Last Sunday, popular radio journalist Mbani Zogo Arsène Salomon, better known as Martinez Zogo, was found dead on the outskirts of the Cameroonian capital, Yaoundé.
Zogo was kidnapped by unknown persons five days earlier. His decomposing body showed signs that he had been tortured prior to his death.
The murder is the latest in a growing trend of enforced and sometimes fatal disappearances in Cameroon.
In an incident last year, 40 commercial motorcyclists were stopped and taken to what appears to have been state custody. Twenty-four of them were later found detained at a military facility in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s northwest region.
Later, in court, they were accused of collaborating with Anglophone separatists.
The sister of one of the 16 who remain missing told of the day last April that they were taken away. “My brother called me and asked me to sunbathe in his traditional clothing. After that conversation, I have not seen or heard from him.” This despite visits to various police stations and gendarmerie brigades for any information.
In 2020, the Cameroonian government admitted that journalist Samuel Wazizi died in prison shortly after being arrested the previous year for his reporting critical of the government’s handling of the separatist conflict.
That conflict, which forms the background to most of these disappearances, began in October 2016, when lawyers’ and teachers’ unions launched street demonstrations against the compulsory use of French in schools and courts in the two English-speaking regions of the country. .
The two regions, in the northwest and southwest of Cameroon, are home to some five million of the country’s 24 million people. When these protests were suppressed by the state, the situation degenerated into an armed struggle for the independence of what the secessionists call Ambazonia.
Disappearances have been a key part of the struggle, with all sides taking people. Families are left without closure.
“Today more than four years have passed. I cannot know where my father is or if he is dead or alive,” said Abedine Akweton Abilitu, whose father was arrested in 2018 on suspicion of collaborating with the rebels. “I had to drop out of school to help my mom find dad.”
His mother died last May without ever knowing what happened to her husband. Secessionist groups have also been accused of “disappearing” people. Its main targets are public officials in conflict zones.
In June 2021, these groups were accused of kidnapping six high-profile delegates in the south-west of the country. One of the delegates later died.
In December of that year, the separatists seized the local chief, Fon Yakum Kevin Teuvih, head of the assembly of traditional rulers in the northwest region.
Justice and closure are even more elusive when the rebels are the captors. “They have no legal structure, no visible and organized chain of command, so it becomes extremely difficult to seek justice,” said Blaise Chamango, director of Human is Right.
Human rights defenders are turning to unusual strategies to get answers.
“I remember that once we sent a lady to cry in front of a security post in Buea, where her son was held incommunicado for months.” Shamango said. “Three days later he was released unconditionally.”
According to reports from the Crisis Group and the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs in Cameroon, more than 2.2 million people are affected by the crisis in the northwestern and southwestern regions of Cameroon.
According to the same reports, more than 6,000 people have died and 956,000 have been displaced, of whom more than 70,000 are refugees in Nigeria.
This article first appeared on The continentthe pan-African weekly produced in collaboration with the mail and guardian. It is designed to be read and shared on WhatsApp. Download your free copy at mg.co.za/thecontinent/
