Crime

Burkina Faso’s junta suspends radio station over Niger criticism.

Published

9 months ago

August 11, 2023

Stella Charles Akupue

Burkina Faso’s junta suspends radio station over Niger criticism.

Burkina Faso’s junta-led government has suspended one of the country’s most popular radio stations after it broadcast an interview deemed “insulting” to Niger’s new military leaders.

Radio Omega was immediately suspended on Thursday “until further notice,” Communications Minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo said in a statement.

He said the measure was “in the nation’s higher interests.”

The station, part of the Omega media group owned by journalist and former foreign minister Alpha Barry, ceased broadcasting after the statement.

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The channel had run an interview with Ousmane Abdoul, the spokesman of a newly-established Nigerien group campaigning to return President Mohamed Bazoum to power.

The country’s elected leader was overthrown on July 26 by members of the Presidential Guard.

Moumouni made “insulting comments about the new Nigerien authorities,” said Ouedraogo, a government spokesman.

His organisation “is clearly campaigning for violence and war against the sovereign people of Niger” and seeks to restore Bazoum “by every means,” he charged.

Last year, Burkina Faso underwent two military coups, each triggered partly — as in Mali and Niger — by discontent at failures to stem a raging jihadist insurgency.

It swiftly declared solidarity with Niger’s new leaders and joined Mali, warning that any military intervention to restore Bazoum would be considered a “declaration of war” against them.

The Burkinabe authorities, in recent months, have suspended the French TV outlets LCI and France24 as well as Radio France Internationale and expelled the correspondents of the French newspapers Liberation and Le Monde.