Burkina Faso suspends French news channel over insurgency report (updated)

Television Francaise 1 SA

30/06/2023 14:09

(Updates TF1 response in paragraph 5, adds latest reported
attack in final paragraphs)
       OUAGADOUGOU, June 30 (Reuters) - Burkina Faso's military
government has suspended a French television news channel for a
report on a jihadist insurgency which it said lacked objectivity
and credibility, the latest escalation in a crackdown on foreign
media.
    Relations between Burkina Faso and its former coloniser
France have soured since frustrations over worsening insecurity
spurred two military takeovers last year.
    French television channel La Chaine Info (LCI), of private
broadcaster TF1, was suspended for three months from June 23
over a report aired at the end of April, according to a
statement by the national media regulator published on Thursday.
    The media regulator said the report overplayed the scale of
the insurgency and "seditiously" exposed "unverified" failures
in Burkina Faso's military response to the crisis.
    A TF1 spokesperson declined to comment.
    The ruling junta has already suspended French-funded
broadcasters Radio France Internationale and France24 for
allegedly giving voice to Islamist militants staging an
insurgency across the Sahel region south of the Sahara.
    In April, two French journalists working for newspapers Le
Monde and Liberation were expelled from the country.
    Burkina Faso is one of several West African countries
grappling with an insurgency by groups linked to al Qaeda and
Islamic State that took root in Mali in 2012.
    The violence has killed thousands of civilians and displaced
more than six million people as militants have gained ground,
according to the United Nations.
    Burkina Faso's army said militants had attacked a military
unit in the western province of Mouhoun on Tuesday, killing
eight soldiers, and an army auxiliary camp in the northern
province of Sanmatenga on Monday, leaving 33 auxiliaries dead.
        The army did not identify the attackers in either case
or say if the incidents were linked.
  

 (Reporting by Thiam Ndiaga; Additional reporting by Jean-Michel
Belot in Paris, Writing by Sofia Christensen; Editing by Nellie
Peyton, Angus MacSwan and Andrew Heavens)
 ((Sofia.Christensen@thomsonreuters.com;))