Cameroon

Two journalists in Cameroon accused of withholding information from the state have been interrogated by a military court and ordered not to leave the country, according to news reports. A closed military court in Yaounde on Tuesday questioned for several hours Félix Cyriaque Ebolé Bola, a senior reporter for the privately owned daily newspaper Mutations and the president of Cameroon's National...

Cameroonian journalists Felix Cyriaque Ebole Bola of the daily Mutations and Rodrigue Tongue of Le Messager, were charged following a October 28 military court hearing in Yaoundé with “non-denunciation” of facts potentially endangering state security. Baba Wamé, a former journalist and professor was accused of the same charges. “This charge prompts great concern for freedom of information...

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the muzzling of the press in Cameroon, where three journalists are currently held on defamation charges, and calls on the government to decriminalize media offences. The latest to be detained is Guy Nsigué, a sports reporter for the Mboafootball.com website and Radio Sport Info, who was arrested on October 21 by men from the defence ministry, which is also...

Authorities in Cameroon should release a newspaper editor who has been imprisoned since March 29 after being convicted of criminal defamation, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported Tuesday. On Friday last, a judge postponed indefinitely a bail hearing for Amungwa Tanyi Nicodemus, according to news reports. On March 10, a court in the northwestern city of Bamenda sentenced Nicodemus...

Using a vague criminal code provision allowing authorities to detain individuals deemed a threat to public order, a provincial governor in Cameroon threw a journalist in prison on Wednesday last for inquiring about the arrests of two employees of a state-run palm oil company, according to local journalists. In a statement, the local press union Network of Journalists of The North said Adamawa Gov...

A court in Cameroon has handed an editor a suspended prison sentence and banned his newspaper for reporting on alleged mismanagement of a transportation company, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. A panel of three magistrates in the commercial city of Douala convicted Editor Jean-Marie Tchatchouang of the weekly Paroles of defamation on Friday...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed concern over the safety of a Cameroonian editor who is being prosecuted in connection with a leaked official document, according to local journalists and news reports. On February 24, a public prosecutor in Yaoundé charged Raphaël Nkamtchuen, editor of the periodical La Boussole, with "unauthorised communication with a detainee" and...

Cameroon's government is obstructing journalists from reporting on issues of public interest. Security forces detained a journalist without charge for six days after he interviewed a jailed former official. They also seized footage from reporters covering the brutal repression of a banned opposition march on Wednesday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Late on Wednesday...

Newspaper editor Raphaël Nkamtcheun has been detained for the past week for receiving allegedly confidential government documents from former finance minister Polycarpe Abah Abah when he visited Abah in Yaoundé prison on February 17. Abah has been jailed since 2008 on an embezzlement charge. “This is an arbitrary act designed to silence the press,” Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans...

Newspaper editors Serge Sabouang of the bimonthly La Nation and Robert Mintya of the weekly Le Devoir were freed provisionally Wednesday after more than eight months in Yaoundé’s main prison, Kondengui. Sabouang confirmed their release in a phone call last night with the Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) correspondent in Cameroon. “We hail the release of these two...