Junta-run Burkina Faso has expelled correspondents from France’s Le Monde et Liberation dailies, the newspapers said on Sunday. Denouncing the move as “arbitrary” and “unacceptable”.
“Our correspondent in Burkina Faso, Sophie Douce, has been expelled from the country. At the same time as her colleague from Liberation, Agnes Faivre,” Le Monde said on its website. Adding that the expulsion occurred on Saturday evening and that the two women had arrived in Paris early on Sunday.
Anti-French sentiment
Anti-French sentiment has been growing in the former French colony since the new junta leader, Capt. Ibrahim Traore, seized power in September. Mr. Traore has been more overtly open to working with other countries, notably Russia. Last month Burkinabe Prime Minister Apollinaire Joachim Kyelem de Tambela visited Russia to strengthen relations and consolidate efforts to combat extremists in the region, according to Russia’s foreign ministry.
France sent troops to West Africa’s Sahel region in 2013 when it helped drive Islamic extremists from power in northern Mali, but is facing growing pushback from local governments that say the French soldiers have yielded few results against the jihadis. French forces left Mali last year after relations with the junta frayed. The French still have several hundred special forces troops based in Burkina Faso. Mr. Hallade’s expulsion comes one year after Mali’s junta also ejected France’s ambassador there.
Throughout 2022, the Franco-African schism has been especially tense. In reaction to the foreign minister’s statement calling the ruling junta’s authority in Mali “illegitimate,” the French ambassador was expelled from Bamako in January. In December, the last French troops left Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic.
And, as the Parisian daily emphasizes, “France, get out!” cries and banners have spread to capitals such as Ouagadougou, N’Djamena, and Niamey, the scene of the largest anti-French demonstrations, many of them fueled by Putin’s Russia, whose Wagner mercenaries are occupying many of the positions abandoned by the French.
