Burkina Faso / Security: When the French media become weapons of destabilisation
The latest “report” of “Libération” on alleged secret detention cells in Burkina Faso illustrates this drift with renewed gravity: no restraint in the proliferation of lies, no respect for the truth, and above all, a fatal mistake they forget they are now addressing people who think.
These media outlets still believe they are living in the era when they called the shots. When their narratives, however biased, were swallowed like gospel. That era is over.
The Burkinabe people, like the entire AES region, have learned to dissect, to cross‑check sources, to distrust “anonymous witnesses” and “exact locations” that are never verifiable.
Today, a citizen in Ouagadougou or Kaya knows that an empty hangar can be filmed and called a “secret prison.” They know that three unidentified voices do not constitute proof.
But there is something more serious: these disinformation campaigns are not harmless. They strike at the security of the country. In a time of transition and counter‑terrorism, accusing the army and authorities of “forced disappearances” and “torture” without evidence is pouring oil on the fire.
It is an attempt to discredit those who, on the ground, shed their blood to reconquer the territory. This is destabilisation disguised as journalism.
With social media, information travels at cruising speed. The manipulators know that a lie can circle the globe before truth has had time to tie its shoes.
Burkinabe, Sahelians are no longer passive consumers of news. They have become actors in their own narrative.
The time for tolerance is over. As is complacency. Every conscious citizen has a duty to denounce these manipulations, not to share blindly, and to support the AES’s sovereign media.
The French propaganda media can continue to vomit their venom. They will, no doubt. But they are now speaking into the void: The Sahelian man has opened his eyes, and he will not close them again. The gospel, here, is now his own.
Maurice K.ZONGO
