![]() ![]() The West African country has witnessed two coups this year. The protesters, mostly young men, accused France of being responsible for Burkina Faso’s problems, including the persistent insecurity. ![]() Last month, protesters demanding the expulsion of the French ambassador attempted to storm the French Embassy in the capital Ouagadougou. The suspension of RFI comes amid growing anger in Burkina Faso against France. The military said it intended to enlist 15,000 volunteers at the national level and another 35,000 at the community level. Last month, authorities announced that a recruitment campaign for volunteers attracted more than 90,000 people. “This media (RFI) … contributes to a desperate maneuver of the terrorist groups to dissuade thousands of Burkinabe” working to protect the country’s integrity, it added. The government has decided to “immediately suspend until further notice, the broadcasting of Radio France Internationale programs throughout the national territory,” the statement said. The accusation was in reference to a message broadcast by RFI on Saturday, in which the Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), or Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims, an affiliate of the al-Qaeda and Daesh/ISIS terror groups, threatened civilian volunteers helping the government in anti-terrorism operations. Mali’s under-equipped army has also often been accused of committing abuses during the brutal conflict.īut the army-dominated interim government, installed after a 2020 military coup, regularly rejects such accusations.Burkina Faso’s military government on Saturday announced it has suspended the broadcast of France’s Radio France Internationale (RFI) with immediate effect.Ī statement by government spokesman Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo accused the broadcaster of giving voice to “a message of intimidation to the population attributed to a terrorist leader.” Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes. Swathes of the country are in thrall to myriad rebel groups and militias. In February, it expelled a journalist working for the French magazine Jeune Afrique just a few hours after he arrived in the capital Bamako.Īn impoverished nation of 21 million people, Mali has over the past decade been wracked by Islamist violence. The junta has recently moved towards exerting tighter control over foreign media. HRW this week released a report accusing Malian soldiers, as well as jihadists, of a wave of civilian killings. Mali’s junta also accused Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Michelle Bachelet, the UN human rights chief, of making false allegations against the government. “Certain allegations, particularly those advanced by RFI, have no other objective than to sow hatred,” he said, adding that this demonstrated the “criminal intent” of some journalists. He compared the French broadcasters to Rwanda’s Radio Mille Collines - a notorious outlet that incited listeners to exterminate minority Tutsis during the 1994 genocide. Maiga said Malian news websites, newspapers and its national radio and TV stations were all “banned from rebroadcasting and/or publishing programmes and news articles put out by RFI and France 24”. The junta, which seized power in August 2020, said there had been “false accusations” in a report early in the week in which RFI aired comments from alleged victims of abuse by the army and shadowy Russian private-security group Wagner. RFI (Radio France Internationale) and France 24 cover African news extensively and have a strong following in the former French colony.įrance Medias Monde, the parent company of RFI and France 24, said on Thursday that it “deplores” the decision to take its broadcasters off the air. There is no recent precedent in Mali for major foreign news media to be taken off the air. ![]() ![]() RFI was no longer broadcasting in the conflict-ridden Sahel state on Thursday afternoon, according to AFP reporters, although France 24 remained on air. “By attacking the freedom of the press, the freedom to inform and to be informed, the junta is continuing and confirming that it is pushing ahead regardless,” foreign policy spokeswoman Nabila Massrali said in Brussels. The European Union lashed the ban as “unacceptable” and said the accusations on which it was based were “unfounded.” The junta is “initiating proceedings… to suspend broadcasts by RFI and France 24… until further notice,” he said in the statement dated Wednesday. The government in Bamako “categorically rejects these false accusations against the courageous FAMA (Malian Armed Forces),” spokesman Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga said. ![]()
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