As Burkina Faso suspends radio station criticising for Niger junta
The African Union on Friday expressed “deep concern” at the reported poor conditions of Niger President Mohamed Bazoum’s detention, calling his treatment at the hands of coup leaders “unacceptable”.
“Such treatment of a democratically elected president through a regular electoral process is unacceptable,” AU Commission head Moussa Faki Mahamat said in a statement, joining a chorus of concern about 63-year-old Bazoum, who was overthrown by military chiefs last month.
“Concordant sources attest to a worrying deterioration” of conditions, Faki said.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres have also spoken out about the worsening conditions that Bazoum and his family are reportedly living under.
CNN reported Wednesday that Bazoum was being kept in isolation and forced to eat plain rice and pasta, with no access to medicines.
Faki also expressed his “strong support” for the decisions adopted by the Economic Community of West African States, which on Thursday approved the deployment of a standby force to restore constitutional order in Niger.
An attempt this week to send a joint team of ECOWAS, UN, and AU representatives to Niger’s capital Niamey was rejected by the coup leaders.
Meanwhile, Burkina Faso’s junta-led government has suspended one of the country’s most popular radio stations after it broadcast an interview deemed “insulting” to Niger’s new military leaders.
Radio Omega was immediately suspended on Thursday “until further notice,” communications minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo said in a statement.
He said the measure was “in the higher interests of the nation.”
The station, part of the Omega media group owned by journalist and former foreign minister Alpha Barry, ceased broadcasting after the statement was issued late Thursday.
The channel had run an interview with Ousmane Abdoul Moumouni, the spokesman of a newly-established Nigerien group campaigning to return President Mohamed Bazoum to power.
The country’s elected leader was overthrown on July 26 by members of the Presidential Guard.
Moumouni made “insulting comments about the new Nigerien authorities,” said Ouedraogo, who is also a government spokesman.
His organisation “is clearly campaigning for violence and war against the sovereign people of Niger” and seeks to restore Bazoum “by every means,” he charged.
Burkina Faso underwent two military coups last year, each triggered in part — as in Mali and Niger — by discontent at failures to stem a raging jihadist insurgency.
It swiftly declared solidarity with Niger’s new leaders and joined Mali in warning that any military intervention to restore Bazoum would be considered a “declaration of war” against them.
The Burkinabe authorities in recent months have suspended the French TV outlets LCI and France24 as well as Radio France Internationale and expelled the correspondents of the French newspapers Liberation and Le Monde.
AFP
