Burkina Faso suspends BBC, Voice of America for reporting on army killings

In a new report, Human Rights Watch said military forces ‘summarily executed’ 223 civilians in February.

Burkina Faso has suspended the BBC and Voice of America (VOA) radio networks from broadcasting for two weeks over their coverage of a report accusing the army of the extrajudicial killings of civilians, the authorities said.

In a new report published on Thursday, international organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) said military forces “summarily executed” 223 civilians, including at least 56 children, in two villages in February.

The country’s Superior Council for Communication (known by its French acronym CSC) announced late on Thursday that “the programmes of these two international radio networks broadcasting from Ouagadougou have been suspended for a period of two weeks”, adding that BBC Africa and the United States-funded VOA had also published the report on their digital platforms.

HRW’s report contains “peremptory and tendentious” declarations against the army likely to create public disorder, CSC claimed, adding that it had “hasty and biased declarations without tangible proof against the Burkinabe army”.

It said that the country’s internet service providers had been ordered to suspend access to the websites and other digital platforms of the BBC, VOA and HRW from Burkina Faso.