APA-Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) – Several international media are no longer accessible in Ouagadougou.
On Sunday, the media regulatory body suspended access to the website of the African Press Agency (Apanews) in Burkina Faso “until further notice’.
The ‘Conseil Superieur de la Communication’ (Communication Higher Council, CSC) accuses APA of having published an ‘article accusing the Burkinabe army of acts of violence against civilians in the north and north-east of the country, following the publication of a report by the NGO Human Rights Watch on its website.
The CSC said it had detected in the APA dispatch “peremptory and tendentious statements against the Burkinabe army, without any precaution.”
According to the CSC, APA has thus violated the cardinal principles of news processing, and the article disseminated constitutes disinformation likely to discredit the Burkina Faso army.
“Moreover, this way of dealing with information as sensitive as that on the army is likely to create public disorder,” the CSC insists in a statement, pointing out that it violates a 2018 law on radio and television broadcasting in Burkina Faso.
“As a consequence of this and in view of the urgency and seriousness of the facts, the College of Councillors, meeting in extraordinary session, has decided (…) to suspend access to the website of (…) ApaNews (…) from the territory of Burkina Faso, until further notice,” adds the official note.
APA is not the only media outlet to be sanctioned. Access to the websites of TVS Monde, Deutsche Welle, Ouest-France, Le Monde.fr, The Guardian and Agence ECOFIN has also been suspended, for the same reason and for the same period.
Broadcasting of TV5 Monde programmes has been suspended for a period of two weeks.
Last week, it was VOA and BBC that were the victims of the CSC, which called on the media to refrain from relaying what it called tendentious content.
DS/ac/fss/as/APA