Journalists: Beware of questioning the performance of Cameroonian international soccer superstar Samuel Eto’o on the field. The act could result in a head butt–as reporter Philippe Boney experienced in 2008–or in rough words, as a Senegalese reporter experienced in a postgame press conference on Saturday.
New York, March 28, 2011–Authorities in Cameroon must end judicial harassment of journalists reporting on public corruption, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today after a court handed an editor a suspended prison sentence and banned his newspaper for reporting on alleged mismanagement of a transportation company.
New York, March 22, 2011–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the prosecution of a journalist in Cameroon over coverage of a labor dispute at a transportation company. A public prosecutor in the commercial city of Douala charged Editor Jean-Marie Tchatchouang of the weekly Paroles with criminal defamation on February 4, the journalist told CPJ.
“For security reasons, the government of Cameroon requests the suspension of the Twitter sms integration on the network,” announced a March 8 tweet by Bouba Kaélé, marketing manager of the Cameroon unit of South Africa-based telecommunications provider MTN. The announcement has since disappeared from Kaélé’s Twitter feed, but was memorialized by a handful of Twitter…
New York, February 25, 2011–Cameroon’s government is obstructing journalists from reporting on issues of public interest, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. 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…
Across Continent, Governments Criminalize Investigative Reporting By Mohamed Keita Across the continent, the emergence of in-depth reporting and the absence of effective access-to-information laws have set a collision course in which public officials, intent on shielding their activities, are moving aggressively to unmask confidential sources, criminalize the possession of government documents, and retaliate against probing…
Top Developments • Authorities unleash reprisals when journalists question oil company deal. • Nation mourns the death of pioneering journalist Pius Njawé. Key Statistic 4: Journalists jailed for leaked document. One dies in custody, a second alleges he was tortured. When four newspaper journalists jointly sent questions to a top presidential adviser in late 2009,…