Cameroon’s government faces mounting accusations that foot-dragging and incompetence have helped coronavirus gain a deadly grip.

In less than three months, the official case tally has risen to nearly 6,600, including 200 deaths — the third-highest number of infections of any country south of the Sahara.

Compared with Europe and America, this total is low, but experts warn of COVID-19’s ability to spread like wildfire in countries where health systems are weak and testing is poor.

Despite forecasts that cases would peak in June, schools and universities were suddenly told to reopen this week, prompting teachers and parents to warn that safety preparedness was nowhere near ready.

Cameroon on March 5 became the first central African country to register a case of the virus — a 58-year-old French national who had arrived in the capital Yaounde in February.

But it was not until two weeks later that the authorities set down restrictions for the country’s 25 million people.

The opposition has repeatedly criticised what it says is the government’s failure to take the threat of COVID-19 seriously, as many other African countries imposed radical containment measures early on.

Albert Ze, an economist specialising in health issues, told AFP that management of the epidemic had been “disastrous.”

“We missed the opportunity to contain the virus at the very beginning,” he said.

President Paul Biya, who has been in power for nearly four decades, only appeared publicly on television on May 19, pressured by the opposition and the World Health Organization (WHO) after more than two months of silence.

– No lockdown –

“We are seeing a particularly significant progression of the epidemic — it’s extremely serious,” Eugene Sobngwi, vice chairman of the health ministry’s scientific council, told state television on May 24.

Cameroon could become “the laughing stock of the world,” he said.

Rebutting such worries, Health Minister Manaouda Malachie on Monday said the case figures “should not be a cause for alarm… so far the government has been in control of the situation”.

Ze accused the government of a lax response in key areas as the epidemic began to brew.

“Cameroon did not close its land, air and sea borders until March 18 — 12 days after the first ‘imported’ case, and weeks after many other African countries,” he said.

The government was also laid back in social distancing, limiting gatherings to 50 people while other countries on the continent set a maximum of 10.

No lockdown has ever been imposed in Cameroon, and restaurants, bars and nightclubs were only forced to close after 6pm.

And those restrictions, as well as rules for distancing on public transport, were not implemented until mid-March.

Despite the late response, the impact of those measures was “immediate — Cameroonians understood there was a major problem,” said Professor Yap Boum II, an epidemiologist and head of a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) research centre in Yaounde.

A month after the start of the epidemic, the authorities required wearing of facemasks, and this too helped strengthen awareness and tighten control over the virus, he said.

But on April 30 the government abruptly eased public transport restrictions and allowed bars, restaurants and nightclubs to reopen in the evenings.

In the public’s mind, the brakes were now off, said Boum.

The move “led to an almost total relaxation of the population, as if this announcement sounded the end of the epidemic,” Boum said.

“We saw fewer and fewer people wearing masks, and more and more people in bars — and a month later we more than tripled” the number of cases and fatalities, he said.

– Back to school –

The reopening of schools and universities, another unexpected move, has been attacked as premature by teachers’ unions and parents, who have taken to social media to voice their fears.

The amount of equipment made available is “ridiculously small,” said Roger Kaffo, general secretary of the National Union of Secondary School Teachers, pointing out that the supply of 3,000 masks was not even one mask per teacher at secondary-school level.

Daniel Claude Abate, president of an association of small and medium-sized businesses and member of the ruling RDPC party, defended the government’s decision not to impose the toughest restrictions.

“We cannot afford to shut down our countries, with fragile economies, as others do,” he said.

Even so, “there should have been surveillance policy measures” to track the virus, he said, conceding the government had made “some mistakes.”

Source: AFP

In the face of mounting evidence, Colonel Cyril Serge Atonfack of the Cameroon Ministry of Defense on Friday June 5 acknowledged that journalist Samuel Wazizi died 16 days after his arrest in Buea from severe sepsis.  The late admission by the Cameroon army undermined the credibility of earlier information provided by top army officers, who ever since had adamantly dismissed allegations of maltreatment and torture.

The Colonel Cyril Serge Atonfack statement also raised a host of new questions, such as whose body was recently transported from Buea to a Yaoundé morgue by the army under heavy escort?

Yaounde’s acknowledgment alters the narrative around its confrontation with Southern Cameroonians in a way that could anger the French Cameroun public and the French Cameroun media. The Biya regime had arrested the journalist and the Buea police told his lawyer that Wazizi was accused of “collaborating with separatists” and “spreading separatist information.”

A fair trial was promised that never held but instead of accepting that the army killed the journalist, Yaoundé is now saying that Wazizi died of severe sepsis and not torture as reported by local and international media houses.

Several news reporters have gathered in Buea and Yaounde to protest the Cameroon government’s late empty statement on the circumstances surrounding Wazizi’s death.

International media organizations such as Reporters Without Borders and Pen International have not commented on the Cameroon army press release. However, the Southern Cameroons Interim government has blamed the killing of journalist Wazizi on the French Cameroun government.

Vice President Dabney Yerima expressed his deep sympathy to the Wazizi family and called on the Ambazonia Self Defense Forces to increase their efforts at protecting Southern Cameroons news men and women covering the French Cameroun genocidal campaign going on in Ambazonia.

 Newscaster Samuel Ajiekah Abuwe aka Wazizi was arrested in August 2019 in Buea and handed over to the Cameroon government army.

By Chi Prudence Asong

Journalists in Cameroon have taken to the streets of Buea in the South west region to protest and demand an account of their missing colleague, Samuel Wazizi, after local media reported he had died in military custody.

Wazizi, was arrested in August 2019. for alleged involvement in the country’s anglophone crisis.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) confirmed his death in a statement on Wednesday evening, after a privately-owned Cameroonian TV station and then the National Union of Cameroonian Journalists (SNJC) announced his death on Tuesday.

Neither the government nor the army had yet confirmed the journalist’s death, or reacted to requests on his whereabouts.

Now, what really happened to Samuel Wazizi? What could he have done to have led to arrest and kept away without trial, and access to no one for so long? And since no one has seen his body, is he really dead?

Source: Africa News

Cameroonian journalist Samuel Wazizi, who was arrested in August 2019 for criticising Yaoundé‘s handling of Cameroon’s anglophone crisis, has died in detention, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said, calling on the authorities to shed full light on the circumstances of his death.

RSF confirmed his death in a statement on Wednesday evening, after a privately-owned Cameroonian TV station and then the National Union of Cameroonian Journalists (SNJC) announced his death on Tuesday.

Neither the government nor the army had yet confirmed the journalist’s death, or reacted to requests from RSF, the SNJC and several human rights organisations, according to these organisations.

Contacted directly by AFP, the authorities had not yet responded on Thursday morning.

Samuel Wazizi, a presenter on the regional television station Chillen Media Television, was arrested on 2 August 2019 in Buea, the capital of the English-speaking Southwest region, according to RSF.

He was accused of “having made critical comments on his channel with regard to the authorities’ management of the crisis in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions,” RSF added in its press release.

For nearly three years, separatist groups and the army have been fighting each other in the north-west and south-west regions of Cameroon, where most of the English-speaking minority, who consider themselves marginalised, live. Some of these groups have taken up arms against Yaoundé and are calling for the independence of this territory.

The fighting, but also the atrocities and murders committed against civilians by both sides, have caused more than 3,000 deaths and forced more than 700,000 people to flee their homes.

Five days after his arrest in August, the journalist was “picked up” by soldiers, RSF said. He was never brought before a court, his lawyer Lyonga Ewule told AFP, and was “held incommunicado” “outside of any legal procedure”, according to RSF.

The journalist was “ill” and reportedly “died during his transfer to Yaoundé on an unknown date”, according to a “senior military official very close to the case” quoted by RSF. His lawyer and the SNJC claim that he was tortured while in detention.

His body arrived at the morgue on Monday “under heavy escort”, according to a source at the Yaoundé military hospital also quoted by RSF.

“We call on the authorities to break the intolerable silence surrounding this case (…) and to conduct a serious and independent investigation to establish the circumstances that led to this tragic event,” said Arnaud Froger, head of RSF’s Africa office.

Source: AFP

One of the white men charged in the Georgia killing of Ahmaud Arbery used a racial slur after shooting the unarmed black man, an investigator testified in court on Thursday, an explosive allegation in one of the cases roiling race relations in the United States.

After more than five hours of arguments during which a prosecutor said Arbery, 25, had been “chased, hunted and ultimately executed”, Glynn County Chief Magistrate Judge Wallace Harrell ruled probable cause existed and the case could go to trial.

Special Agent Richard Dial of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said William Bryan told his office in an interview last month that Travis McMichael uttered the slur as Arbery lay dying from shotgun wounds on Feb. 23. Bryan and McMichael are both defendants in the case.

“Mr. Bryan said that after the shooting took place before police arrival, while Mr. Arbery was on the ground, that he heard Travis McMichael make the statement: fucking nigger,” Dial said in testimony.

The Arbery case triggered a national outcry after cellphone video of the shooting was leaked on social media a month ago. Thursday’s hearing follows more than a week of protests across the United States over the May 25 death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, also a black American. Four officers have been charged in that case.

Dial said he had evidence from social media and elsewhere that Travis McMichael had used racial slurs in the past. McMichael, a former U.S. Coast Guard boarding officer, once told a friend that he loved his job because he “was on a boat and there weren’t any N-words anywhere,” Dial testified.

Dial said the three defendants – Bryan, 50, Travis McMichael, 34, and his father, former police officer Gregory McMichael, 64 – chased Arbery in pickup trucks and sought to box him in as he was jogging in their neighbourhood.

Both McMichaels are charged with murder and aggravated assault. Bryan, their neighbour who took the cellphone video, was charged with murder and attempting to illegally detain and confine.

Jason Sheffield, an attorney for Travis McMichael, pressed Dial on whether Bryan was promised leniency for possible cooperation with prosecutors when he cited the alleged slur, and argued that his client had acted in self defense.

Dial said he was unaware of any leniency offer and that it was Arbery who was defending himself.

“I believe Mr. Arbery’s decision was to just try to get away and when he felt like he could not escape, he chose to fight.”

Dial also testified that investigators found several text messages on Bryan’s phone containing derogatory comments that exhibited a “racist attitude” which Dial said likely played a role in Bryan’s decision to chase and help trap Arbery.

That testimony was elicited by Kevin Gough, Bryan’s attorney, who later argued that his client did not know why the McMichaels were chasing Arbery and had done what “any patriotic American citizen would have done”.

Special prosecutor Jesse Evans called that assertion “asinine”. “Any American would pick up the phone and call 911,” Evans told the court.

The three defendants were not charged until more than two months after the shooting. The GBI stepped in to investigate after the video circulated widely and Glynn County police took no action.

Police say Gregory McMichael saw Arbery running in his neighborhood and believed he looked like a burglary suspect. The elder McMichael called his son and the two armed themselves and gave chase in a pickup truck, police say.

Dial said video and other evidence showed that the first of three shots from Travis McMichael’s 12-gauge Remington Model 870 pump-action shotgun was to Arbery’s chest.

“You see the front of his shirt is saturated with blood,” Dial said. “The second shot is off camera as well but you do see the blood mist come into the camera screen.”

(REUTERS)