Government frowns at CCMN Coordinator’s remarks over poor handling of armed conflict in NWSW region
The whereabouts of Bamenda-based journalist, Rosaline Obah remain unknown following her last outing on a Crisis Group Webinar. She is being hunted by the Cameroon government for accusing the government of doing little in ending the over five years Anglophone crisis.
Rosaline Obah, the National Coordinator of the Cameroon Community Media Network (CCMN) who is also Regional Coordinator of the network for the North West, has come under serious government threats for exposing the regime’s lapses in handling the Anglophone crisis during a webinar meeting with the International Crisis Group (ICG) on March 3, 2022. The webinar meeting was discussing the role and challenges of women and the search for peace in Cameroon.
As one of the guest speakers, and taking the example of Cameroon, Rosaline Obah castigated the government for showing bad faith to end the crisis in the two Anglophone regions. she said “Children and women have been brutally killed by the regular forces like the famous Ngarbu massacre and the government quickly refused that the soldiers did not kill the women and children. It was only when satellite images emerged later actually showing the soldiers carrying out the act that some of the soldiers were indicted”. Rosaline Obah said during the webinar meeting.
She also said those indicted are being tried in Yaoundé and witnesses from Ngarbu cannot travel to Yaounde to testify. “It is so sad to imagine that, witnesses have to travel to Yaounde each time the matter has to come up at the military tribunal and they spend out of pocket. This has even made some of them withdraw because of the expenses incurred and even threats of life on some of them”, she lamented during the meeting.
A Journalist in Danger
After press reports highlighted her experience as a victim and of other journalists during the webinar meeting and quoted the Ngarbu massacre killings, numerous attacks and threats on journalists in the region, and cases of rape, looting, and unlawful arrests and detentions orchestrated by the government forces, that it became a topic of discussion in the weekly in-camera security meeting including some selected media houses, that held on March 4, 2022, chaired by the NW governor in which Rosaline Obah was subject of discussion.
According to Mr. Asala, Commissioner of the Special Branch police, “this lady is not serious, how can she make such callous statements about our government to the international community. This is a direct attack on the government and should not be taken lightly. I think we need to set an example on her in order to serve as a lesson to other journalists who want to destroy the name of the government. This should be taken up immediately after this meeting before things go wild. Does this imply all efforts being made by the government to end the crisis is nothing to her”? It also emerged from the in-camera meeting that it was not the first time she has been vocal about the government’s efforts at ending the crisis. A meeting of the CCMN which she chaired at Church Center, Mankon, she told journalists at that meeting not to shield the government’s own side of atrocities but to expose them to the world because they have the means to end the war, but have continued to perpetrate evil on the population. It was clear from the discussions at the meeting that Rosaline Obah was a threat to government actions. The same day after the security meeting, March 4, 2022, in an interview via call, Obah told this reporter that she received a call from a member of the meeting who advised her to leave immediately because so much has been said about her in the security meeting quoting the anonymous caller’s last words, “I am afraid you might be arrested. ” Just a day after the phone threats, a neighbor of Rosaline Obah reported that a Toyota pickup of special gendarmerie elements visited her home while she was away, knocked several times at her door, tried forcing their way in but did not succeed. She was only informed by her neighbor not to return home soon or to go underground.
An advocate of Press Freedom
It’s worth mentioning that Rosaline Obah had also been the North West Chapter president of the Cameroon Association of English Speaking Journalists (CAMASEJ). Besides being a journalist, she has been crusading for Press Freedom in Cameroon that has been gagged by the Biya regime. She also crusades for peace and this has earned her several threats from the state and non-state actors. This even forced her to take temporal refuge in a neighboring region just because of the rampant threats to her life.
In 2019, she told Mimi Mefo Info a popular online portal about press censorship in Cameroon … “I fight for press freedom, women who are victims of the conflict, preach against hate and that has put my life in danger…” She has also been very vocal about the government’s excesses in handling the crisis and threats on journalists while sharing her experiences in and out of Cameroon, and also on other National and International tabloids.
Government Crack Down On Journalists
Cameroon in general and the Anglophone regions (North West and South West) in particular are one of the unsafe places to practice journalism. Samuel Wazizi, a Pidgin English broadcaster was arrested in Buea and was later killed and buried under unclear circumstances. Independent journalists like Mimi Mefo were picked up and incarcerated in the dungeons of the New Bell prison in Douala. Ambe MacMillan was kidnapped in Bamenda by non-state actors and later released and many other cases abound. Other journalists have either simply relocated to the undisclosed areas while others are in exile in the diaspora where they now practice for fear of oppression by the various actors in the armed conflict. It is feared journalist Rosaline Obah is the latest in the line of those to soon fall on the list of victimized journalists in Cameroon given that the government knows her home and even when good citizens like Wazizi after reporting one’s self, the guarantee of returning alive is always a rare luxury.
