish the image of the country of honest men”.
A triple threat
In a report published on Monday 3 April, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) notes, in turn, the alarming deterioration in the working conditions of the media in the Sahel strip, judging that the geopolitical space which extends from Mauritania to Chad is about to become « Africa’s largest no-information zone”. RSF notes that independent journalists, whether Western or African, are under the triple threat of armed groups, authoritarian states and their foreign allies such as the Russian private company, Wagner.
“Five journalists were murdered, and six others went missing between 2013 and 2023”, notes RSF. Nearly 120 journalists have been arrested or detained over the past ten years, including 72 in Chad alone.
Maximum risk of kidnapping
If the French journalist Olivier Dubois, kidnapped in Gao on April 8, 2021, has regained his freedom after 711 days of captivity, two other Malian journalists, Hamadoun Nialibouly and Moussa M’Bana Dicko, also kidnapped by armed groups in Mali, are at to this day still missing. “Journalists are seen as potential bargaining chips. One of them was kidnapped for articles that had displeased his captors”underlines RSF.
In addition to direct threats, there are administrative restrictions or bans to prevent them from going to the places where they are investigating. Result ? The areas that are forbidden or difficult to access for journalists are increasingly extensive.
The supervision of the press
“In Chad, Burkina Faso and Mali, the deterioration of the situation of the media is exacerbated by the coming to power of the juntas. Their pressure and their patriotic injunctions favor the development of a journalism under orders and a phenomenon of omerta around certain sensitive subjects.explains Sadibou Marong, director of RSF’s Sub-Saharan Africa office.
On the grounds of fighting cyberterrorism, journalists who displease governments are arrested as for Ignace Sossou, of Benin Web TV, in 2020. These restrictive measures “leave the field open to media favorable to the pro-Russian narrative defending the presence of Wagner’s mercenaries in the region, and contribute to the explosion of disinformation adds Sadibou Marong.
The neighboring countries of the Sahel too
Press freedom is also under attack in the countries bordering the Sahel. In Algeria, press boss Ihsane El Kadi, prosecuted for “foreign financing of his company”, was sentenced on Sunday April 2 to five years in prison, three of which are closed. His press group, one of the last independents in Algeria, was sentenced to dissolution, all its seized assets confiscated and he must pay a fine of ten million dinars (over €68,000).
The access of the international press to Cameroon is difficult, articles that are unpleasant to the authorities and their clan are risky for Cameroonian journalists, as evidenced by the assassination of Martinez Zogo in January 2023. In Senegal, restrictions against freedom of the press are also multiplying, as are also alarmed by the NGOs for the defense of human rights.