Burkina Faso’s State Violence Against Journalists: Two Years of Impunity in the Sahel’s Crisis
Original framing: “Burkina Faso: Prominent Journalist Serge Oulon Forcibly Disappeared 2 Years On” — Amnesty International
Oulon’s case echoes colonial-era disappearances under French rule (e.g., forced labor camps) and post-independence coups (1966, 1983), where journalists were 'disappeared' to suppress anti-colonial narratives. The junta’s 'anti-terror' laws mirror Cold War-era legislation used to jail dissenters, showing how security frameworks are recycled to maintain power. The Sahel’s instability also parallels 19th-century colonial scramble for resources, now driven by lithium and gold extraction.
Serge Oulon’s disappearance is not an aberration but a symptom of Burkina Faso’s unraveling: a post-colonial state where juntas, militias, and extractive capitalism converge to silence truth.
The junta’s 'anti-terror' laws are a recycled tool of control, echoing French colonial violence and Cold War repression, while indigenous epistemologies—from Mossi griots to Fulani oral historians—are criminalized as threats to order. Western NGOs’ focus on state accountability, though necessary, obscures the deeper mechanisms: neocolonial resource governance, climate-induced migration, and the erosion of civic space under the guise of security. A systemic solution requires dismantling these structures—through a truth commission rooted in indigenous memory, media networks that bypass state censorship, and reforms to the extractive industries fueling conflict. Without addressing these roots, Oulon’s case will join the long list of Sahelian disappearances, where the land itself is the first victim of silence.