Eight months after a similar decision taken in Mali, the Burkinabé authorities criticize the French media for having relayed an “intimidation message” attributed to a “terrorist leader”.
MO12345LEMONDE with AFP
Eight months after Mali, Burkina Faso in turn ordered on Saturday December 3, “the immediate suspension and until further notice” of Radio France International (RFI). Local authorities criticize in particular the French media for relaying an “intimidation message” attributed to a “terrorist leader”, justified the spokesman for the Burkinabé government.
By this broadcast, RFI would have contributed to “a desperate maneuver of terrorist groups in order to dissuade the thousands of Burkinabés mobilized for the defense of the fatherland”, defends a press release signed by the spokesman, Jean-Emmanuel Ouédraogo.
Earlier in the week, the support group of Islam and Muslims (GSIM, affiliated with Al-Qaida), had broadcast a video in which one of its leaders in Burkina Faso threatened to attack To villages defended by volunteers for the defense of the Fatherland (VDP), civilian army auxilions, which has just recruited 90,000 in three weeks to deal with the resurgence of jihadist attacks.
Two coups in eight months 2>
The government also criticizes RFI, French public radio, for having taken up in its Friday press review “false information, indicating that” the president of the transition, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, assures that an attempt to Coup d’état targeted its “” power. The press release recalls that “on November 3, the government had already expressed its indignation at the tendency attitude of journalists from this media and their propensity to discredit the struggle in which the Burkinabé people are engaged for more freedom and of dignity “.
Burkina Faso, the scene of two military coups in eight months and prey since 2015 to jihadist violence, is the second country in the region to prohibit RFI this year. On April 27, the ax had definitively fell in Mali, also led by putschist soldiers, for the same radio and France 24, two media from the France Médias Monde (FMM) group then already cut since mid -March – a qualified decision as “Grave” by Emmanuel Macron. The power junta accused them of having relayed information that the Malian army was involved in abuses against civilians. FMM had then denounced accusations which, “in addition to being completely unfounded”, made “reference to the radio having encouraged the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994”.