Government under pressure to release Wazizi death investigation report

With the year coming to an end, the Cameroon government is being pressured to come clean over the death of Samuel Wazizi, a Buea based pidgin newscaster.

Reports say Reporters Without Borders, RSF this week asked the government to make public results of an earlier investigation into the journalist’s death in detention.

Despite refuting news of his death government months back are its own vomit, revealing that he died in August 2019.

The authorities had taken ten months to recognize the death of this English-speaking journalist, arrested on August 2, 2019 in Buea, in the South-West region, in the grip of violent clashes between the army and separatist groups.

Wazizi who was arrested in Buea, in the restive South West region, authorities said, had fallen ill while in detention in Yaounde and later died in hospital.

Family and observers however have expressed the belief that he was probably tortured to death, drawing from the torture and detention stories of other Journalists and English speaking Cameronians since the Anglophone Crisis morphed into an armed conflict.

Till date, government has refused releasing his corpse to family, stating that it was under investigation.

Wazizi is not the lone journalist to be detained for his work which was critical of government.

Njoka Kingsley, a freelance Journalist was abducted in Douala and later transfered to the Kondengui prison in Yaounde.

His whereabout was made public several weeks after he was detained incommunicado, leaving family, friends and colleagues worried.

He is currently facing charges for state-related crimes, and has been denied bail despite the pressure from civil society organisations and the international community for his release.

Mimi Mefo Info