(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Minister of the Interior Ferdinand Koungou Edima, RSF protested the harassment of the independent newspaper “Mutations”, which publishes three times weekly. This has included police raids on the newspaper’s headquarters, the seizure of 300 copies of the newspaper and the publisher being summoned for a hearing. “These attacks on […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Minister of the Interior Ferdinand Koungou Edima, RSF protested the harassment of the independent newspaper “Mutations”, which publishes three times weekly. This has included police raids on the newspaper’s headquarters, the seizure of 300 copies of the newspaper and the publisher being summoned for a hearing. “These attacks on an independent publication that merely exercised its right to inform must end. Especially since these actions run counter to Cameroonian press freedom legislation,” stated RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard. The organisation recalled that Cameroon has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
According to information received by RSF, on 30 July 2001, in the afternoon, about twenty police officers blocked access to “Mutations”‘s headquarters for several hours, forcing the newspaper’s employees to remain inside the building. The police officers said they were searching for the newspaper’s publisher, Ahman Mana, and seized 300 copies of the newspaper. The authorities accuse Mana of having published, in a special issue, twenty-one government decrees concerning army reforms, signed by President Paul Biya on 26 July. Since a number of the decrees had yet to be made public, the police officers were seeking the name of the newspaper’s source. The next day, Mana, who went by his own volition to the police services, refused to reveal his source, citing the 19 December 1990 Law on “Freedom of Social Communications in Cameroon”, Article 50 of which guarantees the protection of information sources.
In recent days, the government daily “Cameroon Tribune” has published two or three government decrees per day, detailing the army reforms, without being troubled by the authorities.
