At least 28 people including a well known Cameroonian media mogul, Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga, the owner of Vision 4 TV based in Douala, and several senior police officers have been arrested and detained by authorities in the country in connection with the killing last month of popular broadcast journalist, Martinez Zogo, who was abducted and killed last month.
The mutilated body of the radio host was found on January 22 in Yaounde, five days after he was abducted near a police station after he started a programme where he began exposing official corruption and mentioned names of top government officials.
Media organisations in the Central African country had also reported the murder of a Catholic priest and radio host, Jean Jacques Ola Bebe, who also found dead in the capital after he called for justice for Zogo.
The president of the Cameroon Journalists Trade Union, Marion Obam, told journalists at a press conference in Douala on Tuesday that Cameroonian journalists will wear dark clothes every Wednesday to show they want all suspected killers of journalists arrested and brought to justice.
“On Monday, police arrested and detained seven more people, including media mogul, Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga, who was arrested at his Yaounde home,” Obam said.
She added that Belinga’s chief of security, a former presidential guard commander, and the head of his Vision 4 TV channel.
Friends of the murdered journalist say Zogo had, on his radio program, accused Belinga of planning to kill him for reporting on his (Belinga’s) alleged corrupt deals with officials.
“Since the killings of Zogo and Bebe, several other journalists in Cameroon say they have received death threats.”
“Nobody would want to be killed. When journalists are moving, they feel that the worst can come to them.
“We even have some families who are already beginning to advise that their children should not engage in journalism because it could invite agony to their lives,” Omba said.
“Many journalists are waiting to see the Cameroonian government bring to book those who have brought this kind of agony to the media in Cameroon,” she said.