Dakar, October 24, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Cameroonian authorities to immediately release journalist Thierry Patrick Ondoua, publishing director of the privately-owned Le Point Hebdo bimonthly newspaper, after he was arrested on Tuesday in connection with a report on the minister of housing’s alleged mismanagement, and to drop all charges against him.
“Journalist Thierry Patrick Ondoua’s troubling detention, as well as the continued imprisonment of five other journalists for their work, underscores the urgent need to reform the country’s laws to ensure journalism is not criminalized,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa Program, in New York. “Government officials should be able to respond to journalistic coverage and criticism without resorting to censorious legal proceedings. Ondoua and the other jailed journalists should be released immediately and not punished for doing their jobs.”
On Tuesday, October 22, the regional division of the judicial police (DRPJ) in Yaoundé, the Cameroonian capital, summoned and arrested Ondoua on charges of false news, defamation, and insulting “constituted bodies,” which includes ministers, deputies and certain types of state officials, according to a CPJ review of the summons letters, and Prosper-Rémy Mimboé, the newspaper’s managing editor, who spoke to CPJ. The arrest followed a complaint filed by Célestine Ketcha Courtès, minister of Housing and Urban Development, and Ondoua is still waiting for arraignment in the Yaoundé court, according to those sources. He faces up to five years imprisonment if convicted.
Mimboé told CPJ that Ondoua’s arrest was in connection with several reports published by Le Point Hebdo criticizing Courtès’ management of housing policies, including one published on June 18, 2024, a copy of which CPJ reviewed.
Cameroon, which is preparing for a presidential election next year that could see the 91-year-old current president Paul Biya run for his eighth term, has seen numerous arrests and suspensions of media outlets and journalists in recent weeks related to the delay of parliamentary and local elections.
Cameroon was ranked as sub-Saharan Africa’s third-worst jailer of journalists in CPJ’s annual prison census, with six imprisoned as of December 1, 2023. One journalist, Stanislas Désiré Tchoua, was released on December 28 after serving a prison sentence for defamation and insult.
CPJ’s messages to Bangté Talamdio, a member of Courtès’ cabinet, and calls to the public listed number for Cameroon’s Ministry of Housing, DRPJ and Yaoundé court of first instance went unanswered.