The junta in Burkina Faso on Monday suspended all broadcasts by the France 24 news channel in the west African country after it interviewed the head of al-Qaeda North Africa.
Burkina Faso has also expelled correspondents from France’s Le Monde and Liberation dailies, the newspapers said on Sunday, the latest move the junta running the west African country has taken against French media.
“Our correspondent in Burkina Faso, Sophie Douce, has been expelled from the country… at the same time as her colleague from Liberation, Agnes Faivre,” Le Monde said on its website, denouncing the move as “arbitrary” and “unacceptable.”
Burkina Faso, which is battling a jihadist insurgency that spilled over from neighbouring Mali in 2015, said of the suspension of all France 24 TV broadcasts: “By opening its channel to the head of AQIM (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), France 24 not only acts as a communications agency for these terrorists, but also offers … legitimacy to terrorist actions and hate speech.”
France 24 TV had on March 6 broadcast its interview with AQIM head Abu Ubaydah Yusuf al-Annabi.
“Therefore the government has decided… to suspend sine die the diffusion of France 24 programmes on all national territory,” Spokesperson Jean-Emmanuel Ouedraogo said.
The France 24 broadcast was cut around 0900 GMT on Monday, AFP journalists said.
On March 6, France 24 broadcast written replies given by al-Annabi to 17 questions asked by the news channel’s specialist on jihadist questions, Wassim Nasr.
“The government is disheartened to see that the head of a terrorist organisation like AQIM and recognised as such by the entire international community can take advantage of the editorial generosity of France 24 to talk at length on the channel’s airwaves,” the junta’s statement said.
France 24 hit back branding the Burkinabe government statement “outrageous and defamatory”.
“The management of France 24 condemns this decision and disputes the baseless accusations calling into question the channel’s professionalism,” the news broadcaster said.
The statement stressed that the AQIM chief’s interview had not been directly broadcast but used as an account to confirm that the group had detained a French hostage who was released in Niger last week.
“The security crisis the country (Burkina Faso) is going through must not be a pretext for muzzling the media,” France 24 said.
The two women who work for France’s Le Monde and Liberation dailies, landed in Paris early on Sunday after being expelled late on Saturday, Le Monde said.
Burkina Faso, which witnessed two coups last year, is battling a jihadist insurgency that spilled over from neighbouring Mali in 2015.
In December, the Burkina junta suspended Radio France Internationale (RFI), which belongs to the same France Medias Monde group as France 24, accusing the radio station of airing a “message of intimidation” attributed to a “terrorist chief”.
Both RFI and France 24, which cover African affairs closely and are popular in African francophone nations, have been suspended in neighbouring Mali, which is also run by a military junta fighting jihadist forces.
