Click to expand Image Burkina Faso soldiers patrol aboard a pickup truck on the road from Dori to the Goudebo refugee camp, on February 3, 2020. © 2020 OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT/AFP via Getty Images Burkina Faso authorities on October 6 released Rasmané Zinaba and Bassirou Badjo, two members of the civil society group Balai Citoyen, who had been unlawfully conscripted into military service after criticizing the country’s military junta. Their release is an encouraging if not unprecedented development in a country where the government has increasingly violated human rights since the 2022 military coup. But it is also a reminder that other critics remain in custody and that little prevents the authorities from further abusing the “general mobilization” decree, a sweeping emergency law.The decree, issued in April 2023 as part of a larger plan to combat Islamist armed groups, provides the president with extensive powers to combat the insurgency, including by conscripting people without a regularized process. The junta has used this law to crack down on the political opposition, the media and dissenting voices, and to unlawfully conscript critics, journalists, civil society activists, and prosecutors and judges.In November 2023, Burkinabè security forces notified Zinaba and Badjo, among a dozen other journalists, activists, and opposition party members, that they were to be conscripted. In December 2023, a court in the capital, Ouagadougou, ruled that the orders for Zinaba and Badjo were illegal and ordered the authorities to suspend them.The authorities nonetheless arbitrarily detained Zinaba and Badjo in February 2024. Balai Citoyen filed a complaint with the police, but there was no follow up. In June and July 2024, Zinaba and Badjo appeared in two national television videos wearing military uniforms, holding Kalashnikov assault rifles, and praising the military.Governments are empowered to conscript adult civilians for national defense, but conscription needs to be carried out in a manner that gives the potential conscript notice of the duration of military service and an adequate opportunity to contest being required to serve.Other activists remain detained on fabricated charges, including Guy Hervé Kam, a prominent lawyer and founding member of Balai Citoyen. Others are still missing, such as the investigative journalist Serge Oulon.Burkina Faso authorities should immediately and unconditionally release all those arbitrarily detained and stop using conscription to repress journalists and junta critics.