Female journalist under pressure following ‘anti-government remarks’ on Anglophone crisis

The National Coordinator of the Cameroon Community Media Network (CCMN), Rosaline Obah is the latest member of the press to come under government’s scorching lens for her work on the armed conflict in the North West and South West regions.

This was after the firebrand journalist participated in a webinar on March 3rd, 2022 on Women and the search for peace in Cameroon.

At the session, she spoke on the challenges victims of the crisis are going through, as well as the atrocities being committed by the belligerents. These include the Ngarbuh massacre, and instances of rape, looting, torture, abductions, unlawful arrests and detentions.

Worthy sources note that the presentation was evoked subsequently in a session of top security officials in the North West region, who felt she had stepped on their notes by exposing their deeds. Her remarks were concluded by them to be an ‘attack on government’, stirring a manhunt for her.

That Rosaline Obah’s daring speech

At the said webinar, Rosaline took the floor, calling out the army for its excesses in the conflict torn regions. “Children and women,” she stated, “have been brutally killed by the regular forces like the famous Ngarbuh massacre and government quickly refused that the soldiers did not kill the women and children. It was thanks to satellite images which actually showed the soldiers carrying out the act that some of the soldiers were indicted”.

Doubling down on the Ngarbuh massacre and the declining trust in government by the affected, she said they are being made to suffer more.

Her words: “It is so sad to imagine that witnesses have to travel to Yaounde each time the matter has to come up at the military tribunal and they spend out of pocket. This has even made some of them to withdraw because of the expenses incurred and even threats of life on some of them”.

Obah who is one time president of the Cameroon Association of English Speaking Journalists (CAMASEJ) – North West chapter, it should he said, has for a long time now, been a crusader for media freedom and human rights.

The threats on her life by actors in the armed conflict and most recently, the forces of law and order, count as some of the many ordeals media men are made to go through. The likes of Kingsley Njoka remain behind bars, with delayed judicial practices and bogus charges.

Yet, they continue to be counted among the lucky. Unlike Samuel Wazizi, they remain alive. Wazizi passed away in detention and to date, his corpse is yet to be handed to the family for proper burial.