Serge Oulon signing his books at the Norbert Zongo press center in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, October 2023.
(Nairobi) – Burkina Faso’s authorities should urgently account for the journalist Atiana Serge Oulon, who was forcibly disappeared by state security forces two years ago, and release him immediately, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Observatoire Kisal, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a partnership between the International Federation for Human Rights (Fédération internationale pour les droits humains) and the World Organisation Against Torture, and Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, or RSF) said today.
On June 24, 2024, armed men claiming to be intelligence agents abductedOulon, 40, director of the newspaper L’Événement (The Event), from his home in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso’s capital. In July, Burkina Faso’s president, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, acknowledged that a journalist had been arrested for allegedly spreading falsehoods, an apparent reference to Oulon. The government later confirmed that Oulon and other journalists had been conscripted into the armed forces. However, in May 2026, an exclusive investigation from RSF revealed that security forces, including high-ranking officials close to President Traoré, secretly detained and tortured Oulon in private houses converted into unofficial prisons in Ouagadougou.
“Oulon has been specifically targeted for his journalistic work by the regime and was subjected to different kinds of abuses and detained without any contact with a lawyer or family members,” said Sadibou Marong, RSF’s Sub-Saharan Africa director. “Oulon’s family and friends have the right to know what happened to him and obtain justice.”
Oulon, an investigative journalist known for exposing corruption within the security forces, had long reported on alleged misuse of public funds. I
