A preferred Cameroon radio journalist who had been lacking following what a media rights group referred to as an abduction has been discovered lifeless, his employer and police mentioned on Sunday.
Martinez Zogo was managing director of Yaounde-based personal radio station Amplitude FM and the star host of a preferred each day program, Embouteillage (Gridlock).
On the air, the 51-year-old recurrently tackled circumstances of corruption, not hesitating to query necessary personalities by identify. Zogo served a two-month jail sentence for legal defamation in 2020, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported.
AMINDEH BLAISE ATABONG / REUTERS
He had been lacking since Tuesday.
“I went to Ebogo (15 kilometers north of Yaounde) early this morning the place I noticed and acknowledged the physique of Martinez Zogo. The prosecutor’s deputy was current and his spouse was there to determine him,” Amplitude FM radio editor in chief Charly Tchouemou informed AFP.
The dying of Zogo was confirmed to AFP by a police supply who spoke on situation of anonymity.
A big crowd gathered as Zogo’s physique was taken to the morgue of Yaounde central hospital for an post-mortem, a member of the sufferer’s household informed AFP on situation of anonymity.
Social media has been awash with posts following his disappearance with Reporters With out Borders (RSF) condemning “the brutal abduction of a journalist.”
In response to RSF, Zogo’s badly broken automotive was discovered outdoors a police station in a suburb of the Cameroonian capital Yaounde on Tuesday.
“There are a lot of gray areas concerning the circumstances of his brutal abduction,” Sadibou Marong, head of the sub-Saharan Africa workplace of RSF, informed AFP.
“The authorities should launch a rigorous, thorough and unbiased investigation to determine the complete chain of duty and the circumstances that led to this unhappy occasion,” Marong mentioned.
Cameroon’s nationwide journalists’ union condemned a “heinous assassination” and urged media employees to put on black on January 25 as an indication of mourning.
“Though Cameroon has one of many richest media landscapes in Africa, it is likely one of the continent’s most harmful international locations for journalists, who function in a hostile and precarious atmosphere,” RSF says in its Cameroon nation profile.
The Worldwide Press Institute, a Vienna-based press freedom group, urged Cameroonian authorities to “promptly examine the horrific homicide and be sure that these accountable are delivered to justice”.
The political opposition was additionally indignant, with Social Democratic Entrance (SDF) deputy Jean-Michel Nintcheu denouncing a “crime which can not go unpunished.”
On Sunday, a number of Cameroonian tv channels devoted their applications to Zogo’s dying.
Cameroonian-French author Calixthe Beyala mentioned she was “dejected, saddened” by information of his dying.
“I knew he was lifeless as quickly because it was introduced that he was kidnapped,” she informed Data TV.
“We will ask ourselves the query: whose flip is it? Every of us can discover ourselves on this scenario for one thing that we would have mentioned.”
Killings of journalists and different media employees jumped 50% in 2022, with a median of 1 journalist killed each 4 days, in line with latest figures launched by the United Nations.
“These journalists have been killed for a wide range of causes, together with reprisals for reporting on organized crime, armed battle or the rise of extremism, and masking delicate topics similar to corruption, environmental crimes, abuse of energy, and protests,” UNESCO mentioned in an announcement.
