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.
Chance of the calendar: this publication comes the day after the expulsion on April 2 from Burkina Faso of the correspondents of French daily newspapers The world et Release. This news illustrates the difficulties with which information professionals must now deal. Namely difficulties related to the security environment, but also institutional. According to RSF, the Sahelian strip is becoming a “non-information” zone.
► Read also The correspondents of the French newspapers “Le Monde” and “Liberation” expelled from Burkina Faso
Well-identified threats
The first threat hanging over 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 colleagues from RFI, 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 greatest. Evidenced by the fate of Hamadoun Nialibouly and Moussa M’Bana Dicko, two Malian journalists still missing. RSF also recalls that three other news professionals 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: the military juntas, which came to power through coups. Whether in Mali, Burkina Faso or Chad, these new governments today represent a real challenge for journalists. They are trying in every way to control the media according to RSF, those in particular in the public service. Example, again in Mali and Burkina Faso, where the putschists require journalists to read their press releases.
The NGO is also concerned about the misuse of laws, particularly in Benin and Niger, in relation to cyberspace. Laws that make it possible to convict and imprison journalists, instead of protecting them. And the result is clear, according to the organization: ” Fear of reprisals fosters self-censorship. Withholding information becomes the norm. »