“These regimes want to camouflage their abuses”, reacts the secretary general of Reporters Without Borders

“These regimes do not realize how much credibility they are losing”, reacts, Sunday, April 2, the secretary general of Reporters without Borders, Christophe Deloire, questioned by the international editorial staff of Radio France. The French correspondents in Burkina Faso, Sophie Douce and Agnès Faivre from the daily newspapers the world And Releasewere ordered by the military junta in power in Ouagadougou to take the first plane to Paris.

Men who “mix everything”

For Christophe Deloire, the Burkinabe junta in power, behind the October 2022 coup, is made up of men who “mix absolutely everything“. “They deal with journalists as if they were ambassadors, which they are not at all.”

“By doing this, with journalists, by restricting the freedom of the press, by restricting the right of their own citizens to have access to information, these regimes very clearly want to cover up their own abuses.”

Christophe Deloire, Director General of Reporters Without Borders

at franceinfo

Christophe Deloire quotes the survey published in Release this week which relates the “exactions committed by Burkinabe soldiers” against children. “They want to hide, camouflage the reality of what they are, that is, people who act arbitrarily and violate the rights of citizens.”

Today, the secretary general of RSF regrets the direction taken by the Burkinabé authorities. “It’s a pretty sad story”says Christophe Deloire. “It was a country that was a model, in any case a country that was well ranked in the world press freedom ranking, it was 41ᵉ. It is a country in which the 1991 Constitution enshrines the right to information and freedom of the press.

For Christophe Deloire, the junta in power in Burkina takes the direction of that of Mali which leads to “unworthy, scandalous and arbitrary decisions”.