The mutilated body of a outstanding 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 an extra sign of the perils of reporting within the African country.
Zogo, the director of personal radio station Amplitude FM, was kidnapped on Jan. 17 by unknown assailants after attempting to enter a police station to flee his attackers, media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said.
Zogo had recently been talking on air a few case of alleged embezzlement involving a media outlet with government connections, RSF said.
“Cameroonian media has just lost one in all its members, a victim of hatred and barbarism,” Cameroon’s journalists’ trade union said in an announcement. “Where is the liberty of the press, freedom of opinion and freedom of expression in Cameroon when working within 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 federal government didn’t reply to calls for comment.
The incident is the most recent 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 in all 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 in all the richest media landscapes in Africa, it’s one in all 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 2 years on terrorism charges that rights groups denounced as a sham. Outspoken reporter Paul Chouta, who worked for personal news website Cameroon Web, was beaten and stabbed by unknown attackers in 2019.