“Burkina Faso: Release of Journalist Charles Sawadogo Ignites Controversy”

2023-05-01 18:25:50

Wendpouire Charles Sawadogo “was released this morning (May 1) around 09:00 (UTC and local). He returned to his home without any charges being formally brought once morest him”said on condition of anonymity a member of the collective of journalists, activists and influential people of civil society in Burkina Faso, of which he is a member.

“He was suspected of having received money from abroad to destabilize the transition” explained another relative, specifying that “His home was searched and his phones seized”. “The procedure is taking its course”, he continued, the investigation is therefore not closed.

Charles Sawadogo had been summoned on April 27 by the Central Brigade for the Fight once morest Cybercrime (BCLCC) before being placed in detention, suspected of“intelligence with foreign countries with a view to dismissing the regime in place”according to the collective.

Famous whistleblower very followed on social networks, Wendpouire Charles Sawadogo is a member of the collective of “victims who have been the direct and individual target of numerous death threats and violence for the simple fact of having a contrary opinion” in power.

On Saturday April 29, the collective had asked the government “to stop this hunt for journalists, activists and opinion leaders”.
Their members “live in daily anguish and suffer harassment, repression and harassment”in particular through regular tracking and “the tapping of telephones, insults, defamation, slander”lamented their spokesperson Arouna Louré.

The organization also said it had “we acknowledged” of one “blacklist” of members of civil society, a document which, according to her, will be used by the authorities to make new arrests.

Burkina Faso, the scene of two military coups in 2022, has been caught since 2015 in a spiral of jihadist violence that appeared in Mali and Niger a few years earlier and which has spread beyond their borders.

The violence has killed more than 10,000 people in seven years – civilians and soldiers – according to NGOs, and some two million internally displaced people.

The transitional president, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who came to power in a putsch in September, said he wanted “refocus the transition on security emergencies”.

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