Burkina Faso has suspended four more international media outlets over their reporting of the HRW statement accusing the Burkinabè army of killing civilians.
The country’s media regulator has now added the German broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, the French network TV-Cinq and the websites of Le Monde and the Guardian to its list of banned media outlets.
This is coming after the Burkinabè authorities imposed a two-week ban on BBC and US public broadcaster Voice of America (VOA) for covering the same Human Rights Watch (HRW) report.
In a statement on Sunday, the Superior Council for Communication (CSC) said the coverage of the HRW report by the newly suspended outlets “constitutes disinformation likely to bring discredit to the Burkinabè army”.
The regulator also restated its warning to all media outlets against covering the report, threatening sanctions.
In a recent report, the US-based group HRW accused the Burkinabè military of massacring at least 223 civilians in February in the north of the country.
However, the junta rejected the HRW report saying it was “baseless accusations” and said they had opened a legal inquiry to “establish the facts”.