10, June 2020
Transparency, Accountability Needed for journalist ‘Wazizi’ Case 0
Cameroon’s government should ensure that the investigation into a journalist’s enforced disappearance and death in military custody is independent, effective, thorough, and impartial, four Cameroonian and six international organizations said today. United Nations (UN) Security Council members should urge accountability for the death of the journalist, Samuel Ajiekah Abuwe, known as Wazizi, when they are briefed on the situation in Cameroon during their June 12, 2020 meeting with the UN Office of Central Africa (UNOCA).
The police arrested Wazizi, 36, an English-speaking journalist at the privately owned broadcaster, Chillen Muzik and TV (CMTV), on August 2, 2019 in in Buea, South-West region, and transferred him to a military-run facility in the same city on August 7. On June 2, 3, and 4 Cameroonian and international media, as well as Reporters Without Borders and the Cameroon Trade Union of Journalists reported that they had learned Wazizi died in custody following torture, on an undetermined date.
“We are still shocked that authorities disappeared Wazizi and then covered up his death for 10 months, but we welcome the opening of an investigation and call on Cameroon’s government to make its findings public and ensure that all those responsible are brought to justice,” said Felix Agbor Nkongho, also known as Agbor-Balla, President of the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (CHRDA).
Wazizi’s transfer to the military facility on August 7 was the last time any of his family, friends, colleagues, or lawyers saw him, or learned anything of his fate from the authorities, making his continued detention an enforced disappearance. He was accused of “collaborating with separatists,” but his lawyers say he had not been charged with any offense before his disappearance.
The French Ambassador to Cameroon told the media on June 5 that President Paul Biya had assured him that an investigation will be opened into the Wazizi’s death. The declaration was made the same day that the military spokesman, Colonel Serge Cyrille Atonfack, announced that Wazizi had died of severe sepsis on August 17, 2019 at the military hospital in Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital. No autopsy was performed, and it is not clear on what basis Atonfack made the statement.
Cameroonian authorities had not made any official statement about the death of Wazizi, nor had they responded to multiple request for information filed by his lawyers, international media groups such as Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and other journalists from Radio France International until June 5.
“It took the government 10 months after Wazizi was forcibly disappeared to acknowledge he died in custody, and authorities did so only following significant national and international pressure,” said Cyrille Bechon of the Cameroonian rights organization Nouveaux Droits de l’Homme. “Cameroonian authorities were responsible for his life and safety while in detention and must provide a full accounting as to the circumstances of his detention and death.”
Atonfack said that Wazizi’s family had been informed about his death, but family members refute that, saying they were never told and had been seeking information on his whereabouts since his arrest. On August 13, 2019 Wazizi’s lawyers filed a habeas corpus application before the president of the high court of the Fako division, Buea, South-West region. The application was dismissed on technical grounds. Another habeas corpus was filed on November 13, but even then, the government did not disclose that he was dead.
When he announced the death, Atonfack also alleged that Wazizi was active in one of the several separatist groups operating in the South-West region. His lawyers said that no evidence has ever been produced to support the accusations.
“If a person is arrested under the anti-terror law, due process should be followed, and evidence brought to court,” said Emmanuel Nkea, a defense lawyer. “But this has never been the case and the government is trying to cover up the facts.”
The circumstances of Wazizi’s death underscore the dangers faced by Cameroonian journalists, particularly those who report on and investigate the crisis in the Anglophone regions of the country. The organizations have repeatedly documented the vulnerability of reporters in Cameroon to harassment, intimidation, threats, torture, arbitrary arrest, and detention by Cameroonian security forces and authorities.
Under national and international human rights law, Cameroon’s authorities have an obligation to account for every death in custody and should conduct an effective, thorough, and independent investigation into Wazizi’s enforced disappearance and death. The investigation should be capable of establishing the facts surrounding Wazizi’s disappearance and death, including whether he died following torture or other ill-treatment in custody, and identifying all those responsible with a view to bringing them to justice. Failure to investigate and prosecute those responsible would violate Cameroon’s obligations to protect people from arbitrary detention and deprivation of life and to provide an effective remedy, the groups said.
The situation in Cameroon is expected to come up at the June 12 UN Security Council meeting with UNOCA. Cameroon’s international partners and UN Security Council members should publicly raise concerns about the grave human rights abuses in Cameroon, including against journalists, political opponents, and human rights defenders. The Security Council should also take the long-overdue step of formally adding Cameroon to its agenda so that it can more closely monitor the situation there.
“When it comes to the respect for human rights, the UN and Cameroon’s international partners should take a stand and speak out,” said Maximilienne Ngo Mbe, executive director of the Central African Network of Human Rights Defenders (Réseau des Défenseurs des Droits de l’Homme de l’Afrique Centrale – REDHAC). “They should demand accountability for Wazizi’s death. Ensuring a thorough, impartial and transparent investigation into Wazizi’s death is the very least the Cameroonian government can do to show its commitment to protecting the country’s fragile media freedom is not hollow.”
Action des chrétiens pour l’abolition de la torture (ACAT)
Amnesty International
Cameroon Journalists’ Trade Union
Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (CHRDA)
Central African Network of Human Rights Defenders
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Human Rights Watch
International Federation for Human Rights, in the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), in the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
Nouveaux Droits de l’Homme
Culled from Human Rights Watch
11, June 2020
“Wazizi was neither charged nor tried. He died for being a journalist” 0
Without free speech, there is no liberty. It is the duty of the mentally autonomous to demand and defend freedom of speech and expression. With this duty comes the realisation that it is also about speech they disagree with.
Last week’s confirmation from the government of the Cameroons that Samuel Wazizi, a journalist, with a local station, CMTV, Buea has died whilst in detention is inexcusable. Wazizi was neither charged nor tried. He died for being a journalist.
On the 8 June 2020, after unrelenting pressure from human rights organisations and international media, the regime in Yaoundé released information that Kingsley Njoka, another journalist who was abducted on the 15 May 2020, has been detained incommunicado at the Secretariat of Defense (SED) Yaoundé. Lawyers who were allowed to meet him observed that he was frail, pale and traumatized psychologically.
Cameroon is an obscured nation of 25 million inhabitants in the Gulf of Guinea. It’s been governed with an iron-fist by Paul Biya, the world’s oldest dictator. The country’s political and economic challenges are countless and growing. Although, blessed with natural resources, it is plagued by the Boko Haram insurgency in the north and a political unrest in the south.
It has a terrible human rights record and a scandalous record on press freedom. It is ranked 134th out of 180 countries and territories in RSF’s 2020 World Press Freedom Index. It is obvious that freedom of speech is an offence in the country and this is incompatible with a free society. The criminalization of free speech results in fear and bondage existence. In Cameroon, there are reports of countless acts of brutality to proponents of freedom of speech and expression. This is unacceptable!
The death of Samuel Wazizi and the detention of Kingsley Njoka have employed little empathy from the regime in Yaoundé and their collaborators. The authorities and the country’s military fear no consequences from its citizens and the international community for their actions.
The ignorance or wickedness of those who enjoy freedom of speech and expression in western democracies but support the evil perpetrated by dictators such as Paul Biya is worrisome and must be condemned. Successive French Presidents have given Paul Biya carte blanche and he has not let them down.
Since taking power almost four decades ago, Paul Biya has been increasingly hostile in his attacks on free speech. He seeks to quiet his critics, whom he considers sinners in publicly exposing his voluminous shortcomings. His imprisonment and execution of many political critics, especially journalists and scholars has remained unreported and unpunished due to his meticulously designed web of state-sponsored intimidators and murderers.
It is impossible to envisage anywhere on this planet a group of organized lawbreakers working effortlessly in harmony and impunity than the police and gendarmes in Cameroon. It should marvel any discerning mind that such savagery as incommunicado detention is a regular occurrence in the twenty-first century. The Idea that small minded criminal elements could eliminate freedom of speech in a country exhibits an utter lack of appreciation of history.
The appreciation of the value of freedom of speech and expression by tyrants is one challenge that man has had to face over the centuries. Tyrants and bigots fear freedom of expression because it exposes their smallness and lack of humanity. Arbitrary and unlawful arrest, intimidation, murder and political imprisonment are tools used to stifle debates and they also give the oppressor a false sense of authority.
Despots must understand that people perceive things differently. The failure of any government to uphold freedom of speech and expression betrays its principal duty to the people. Man is a learning and growing animal. When man stops learning, he stops growing. The ruling class in Cameroon has made a conscious decision to not learn anything from history and thus their collective lack of growth is stunting the nation they govern.
Terror and oppression have never propelled man to growth and success. The great contributors to man’s progress since his appearance on this planet have been men and women who have been allowed to flourish in free societies. Man makes his greatest contribution to humanity when he is free to exercise his freedom of thought and expression. This explains the decline in political, economic and scholarly progress under the rules of tyrants.
The criminalization of free of speech and expression in the Cameroons exposes one of the reasons for its economic and academic backwardness despite being blessed with enormous natural and human resources.
The primary function of any organisation is to help men and women enjoy a more meaningful existence. If the leaders of any organisation, a business or country included, are not helping humans attain the aforementioned, they shouldn’t be in the organisation. The political leaders in Yaoundé need to take a look at themselves and make speedy decisions.
Wazizi has been murdered for being a journalist by a regime that exhibits an utter obliviousness of history and spotting the trend in a changing world. But the free speech he stood for will live longer than his murderers and their brutal and ignorant institutions.
By Asu Vera Eyere with additional reporting from Ewang Miriam Metchane
Cameroon Concord News Group