After the DIRPA tethered the media in Bamako, the Malian regime decided to censor RFI and France 24, citing a disinformation campaign against the FAMA. Reporters Without Borders1 denounced this censorship: "The announcement by Mali’s military junta that it plans to suspend local radio and TV news broadcasts by Radio France Internationale and France 24 for reporting abuses by the Malian army and its Russian mercenary allies constitutes an attack on press freedom."

This decision comes in the wake of published investigations into abuses in Mali, with civilian testimonies of extrajudicial killings and torture involving both FAMA and non-French speaking white soldiers.

Testimony reported by RFI: "There were about 40 of them - three vehicles, some motorbikes and the rest on foot. There were a lot of white people with them. ... They spoke a language that I didn't know. It wasn't French. They had very bright military uniforms. Immediately, they started shooting in all directions. ... They set fire to all the houses. The old people who were left were shot or burnt in their houses."2

Testimony reported by Human Rights Watch: "The soldiers dragged two octogenarians and four others to the site of the mine explosion and executed them on the spot", "soldiers killed five civilians. Three of the victims appear to have been shot in the mouth. Two villagers were elderly, one of whom was burned alive in her home."3

Testimony reported by Le Monde : a shepherd recounted how a white man dressed in "the same uniform as FAMA", "forced him to drink a lot of water" before a Malian soldier "tied an electric cable around his toes" and "ran the current, several times."4

But beyond these abuses, the Malian regime began to tether the Bamako media last month, practically asking them to relay FAMA's communication and to boast their successes. As a result of this policy, the media no longer cover FAMA's failures.

This was the case for the Tamalat and Inchinanane massacres, in which dozens of Azawad civilians were killed by the EIGS without intervention by the FAMA. The Malian regime also failed to support the refugees5 who had managed to flee the massacres. The Western media did not mention these massacres either. Only RFI and France 246 - the two media censored by Bamako - finally reported on the massacres two days later. RFI mentions in particular the lack of reaction from FAMA, and the fact that neither FAMA nor the Malian Ministry of Defence7 agreed to respond.

The censorship of RFI and France 24 thus allows the obfuscation not only of testimonies of abuses8 against civilians, but also of the failures or incapacity of FAMA, while the Malian regime relies on the press to spread a narrative boasting the progress and success of FAMA.

FAMA and the Malian regime are not the only ones to benefit from this censorship: with the banning of RFI and France 24, the Malian population will no longer receive information critical of the war in Ukraine. But this war is a war of colonisation aimed at expanding Russian territory. And it is experienced as such by the Ukrainians, as Volodymyr Sheiko9 clearly states : "Today’s Russian invasion is a neocolonial war on a sovereign and peaceful country, an attempt to restore Russia’s imperial geopolitical blueprint". Russia needs international support, or at least a certain neutrality. And it is precisely in Africa that the Kremlin is seeking such support : the African people must not see that this war is a colonial invasion. Censorship by the Western media therefore protects the pro-Russian Malian regime from an over-reflection by its population on Vladimir Putin's colonial policy. In the end, this censorship also benefits the Russian government.

Moreover, the Malian regime constantly denies the presence of Russian mercenaries, and mentions the presence of Russian soldiers. This debate seems unimportant, since in practice changing a patch on a uniform can change a mercenary into a conventional soldier, and vice versa. However, as Bamako has insisted on presenting Russian forces in Mali as not belonging to the Wagner group, if they have committed executions and torture, as several testimonies indicate, this is detrimental to Russia, which cannot in the current situation bear any further damage to its image. Here again, Russia benefits from the censorship of the Western media.

The real reasons for the censorship imposed by the Malian regime therefore seem to be broader than the reason it invokes, especially since FAMA abuses have been long known and reported in the media : in May 2020 RFI already reported a UN report denouncing 101 extrajudicial killings by the FAMA in the first quarter of 202010 .

Mali is thus joining the Central African Republic in its censorship policy: in April 2021 Reporters Without Borders was already denouncing the censorship in Bangui of websites reporting on the abuses of Russian mercenaries.

The censorship imposed by Bamako will inevitably prove counterproductive. It is the Streisand effect, well known (or not) on the internet : In this case, by trying to obfuscate the issue of abuses against Malian civilians, the Malian regime is drawing international attention to testimonies of summary executions and torture involving its armed forces, to the inability of these armed forces to prevent the EIGS from massacring civilians in Azawad11 , and to its ambition to hide from public opinion the fundamentally colonialist nature of the war that its Russian ally is waging against Ukraine.

Finally, the Malian regime's statement attempts a startling comparison12 between the censored French media and Radio mille collines. At first glance, the absurdity of this comparison evokes the characteristic style of the Russian propaganda apparatus13 , which does not hesitate to propagate absurdities knowing that a significant part of the targeted populations will believe them. But is this comparison really meaningless? This communiqué could imply that RFI propagates Azawadian messages in the same way that Radio mille collines called for the extermination of the Tutsis. The Azawadian populations would thus constitute a genocidal threat to the Malian regime. This ominous comparison can be seen as a narrative element to justify a looming offensive against the autonomist movements of Azawad.