Following an Amnesty International report about coronavirus cases in Cameroon’s Kondengui prison, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has asked the UN special rapporteur on the right to health to urgently seek the release of Amadou Vamoulké, a journalist held in this prison who is very vulnerable because he is 70 and in poor health.

RSF’s appeal to the special rapporteur comes just days before Amadou Vamoulké is due to appear before Cameroon’s Special Criminal Tribunal on 26 May for the 30th hearing in his drawn-out trial on a charge of misusing public funds for the benefit of the state-owned radio and TV broadcaster he used to run.

According to an Amnesty International report published earlier this month, at least one detainee has tested positive to Covid-19 in Kondengui prison, located in the capital, Yaoundé, and several other suspected cases have been identified. The report also said that two prisoners died shortly after being released in circumstances suggesting they were infected, and one was buried in his family’s absence.

Amnesty International also reported that the number of detainees in Kondengui prison currently stands at 432% of the inmate population for which it is designed, despite releases ordered by President Paul Biya on 15 April to reduce overcrowding in the country’s prisons. Valmoulké was not one of the detainees to benefit from the presidential measure although he has been held for nearly four years for an alleged economic crime for which the state has yet to find the evidence on which to convict him.

“The Cameroonian authorities cannot continue to expose one of their leading journalists to the possible of dying in prison,” said Arnaud Froger, the head of RSF’s Africa desk. “During a visit to Yaoundé in November, we drew the justice ministry’s attention to the fact that Amadou Vamoulké is not getting appropriate medical care although two medical reports say he needs medevacking. Since then, he has spent his 70th birthday behind bars and at least one case of coronavirus has been identified in his prison, which makes him especially vulnerable. This case’s humanitarian dimension and his right to health should prevail over every other consideration.”

President Biya was one the ten African leaders to whom RSF and 80 other human rights and press freedom organizations wrote on 6 April asking them to immediately release the arbitrarily detained journalists in their prisons because they are routinely denied proper medical care and because medical isolation is not possible.

A week later, RSF addressed a formal written request to the UN special rapporteur on the right to health, the Lithuanian Dainius Pūras, and the UN special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, the American David Kaye, asking them to condemn governments that have violated the right to information in connection with the coronavirus epidemic.

Cameroon is ranked 134th out of 180 countries and territories in RSF’s 2020 World Press Freedom Index, three places lower than in 2019.

Culled from Reporters Without Borders

From the greatest high to the greatest low at the Cameroon Radio and Television (CRTV), the detention without trial for nearly four years of Amadou Vamoulké the former general manager of the Cameroon public broadcaster has again regenerated a massive under-the-table talk in the nation’s capital Yaoundé and the detained senior French Cameroun political elite has reiterated his claim of being a victim of a Beti Ewondo conspiracy.

The 70 year old Vamoulké was appointed General Manager of CRTV in January 2005 and was sacked in June 2016 after spending 11 years as head of the Cameroon Radio and Television Cooperation. A month later, in July 2016, he was placed under a provisional detention order at Yaoundé-Kondengui Central Prison.

Amadou Vamoulké like many others held in the same facility is suspected of embezzling several billion of CFA francs when he was head of CRTV. The Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime in Yaoundé has maintained a kind of deliberate silence despite receiving signals incessantly flashed out by renowned international media organizations including Reporters Without Borders for his release.

Vamoulké, who has been very discreet throughout this difficult time has made his first public outing on social media entitled “The Truth of Revenge“, which he painted himself as a Cameroonian more sinned against than sinning. He considers himself an innocent man whose human rights are being violated by men and women who wanted the job of GM at CRTV.

Cameroon Intelligence Report sources have revealed that Vamoulké may die in detention. He has been deprived of medical examination and treatment appropriate to his recently diagnosed severe neuropathy and he is running the risk of losing his lower limbs.

In his posting on social media he repeatedly observed that “I am well aware that openly exposing today the hostage-taking of my country’s justice system is not likely to move the incriminated actors who still believe themselves to be unshakeable”.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with intelligence files from Asu Isong and Rita Akana

Sources close to Colonel Etoudi Marius family have hinted that the senior officer of the Cameroonian army has been carried away by the Coronavirus, the dreaded pandemic that is wreaking havoc throughout the world.

The native of Konabeng, a village in Okala district, Lekié Division in the Central region was a chartered member in President Biya’s private medical team.

Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered that he died early this morning in Yaoundé.

By Rita Akana