A murdered journalist, the media mogul, and an epic reporting project in Cameroon

In January, Martinez Zogo, the director of the Cameroonian radio station Amplitude FM, was found dead near Yaoundé, the capital. His body reportedly showed signs of torture: his foot was broken, several of his fingers had been cut off, and his tongue was deformed. A few weeks later, a suspect named Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga—whom Zogo had recently accused of corruption on air—was arrested in connection with the killing. Belinga, too, had interests in Cameroon’s media: he owned Vision4, a TV network, and L’Anecdote, a newspaper. According to Reporters Without Borders, the head of Vision4 was also arrested, as was Belinga’s father-in-law and security chief, a former commander in Cameroon’s presidential guard.

The same week that Zogo was killed, John Williams Ntwali, an outspoken newspaper editor, was found dead in Rwanda.

Press freedom is in a dark state in Cameroon. The country sits 138th out of 180 on RSF’s latest World Press Freedom Index, a twenty-point drop on last year. The government of Paul Biya—who has been president for the past forty years, and is now ninety years old—and Biya’s allies stifle free speech, including, one local journalist told me, by manipulating ad placements; in recent years, physical threats facing reporters have intensified, with the deaths of Zogo and Bébé following that of Samuel Wazizi, who died in custody after he was arrested while covering a civil conflict in 2019.

The death of journalists is more rampant in Africa than anywhere else,” Anas said.

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