(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Security Minister Djibrill Bassolé, RSF asked that Paulin Yaméogo, editor-in-chief of the weekly “San Finna”, be released immediately. Robert Ménard, the organisation’s secretary-general, added that: “To our knowledge, this journalist did nothing more than exercise his right to inform, in accordance with the international treaties ratified by Burkina Faso.” […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Security Minister Djibrill Bassolé, RSF asked
that Paulin Yaméogo, editor-in-chief of the weekly “San Finna”, be released
immediately. Robert Ménard, the organisation’s secretary-general, added
that: “To our knowledge, this journalist did nothing more than exercise his
right to inform, in accordance with the international treaties ratified by
Burkina Faso.”
According to the information obtained by RSF, on 15 September 1999 at 8 p.m.
(local time), Yaméogo was called before the Office of State Security. Since
then, the journalist has not been allowed to contact his family and no one
has visited him. An official with a local press freedom organisation, who
accompanied Yaméogo when he arrived at the police station, noted that he was
being blamed for publishing a critical editorial in issue no. 18 of the
weekly. The article, titled “When Blaise Compaoré rolls out the red carpet
for the putschists”, criticised the “power’s gangster-like administration”
and ended with the suggestion that: “the republicans will watch the
institutions disintegrate because of a man who did not realise when it was
time to leave.”
