YAOUNDE, Cameroon
The mutilated body of a prominent Cameroonian journalist was found on Sunday near the capital Yaounde five days after he was abducted by unidentified assailants, the press union and a colleague said on Sunday.
Media advocates described
Martinez Zogo’s disappearance and death as a further sign of the perils of
reporting in the African country.
Zogo, the director of private
radio station Amplitude FM, was kidnapped on Jan. 17 by unknown assailants
after trying to enter a police station to escape his attackers, media watchdog
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said.
Zogo had recently been talking
on air about a case of alleged embezzlement involving a media outlet with
government connections, RSF said.
“Cameroonian media has just
lost one of its members, a victim of hatred and barbarism,” Cameroon’s
journalists’ trade union said in a statement. “Where is the freedom of the
press, freedom of opinion and freedom of expression in Cameroon when working in
the media now entails a mortal risk?”
His colleague, Charlie Amie
Tchouemou, editor-in-chief of Amplitude FM, confirmed Zogo’s death and his
abduction. The police and the government did not respond to calls for comment.
The incident is the latest in
a string of attacks against journalists in Cameroon, which has a vibrant press
and which is ruled by President Paul Biya, who has a decades-long record of
repressing opposition.
Cameroon is one of many
countries across the continent, from Burkina Faso to Ethiopia to Equatorial
Guinea, where journalists complain that media freedoms are under threat from
authoritarian governments.
“Although Cameroon has one of
the richest media landscapes in Africa, it is one of the continent’s most
dangerous countries for journalists, who operate in a hostile and precarious
environment,” RSF says in its Cameroon country profile.
Radio France Internationale reporter Ahmed Abba was arrested in July 2015 and imprisoned for two years on terrorism charges that rights groups denounced as a sham. Outspoken reporter Paul Chouta, who worked for private news website Cameroon Web, was beaten and stabbed by unknown attackers in 2019.
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