Cameroon

Cameroon’s suspension of a local radio station is the latest move to stifle discussion over ongoing English-French conflict.

Kah Walla, leader of the opposition Cameroon People’s Party, was arrested along with other activists while participating in a long-running opposition campaign that calls for wearing black on Fridays.

“In a country where the media are often accused of sloppy reporting, it’s the last straw that these journalists are being prosecuted for acting professionally, checking their facts and deciding not to publish an incomplete story.”

According to an RFI report citing the journalist’s lawyer, Ahmed Abba was being interrogated in relation to activities of the militant Islamist sect Boko Haram, which has renamed itself the Islamic State in West Africa.

“Government claims that its move against journalists protects the public and ensures compliance with professional standards is simply an attempt by authorities to stifle dissent and consolidate control over independent media.”

“Detaining journalists for defamation violates not only their personal rights but also freedom of information in general, because it leads to self-censorship. We urge the authorities to free Nsigué, Ndiomo and Nicodemus without further delay.”

“It is hard to believe that over the course of a year authorities in Cameroon have not conducted a proper investigation into the murder of Eric Lembembe and that there have been no arrests, no court proceedings, and no justice served,” said Vukasin Petrovic, director of Africa programs at Freedom House.

“We are alarmed by the explosion at the home of Denis Nkwebo, who had been reporting on a sensitive issue of public interest: the performance of Cameroon’s security forces,” says CPJ Africa Advocacy Coordinator Mohamed Keita.

After 30 years of rule, President Paul Biya would certainly like nothing more than for his critics to root for his country’s success in the World Cup and forget about his regime’s human rights abuses. But Cameroon’s victories will ring hollow when one of its most creative voices off the field – writer Enoh Meyomesse – languishes in prison.

Reporters Without Borders is concerned about the growing intransigence of the National Communication Council (CNC), Cameroon’s media regulator, and its president, Joseph Befe Ateba.

Cameroon’s ambassador to Geneva, Anatole Nkou, told the United Nations Human Rights Council on September 20, 2013, that a murdered human rights defender was killed because of his “personal life.”

Three weeks before parliamentary elections in Cameroon, the government’s National Communications Council (NCC) has ordered the suspension of 11 media organisations, accusing them of unprofessionalism and unethical behaviour.

Eric Ohena Lembembe, executive director of the Cameroonian Foundation for AIDS, was found dead at his home in Yaoundé on 15 July. Lembembe’s killing follows several attacks on the offices of human rights defenders, including those working for equal rights for LGBTI people.

The Cameroonian government should rigorously investigate, denounce, and prosecute suspicious break-ins at three human rights defenders’ offices in June, six Cameroonian and international human rights organizations said.

Journalist and cartoonist Charles Fils Elangue has been in detention for six days pending payment of a fine, damages and legal costs for an article published on the Kawali website.

Officials in the city of Bamenda indefinitely shut down the studios of private station Foundation Radio in retaliation for its broadcast of an interview that authorities said incited secessionism.