Reporters Without Borders warns of increasingly threatened press freedom in Sahel

[Illustrative image] Men watching the headlines, in Bamako, June 11, 2021. AFP - ANNIE RISEMBERG

Text by: RFI Follow

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RSF unveiled a report on Monday (April 3rd) entitled "In the shoes of a journalist in the Sahel". This survey highlights several threats: violence by armed gangs, attempts at control by military juntas, and digital-related laws used by some states to curtail press freedom.

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Press freedom is increasingly under threat in the Sahel, warns Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in an investigation entitled "In the shoes of a journalist in the Sahel". In this forty-page document, the NGO details the multiple dangers and threats faced by journalists in the region.

Coincidentally, this publication comes the day after the expulsion on April 2 from Burkina Faso of the correspondents of the French dailies Le Monde and Libération. This news illustrates the challenges that information professionals now face. Namely difficulties related to the security environment, but also institutional. According to RSF, the Sahelian strip is becoming a "no-information" zone.

► Read also The correspondents of the French newspapers "Le Monde" and "Liberation" expelled from Burkina Faso

Well-identified threats

The first threat to journalists – and it is not new: armed gangs, whose violence has intensified over the past 10 years, more precisely since the assassination, in 2013 in Mali, of our RFI colleagues, Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon. In northern Mali, the area from Gao to Kidal is now a "no man's land" for reporters, an area where the risk of assassination and kidnapping is maximum. The fate of Hamadoun Nialibouly and Moussa M'Bana Dicko, two Malian journalists who are still missing, bear witness to this. RSF also recalls that three other journalists have been killed since 2019, on the shores of Lake Chad and in eastern Burkina Faso.

Another enemy of information in the Sahel, according to RSF, is the military juntas, which came to power through coups. Whether in Mali, Burkina Faso or Chad, these new governments now represent a real challenge for journalists. They are trying by all means to "control the media" according to RSF, especially those of the public service. For example, again in Mali and Burkina Faso, where the putschists force journalists to read their communiqués.

The NGO is also concerned about the misuse of laws, particularly in Benin and Niger, in relation to cyberspace. Laws that convict and imprison journalists, instead of protecting them. And the result is clear, according to the organization: "Fear of reprisals promotes self-censorship. Information retention is becoming the norm.

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Read on on the same topics:

  • Freedom of the press
  • Sahel
  • Burkina Faso
  • Mali
  • Chad
  • Benin
  • Niger
  • Journalism
  • Media