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.
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.
