20, January 2022
CPDM Crime Syndicate: Amadou Vamoulké trial adjourned 90 times, former CRTV GM completes 2,000 days in prison without being convicted 0
Cameroonian journalist Amadou Vamoulké, the septuagenarian former head of the national radio and TV broadcaster, has just completed his 2,000th day in detention without being convicted on any charge. Cameroon’s disgraceful treatment of Vamoulké falls far below even the most basic standards of justice and human dignity, says Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Adjourned 90 times, his trial is the longest to have been held as part of the anti-corruption drive known as Operation Sparrowhawk that the Cameroonian authorities launched in 2006. Critics have often accused them of exploiting Sparrowhawk to get rid of personalities regarded as a nuisance. Aside from the shocking treatment of journalists in Eritrea, which is one of the world’s worst dictatorships and is rightly last in RSF’s World Press Freedom Index, this case has also broken all records for the longest detention of an African journalist without being convicted. Vamoulké has been held for more than five and a half years.
Arrested on 29 July 2016, Vamoulké is the subject of two distinct grotesque proceedings on charges of misusing public funds as director-general of Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV) – charges for which absolutely no evidence and no witness has ever been produced by the prosecution. In letter on 29 December to the secretary-general of the prime minister’s office, whose duties include ensuring Cameroon’s compliance with the international conventions and treaties it has signed, Vamoulké’s French and Cameroonian lawyers called on the authorities to free him in order to comply with the decision issued on 12 July 2020 by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. After being referred the case by RSF, the Working Group issued an unambiguous determination that Vamoulké’s provisional detention has “no legal basis” and that the violations of the right to due process are “of such gravity” that they confer an “arbitrary character” on Mr. Vamoulké’s detention.
“Two thousand days in prison and 90 trial adjournments – these are dizzying figures behind which lies the life of a journalist broken by five and a half years of totally illegal provisional detention,” said Arnaud Froger, the head of RSF’s Africa desk. “We reiterate our appeal to the Cameroonian authorities to end this judicial persecution, which is breaking all records, which is arbitrarily depriving a journalist of his freedom, and which is discrediting all of the Cameroonian institutions involved.”
In its decision, the UN Working Group also voiced concern about the health of Vamoulké, who will be 72 next month and who suffers from an illness described by medical experts as “severe.” He has never been given the tests and treatment required by his ailment and he is in great danger from Covid-19 because of his age and pre-existing conditions, and because of prison over-crowding.
Cameroon is ranked 135th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index.
Culled from RSF
22, January 2022
Maryland cabal close doors to Ambazonia, open them to French Cameroun: Dr Patrick Ayuk 0
A senior Southern Cameroons academic says the Federal Republic of Ambazonia is under a very malicious occupation but some so-called front line leaders are closing their doors to the liberation journey to Buea, while at the same time reaching out to Southern Cameroons enemy in Yaounde.
Referring to the crisis that has rocked the Southern Cameroons group in Maryland often refered to as the Sako-IG, Dr. Patrick Ayuk said on Thursday, “We have to admit that the Maryland gang had private financial dealings with some people in Yaounde.”
“It is hard to believe that because of small amounts of money, the enemy in French Cameroun is now standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Maryland group in the way we are seeing today, and the group is closing its doors to the Ambazonian struggle? Dr. Patrick Ayuk said during a meeting with the Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government, Dabney Yerima on Thursday.
Dr. Patrick Ayuk in a soul-searching presentation to the Ambazonia war cabinet re-echoed the view that Dr. Ikome Sako and Pastor Chris Anu had used the Bible to blindfold Southern Cameroonians who were delivering millions of dollars for war purposes.
The pastors became front line leaders in the US and carefully transformed Southern Cameroonians into their personal piggy banks not to fight the intimidated Yaounde regime, but to line their pockets.
Dr. Patrick Ayuk condemned what he described as a treacherous stab in the back and appealed to Vice President Yerima to present a clearer picture to the people in Ground Zero and Ground One on the state of the Southern Cameroons revolution.
By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai