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Burkina Faso’s authorities secretly held and abused a prominent investigative journalist and dozens of others in a makeshift detention facility in the capital, an international advocacy group said Wednesday, in the latest crackdown on political dissent in the West African nation.
Reporters Without Borders said Atiana Serge Oulon, editor of the newspaper L’Evenement, was taken from his home in June 2024 by several armed men in civilian clothes. Burkina Faso’s military junta later said he had been conscripted into military service.
Instead, according to the advocacy group, former detainees said Oulon and up to 40 other people were being held in a heavily guarded house in the capital, Ouagadougou, as of late 2025, contradicting the government’s claim. They reported sleeping on bare floors, having to drink toilet water and being beaten by guards wielding ropes and tree branches.
Oulon’s current location is unknown. Reporters Without Borders said it had shared its findings with Burkina Faso’s government, which didn’t respond.
The group said Oulon had been in the junta’s crosshairs since 2022, when he released an investigation accusing an army captain of embezzlement. The group called for the journalist’s immediate release.
The advocacy group said the junta’s inner circle appears directly involved in the detentions, with a security officer for junta leader Capt. Ibrahim Traoré personally briefing detainees before their release and warning them not to speak out.
Since seizing power in a 2022 coup, Burkina Faso’s junta has cracked down on political dissent and journalists, shutting down independent media outlets and forcibly conscripting dissidents into the army to fight Islamic militants.
Human Rights Watch said in an April report that under Traoré, the junta has carried out a broad crackdown that has fostered “an atmosphere of terror and severely restricting the flow of information.”
