The decision was announced in a statement over the weekend, days after the military government suspended the BBC, Voice of America and the international watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW), halting broadcasts and blocking websites, after the latter’s scathing report on Thursday.

HRW accused troops of killing at least 223 people in attacks on two villages in the west African country’s north, near the Mali border, on 25 February. As many as 56 of the victims were reportedly children.

A statement by the Burkinabe authorities said on Monday: “The media campaign orchestrated around these accusations fully shows the unavowed intention … to discredit our fighting forces.”

The Guardian was named in the latest round of suspensions, alongside half a dozen other organisations including the French outlets Le Monde and TV5Monde, the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle and the Swiss-based Agence Ecofin. Access to their websites had been blocked until further notice, the statement said.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called the suspensions “grave and abusive decisions”.

HRW had said in its report on Thursday that “these mass killings … appear to be part of a widespread military campaign against civilians accused of collaborating with Islamist armed groups, and may amount to crimes against humanity”.

It said villagers had said the killings were reprisals for an attack by jihadists at a military camp close to the villages earlier on 25 February.

Late on Saturday, the Burkinabe communications minister, Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo, said the report was baseless and accused HRW of “boundless imagination”.

The suspensions are the latest media restrictions to be imposed by the junta led by Ibrahim Traoré, the 36-year-old who became Africa’s youngest leader after a coup in September 2022.

French media have been particularly targeted as relations between the former colonial power and French-speaking Africa continue to sour.

Traoré’s ascendancy to power came against the backdrop of insurgent violence that began seeping in from neighbouring Mali in 2015 and has precipitated political instability across the Sahel region.

More than 2 million people have been displaced and thousands of civilians and security personnel have been killed in Burkina Faso. Not even the change of political order has extinguished the conflict: there was an uptick in violence in 2023, with 8,000 deaths that year, data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled) shows.

This has led to a war against armed non-state actors, and led to the army and state-backed vigilantes reportedly torturing or killing villagers believed to be harbouring or aiding the rebels.

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Source: The Guardian, Author: Eromo Egbejule

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BBC reports that a group of between 20 and 30 armed assailants burst into the Catholic church and started firing as the congregation tried to run for their life. This lead to the death of the priest and five worshippers on Sunday, in the northeastern town of Dablo about 200km from the capital Ouagadougou. According to the mayor, the attackers also burned down the church itself as well as several local buildings, including businesses and a health centre.

Urbain Kabore, a government spokesman for the West African country’s Sahel region, told Aljazeera news that “the attackers also destroyed all places serving alcohol”.

“The city is filled with panic. People are holed up in their homes, nothing is going on. The shops and stores are closed. It’s practically a ghost town,” the mayor said.

Sources have it that this is the third attack on a church in five weeks. Two weeks ago a similar bloodshed happened in Silgadji, also in the north. The pastor and several worshipers were killed. According to the Catholic Bishop in the case of Dori, four people were killed.

Help from Allies

France has deployed more than 4,000 troops to the region to help fight extremists operating in the country. The US has also sent some security forces to the area. Some African countries including Chad, Niger, and Mali has also stretched a helping hand to fight terrorism in the region.

By: Hope Ewudor || Chrife.com.gh

The post A Call to Intercession Against Persecution: A Priest and Five Others Killed in Burkina Faso appeared first on Chrife.com.gh.