Burkina Faso has suspended yet more foreign media outlets over their coverage of a report accusing its army of killing 223 civilians.<\/p>\n
The report, by US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), said it believed the the massacre in February was in retaliation for villagers aiding armed Islamists.<\/p>\n
The West African nation\u2019s military government has denied the allegation.<\/p>\n
They have already suspended the BBC and US broadcaster Voice of America for reporting on the HRW\u2019s publication.<\/p>\n
The UK and US governments said in a joint statement that they strongly opposed the suspension of media outlets in the country, and urged authorities to reconsider their decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cFree and independent media must be permitted to conduct investigations and good-faith reporting without fear of reprisals,\u201d it read.<\/p>\n
Burkina Faso is ruled by a military junta, which seized power in a coup in 2022, promising to end the Islamist insurgency.<\/p>\n
The violence has however continued to escalate, with more than a third of Burkina Faso controlled by jihadist groups.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Burkina Faso\u2019s communications regulator said broadcasts from French network TV5Monde would also be suspended for two weeks and access to its website blocked, state-owned media reported.<\/p>\n
The websites of German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW), French newspapers Le Monde and Ouest-France, British newspaper the Guardian, and African agencies APA and Ecofin have also been barred until further notice.<\/p>\n
In its report, the non-governmental organisation said that Burkina Faso\u2019s military had killed 179 people in Soro and 44 others in the nearby Nondin, villages in the country\u2019s north.<\/p>\n
The alleged killings were the country\u2019s \u201cworst army abuse\u201d in nearly a decade, HRW said.<\/p>\n
In a statement published on Saturday, Burkina Faso\u2019s Communications Minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo said: \u201cThe government of Burkina Faso strongly rejects and condemns such baseless accusations.\u201d<\/p>\n
The minister also expressed his surprise that \u201cwhile this inquiry is under way to establish the facts and identify the authors, HRW has been able, with boundless imagination, to identify \u2018the guilty\u2019 and pronounce its verdict\u201d.<\/p>\n
On Monday, DW urged Burkina Faso\u2019s authorities to unblock their website \u201cas quickly as possible\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe blocking of dw.com and other media in Burkina Faso means the people there are being deprived of the important right to independent information,\u201d Nadja Scholz, DW\u2019s Managing Director of Programming, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur coverage in and about Burkina Faso continually provides facts and balanced perspectives.\u201d<\/p>\n
DW also suggested ways in which its Burkina Faso audience could access its website, for example through the use of\u00a0virtual private networks (VPNs)<\/a>.<\/p>\n International and human rights groups, including the European Union and UN, have accused Burkina Faso of serious human rights violations in its fight against Islamists, including the indiscriminate killings and forced disappearances of dozens of civilians.<\/p>\n Supporters of the military junta have previously criticised the media for reporting alleged atrocities, saying that the reporting is designed to hit the morale of the Burkina Faso armed forces.<\/p>\n The post Burkina Faso bans more foreign media outlets<\/a> first appeared on KBC<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Burkina Faso has suspended yet more foreign media outlets over their coverage of a report accusing its army of killing 223 civilians. The report, by US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), said it believed the the massacre in February was in retaliation for villagers aiding armed Islamists. The West African nation\u2019s military government has denied the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}