More foreign media banned in Burkina Faso due to HRW report

More foreign media sites have been suspended by Burkina Faso’s media regulator due to their coverage of a report that charges the Burkinabè army of killing civilians.

The French television network TV-Cinq, the websites Le Monde and the Guardian, as well as the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, have all been outlawed by the military government.

The suspension occurs a few days after Voice of America (VOA), a US public broadcaster, and the BBC were banned from Burkina Faso for two weeks for reporting on the same Human Rights Watch (HRW) report.

In a statement released on Sunday, the Superior Council for Communication (CSC) said that the newly suspended outlets’ coverage of the HRW study “constitutes disinformation likely to bring discredit to the Burkinabè army”.More foreign media sites have been suspended by Burkina Faso’s media regulator due to their coverage of a report that charges the Burkinabè army of killing civilians.

The French television network TV-Cinq, the websites Le Monde and the Guardian, as well as the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, have all been outlawed by the military government.

The BBC and Voice of America (VOA), two US public broadcasters, were barred from Burkina Faso for two weeks for covering the same Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, just days before to the suspension.

The Superior Council for Communication (CSC) declared in a statement on Sunday that the coverage of the HRW study by the recently suspended outlets “constitutes disinformation likely to bring discredit to the Burkinabè army.”

In addition, the media watchdog threatened punishment and restated a caution to all media outlets not to cover the article.

The Burkinabe military was accused of massacring at least 223 civilians in the country’s north in February, according to a report released last Thursday by the US-based Human Rights Watch.

Authorities in Burkina Faso declared that they had launched a legal investigation to “establish the facts” and dismissed the HRW report as “baseless accusations”. (BBC)

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