The journalist died in custody in August 2019. Cameroonian authorities deny any act of torture.
“The results of the inquest into the custody of the Cameroonian journalist Samuel Wazizi must be made public. This is the cry from the heart of two human rights organizations, Acat-France and Reporters Without Borders.
Samuel Wazizi was arrested in Buea in the southwest on August 2, 2019. It took ten months for the Cameroonian authorities, after revelations in the national press, to admit that the journalist was dead. In June last year, they declared that Samuel Wazizi, “active in a separatist group”, had died of a generalized infection on August 17, 2019 at Yaoundé Military Hospital and denied any act of torture. or bodily injury.
“We must break with silence and the National Commission on Human Rights and Freedoms should weigh with all its weight so that the light is shed on the death of this journalist,” asks Clément Boursin, responsible for Africa at Acat-France.
On October 9, the Vice President of the Cameroonian CNDHL sent a letter to Acat regarding the Wazizi affair, indicating that President Paul Biya had received the death report in the custody of Samuel Wazizi. We are quite surprised because we have no information about this report, there is no indication of who carried out this survey: was it independent, impartial? Was there an autopsy of the body? No item appears in this message. The Cameroonian authorities are requested to publish the results of this investigation.
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