In the face of mounting evidence, Colonel Cyril Serge Atonfack of the Cameroon Ministry of Defense on Friday June 5 acknowledged that journalist Samuel Wazizi died 16 days after his arrest in Buea from severe sepsis.  The late admission by the Cameroon army undermined the credibility of earlier information provided by top army officers, who ever since had adamantly dismissed allegations of maltreatment and torture.

The Colonel Cyril Serge Atonfack statement also raised a host of new questions, such as whose body was recently transported from Buea to a Yaoundé morgue by the army under heavy escort?

Yaounde’s acknowledgment alters the narrative around its confrontation with Southern Cameroonians in a way that could anger the French Cameroun public and the French Cameroun media. The Biya regime had arrested the journalist and the Buea police told his lawyer that Wazizi was accused of “collaborating with separatists” and “spreading separatist information.”

A fair trial was promised that never held but instead of accepting that the army killed the journalist, Yaoundé is now saying that Wazizi died of severe sepsis and not torture as reported by local and international media houses.

Several news reporters have gathered in Buea and Yaounde to protest the Cameroon government’s late empty statement on the circumstances surrounding Wazizi’s death.

International media organizations such as Reporters Without Borders and Pen International have not commented on the Cameroon army press release. However, the Southern Cameroons Interim government has blamed the killing of journalist Wazizi on the French Cameroun government.

Vice President Dabney Yerima expressed his deep sympathy to the Wazizi family and called on the Ambazonia Self Defense Forces to increase their efforts at protecting Southern Cameroons news men and women covering the French Cameroun genocidal campaign going on in Ambazonia.

 Newscaster Samuel Ajiekah Abuwe aka Wazizi was arrested in August 2019 in Buea and handed over to the Cameroon government army.

By Chi Prudence Asong

Journalists in Cameroon have taken to the streets of Buea in the South west region to protest and demand an account of their missing colleague, Samuel Wazizi, after local media reported he had died in military custody.

Wazizi, was arrested in August 2019. for alleged involvement in the country’s anglophone crisis.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) confirmed his death in a statement on Wednesday evening, after a privately-owned Cameroonian TV station and then the National Union of Cameroonian Journalists (SNJC) announced his death on Tuesday.

Neither the government nor the army had yet confirmed the journalist’s death, or reacted to requests on his whereabouts.

Now, what really happened to Samuel Wazizi? What could he have done to have led to arrest and kept away without trial, and access to no one for so long? And since no one has seen his body, is he really dead?

Source: Africa News

Cameroonian journalist Samuel Wazizi, who was arrested in August 2019 for criticising Yaoundé‘s handling of Cameroon’s anglophone crisis, has died in detention, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said, calling on the authorities to shed full light on the circumstances of his death.

RSF confirmed his death in a statement on Wednesday evening, after a privately-owned Cameroonian TV station and then the National Union of Cameroonian Journalists (SNJC) announced his death on Tuesday.

Neither the government nor the army had yet confirmed the journalist’s death, or reacted to requests from RSF, the SNJC and several human rights organisations, according to these organisations.

Contacted directly by AFP, the authorities had not yet responded on Thursday morning.

Samuel Wazizi, a presenter on the regional television station Chillen Media Television, was arrested on 2 August 2019 in Buea, the capital of the English-speaking Southwest region, according to RSF.

He was accused of “having made critical comments on his channel with regard to the authorities’ management of the crisis in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions,” RSF added in its press release.

For nearly three years, separatist groups and the army have been fighting each other in the north-west and south-west regions of Cameroon, where most of the English-speaking minority, who consider themselves marginalised, live. Some of these groups have taken up arms against Yaoundé and are calling for the independence of this territory.

The fighting, but also the atrocities and murders committed against civilians by both sides, have caused more than 3,000 deaths and forced more than 700,000 people to flee their homes.

Five days after his arrest in August, the journalist was “picked up” by soldiers, RSF said. He was never brought before a court, his lawyer Lyonga Ewule told AFP, and was “held incommunicado” “outside of any legal procedure”, according to RSF.

The journalist was “ill” and reportedly “died during his transfer to Yaoundé on an unknown date”, according to a “senior military official very close to the case” quoted by RSF. His lawyer and the SNJC claim that he was tortured while in detention.

His body arrived at the morgue on Monday “under heavy escort”, according to a source at the Yaoundé military hospital also quoted by RSF.

“We call on the authorities to break the intolerable silence surrounding this case (…) and to conduct a serious and independent investigation to establish the circumstances that led to this tragic event,” said Arnaud Froger, head of RSF’s Africa office.

Source: AFP

One of the white men charged in the Georgia killing of Ahmaud Arbery used a racial slur after shooting the unarmed black man, an investigator testified in court on Thursday, an explosive allegation in one of the cases roiling race relations in the United States.

After more than five hours of arguments during which a prosecutor said Arbery, 25, had been “chased, hunted and ultimately executed”, Glynn County Chief Magistrate Judge Wallace Harrell ruled probable cause existed and the case could go to trial.

Special Agent Richard Dial of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said William Bryan told his office in an interview last month that Travis McMichael uttered the slur as Arbery lay dying from shotgun wounds on Feb. 23. Bryan and McMichael are both defendants in the case.

“Mr. Bryan said that after the shooting took place before police arrival, while Mr. Arbery was on the ground, that he heard Travis McMichael make the statement: fucking nigger,” Dial said in testimony.

The Arbery case triggered a national outcry after cellphone video of the shooting was leaked on social media a month ago. Thursday’s hearing follows more than a week of protests across the United States over the May 25 death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, also a black American. Four officers have been charged in that case.

Dial said he had evidence from social media and elsewhere that Travis McMichael had used racial slurs in the past. McMichael, a former U.S. Coast Guard boarding officer, once told a friend that he loved his job because he “was on a boat and there weren’t any N-words anywhere,” Dial testified.

Dial said the three defendants – Bryan, 50, Travis McMichael, 34, and his father, former police officer Gregory McMichael, 64 – chased Arbery in pickup trucks and sought to box him in as he was jogging in their neighbourhood.

Both McMichaels are charged with murder and aggravated assault. Bryan, their neighbour who took the cellphone video, was charged with murder and attempting to illegally detain and confine.

Jason Sheffield, an attorney for Travis McMichael, pressed Dial on whether Bryan was promised leniency for possible cooperation with prosecutors when he cited the alleged slur, and argued that his client had acted in self defense.

Dial said he was unaware of any leniency offer and that it was Arbery who was defending himself.

“I believe Mr. Arbery’s decision was to just try to get away and when he felt like he could not escape, he chose to fight.”

Dial also testified that investigators found several text messages on Bryan’s phone containing derogatory comments that exhibited a “racist attitude” which Dial said likely played a role in Bryan’s decision to chase and help trap Arbery.

That testimony was elicited by Kevin Gough, Bryan’s attorney, who later argued that his client did not know why the McMichaels were chasing Arbery and had done what “any patriotic American citizen would have done”.

Special prosecutor Jesse Evans called that assertion “asinine”. “Any American would pick up the phone and call 911,” Evans told the court.

The three defendants were not charged until more than two months after the shooting. The GBI stepped in to investigate after the video circulated widely and Glynn County police took no action.

Police say Gregory McMichael saw Arbery running in his neighborhood and believed he looked like a burglary suspect. The elder McMichael called his son and the two armed themselves and gave chase in a pickup truck, police say.

Dial said video and other evidence showed that the first of three shots from Travis McMichael’s 12-gauge Remington Model 870 pump-action shotgun was to Arbery’s chest.

“You see the front of his shirt is saturated with blood,” Dial said. “The second shot is off camera as well but you do see the blood mist come into the camera screen.”

(REUTERS)

A Yaoundé mission that resulted in the apparent death of a Southern Cameroons journalist Samuel Wazizi, arrested August 2 and handed over to Cameroon’s military was organized by a high-ranking officer with the support of SED and the Cameroon Secret Service, a well placed source familiar with the case has hinted Cameroon Intelligence Report.

Our source described the Cameroon military official who interrogated Samuel Wazizi Wazizi, also known as Samuel Ajekah Abuwe immediately after his arrest in Buea, in Cameroon’s southwest as very close to the inner circle of President Paul Biya and Minister Paul Atanga Nji.

Cameroon government authorities did not publicly said why they were detaining him, but the Francophone dominated police reportedly told his lawyer that Wazizi was accused of “collaborating with separatists” and “spreading separatist information.”

 It is unclear whether President Biya or Territorial Administration Minister, Paul Atanga Nji authorized his arrest, interrogation and killing. However, several opponents of the Yaoundé regime including exiled Ambazonia leader Vice President Dabney Yerima, Cameroon Intelligence Report spoke with noted that the killing of Samuel Wazizi could not have happened without the direct knowledge of the Cameroonian National Security Council run by Minister Paul Atanga Nji.

Another source deep inside the ruling CPDM party told Cameroon Intelligence Report that the Biya Francophone government suspected Samuel Wazizi of having ties to the Southern Cameroons Interim Government and its jailed leadership. There has been no evidence to demonstrate Wazizi had such ties.

The same source furthered that the organizer of the mission to kill Wazizi was not transparent about what he told President Biya and other members of his so-called National Security Council, which, the source said, explained why the Yaoundé government still has no clear information and has been maintaining a kind of deliberate silence on the matter.

Some sources have hinted CIR that the Biya regime is planning to acknowledge that Wazizi died in Buea during a botched interrogation, one that was intended to lead to his transfer from Southern Cameroons to Yaoundé.

A Southern Cameroons officer serving with the intelligence unit of the Rapid Intervention Battalion in Buea informed Cameroon Intelligence Report that Samuel Wazizi’s body may have been cut into pieces after he was killed in Buea by Francophone Beti Ewondo officers. Cameroon government officials would not comment on the disposal method for the body despite pressure from Reporters Sans Frontieres.

Yaoundé silence suggests Wazizi killer squad had ties to Biya regime.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai in London

Measures to combat the novel coronavirus in Cameroon are triggering an avalanche of criticism in one of the countries most affected by the pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa.

With late border closures, no containment period, bars, restaurants and discotheques remaining open, masks imposed late, schools and universities reopening prematurely, Yaoundé seemed to stall and then sail on sight, suggesting that its authorities did not take the danger of the Covid-19 seriously when many other African countries imposed radical measures very early on.

President Paul Biya, who has been in power for nearly four decades, only appeared publicly on television on 19 May, pressured by the opposition and even the WHO, after more than two months of deafening silence. Meanwhile, all his African peers very early on, publicly at least, took up the torch of the fight against the virus.

We are seeing a particularly serious progression of the epidemic. It’s extremely serious

In less than three months, the number of reported cases rose from one to more than 6,500 in early June, with more than 200 deaths out of a population of more than 25 million.

“We are seeing a particularly serious progression of the epidemic. It’s extremely serious,” Professor Eugène Sobngwi, vice-president of the scientific council at the health ministry, told the press on 24 May, brandishing the risk that Cameroon could become “the laughing stock of the world”.

The assessments “should not alarm us because so far the government has been in control of the situation,” Health Minister Manaouda Malachie replied on state radio on 1 June, also in response to countless worries and criticisms on social networks.

This progress is the result of the government’s “calamitous management” of the pandemic, although Albert Ze, a Cameroonian economist specialising in health issues, told AFP that, “we missed the opportunity to contain the virus from the outset.

Cameroon did not close its land, air and sea borders until 18 March, 12 days after the first “imported” case and weeks after many other African countries. It limited the number of people allowed in the gatherings to 50, while others set it at 10.

Other restrictive measures, such as distancing on public transport and closing bars and restaurants, had to wait until mid-March as well, but only after 6 pm.

To date, no general containment has been imposed, as in countless countries across the continent and around the world.

The impact of these measures was however “immediate, and Cameroonians understood that the problem was major,” said Professor Yap Boum II, epidemiologist and head of a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) research centre in Yaoundé.

“The compulsory wearing of masks reinforced this approach,” but more than a month after the start of the pandemic. Although the spread of the virus was progressing, it was “controlled” at the time, the epidemiologist added.

Nightclubs open

Until 30 April, when the government unexpectedly eased these restrictions, bars, restaurants and discos were allowed to reopen after 6 p.m., and measures to distance public transport were eased.

This “led to an almost total relaxation of the population, as if this announcement sounded the end of the epidemic,” laments the scientist.

“Fewer and fewer people were seen wearing masks and more and more people were seen in bars, and a month later we have more than tripled “the number of reported cases and deaths”, he notes, establishing a “direct link between this relaxation of measures, the ensuing indiscipline and the current situation”.

Against all expectations, the government also reopened doors of schools, colleges, high schools and universities on June 1, even though it anticipates the epidemic’s peak “in June.” A premature resumption according to the country’s teachers’ unions.

“The state has made available a ridiculously low number of materials, 3,000 masks for example,” not even one per teacher in secondary schools and colleges, vexed Roger Kaffo, general secretary of the National Autonomous Union of Secondary Education (SNAES).

But according to Daniel Claude Abate, president of a local group of small and medium-sized businesses, “we cannot afford to stop our countries, with fragile economies, as in others.”

“But it should have been accompanied by police surveillance measures,” he admits, conceding “a few mistakes”, “negligence” and “clumsiness”.

Source: AFP