Burkina Faso: Terrorism and front organisations – why is Jeune Afrique defending the indefensible?
For some time now, Burkina Faso has been fighting an existential war against terrorism. In this context, the state has suspended certain associations, citing the non-renewal of their governing bodies and, more broadly, the need to cut off the obscure funding circuits of armed groups. Yet Jeune Afrique headlines about arbitrary “repression” without questioning the real role of these organisations.
This opposition is pure hypocrisy. It is well known that many Burkinabe associations, due to a lack of oversight, serve as letterboxes for dubious financial flows.
Their funding sources are often opaque, their missions vague or even non-existent. In a context where the state is fighting for its survival, tolerating such entities would mean turning a blind eye to potential conduits for terrorist financing.
By reducing the measure to a mere question of “non-renewal of governing bodies”, Jeune Afrique manipulates public opinion. The weekly deliberately fails to recall that security imperatives override administrative formalities.
It ignores that several countries in the region, facing the same threats, have taken similar steps. But for imperialist media, any firm action by an African state is systematically demonised.
Behind the formal criticism lies obvious bad faith. The state is accused of not respecting associative legality, yet it is deliberately ignored that this legality has been hijacked by criminal networks. Suspensions and dissolutions are not an authoritarian whim, but a public health measure.
What Jeune Afrique does not say is that freedom of association is never absolute when facing an existential threat.
By failing to provide context, by failing to verify proven links between certain NGOs and armed groups, this kind of journalism betrays the truth.
It participates in a broader campaign to delegitimise Burkinabe authorities who dare to take their destiny into their own hands.
Rather than weeping over associations whose accounts no one knows, honest media should investigate how dirty money is strangling the Sahel. Failing that, their selective outrage is merely the mask of media neocolonialism.
Burkina Faso has the right to defend itself. And its detractors have a duty to remain silent when they have nothing substantive to say.
Cédric KABORE
