The expulsions are the most recent crackdown on French media by the army that rules the West African country.
Burkina Faso has expelled two French journalists who work for the newspapers Le Monde and Liberation, the two newspapers said on Sunday.
Liberation said its correspondent Agnès Faivre and Le Monde’s Sophie Douce arrived in Paris early Sunday after being summoned separately for questioning by military authorities on Friday and later informed of their deportation.
The two are “journalists of perfect integrity, who were legally working in Burkina Faso, with valid visas and accreditations… We strongly protest against these absolutely unjustified deportations,” Liberation said in an editorial on its website.
There was no statement from the authorities in Burkina Faso. The French Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Relations between Paris and Ouagadougou have deteriorated sharply since Burkina Faso’s army seized power in a coup d’état last October.
In March, Burkina’s military government scrapped a 1961 agreement with France on military aid. It has since ordered the French ambassador and troops to withdraw from the country and suspended broadcasts from the French RFI radio and television channel France 24.
Crackdown on the media
“These two evictions mark another major setback in the freedom to inform about the situation in Burkina Faso,” Le Monde director Jérôme Fenoglio said in a statement.
Douce’s coverage “finally came across as intolerable to the regime of Ibrahim Traoré, transitional president for six months,” he said.
Liberation said a recent investigation by Faivre “into the circumstances in which a video was filmed showing children and adolescents being executed in a military barracks by at least one soldier” “clearly greatly displeased the junta”.
“These restrictions on freedom of information are unacceptable and the sign of a power that refuses to question its actions,” it said.
Burkina’s government spokesman Jean-Emmanuel Ouedraogo had criticized the article as “manipulations disguised as journalism to tarnish the country’s image”.
Media rights organization Reporters Without Borders claimed that the military targeted the media to “camouflage its abuses”.
Burkina Faso is one of many West African countries and former French colonies battling violent groups that have taken root in neighboring Mali and spread across the region over the past decade.
Thousands of people have been killed and more than two million displaced in the sub-Sahel region, despite the presence of foreign troops, including from France.
Frustrations over the authorities’ inability to restore security have fueled anti-French sentiment and contributed to two military takeovers in Burkina Faso and two in Mali since 2020.