Photo by Edouard TAMBA on Unsplash

Censorship in the Republic of Cameroon? This is a topic that is difficult to shed light on. Not only because so little information about it reaches the outside world, but also because it is incredibly deeply rooted in the country’s structures.

Most of the censorship laws in force today date back directly to Cameroon’s independence in 1960. Since then, the country has been ruled by one and the same party – the RDPC. President Paul Biya has been in power continuously since 1982. He has been able to prolong his time at the helm of the country time and again through corruption and rigged elections.

The situation is problematic for people who speak their mind freely. The dissemination of anything that does not fit in with the strict conservative guidelines of Biya and his government is systematically suppressed. Critical voices are silenced. Authors, journalists and activists are regularly threatened, arrested, tortured or even killed. The journalist Martinze Zogo uncovered a corruption scandal and was found dead shortly afterwards, on January 17, 2023.

Cameroonian influencer Shakiro was attacked and arrested in 2021 after publicly identifying as a trans woman. She had to publicly retract her coming out in order to get out of prison on bail. She was then attacked again on the street before she was finally able to flee to Europe.

Intimidation and violence on the part of the government can also be seen regularly at schools and, above all, at universities. Here, armed government troops are constantly present. They create an atmosphere of fear that is intended to prevent criticism and dissidence from the outset.

Classic censorship, i.e. the explicit banning of specific works, also takes place in Cameroon, but it isn’t the government’s primary tool in its effort to suppress dissident voices. Manfred Loimeier, journalist and expert on African literatures, explains that censorship is instead created much more by a constant, all-encompassing threat. This inevitably drives writers and intellectuals into a kind of self-censorship. We, a group of students from Kassel, exchanged ideas with experts, such as Manfred Loimeier, and with those affected by censorship in Cameroon, such as the writer and scientist Patrice Nganang. We learned a lot about the nature of censorship in Cameroon through intensive research and added around 30 titles to the „Kasseler Liste“. Our conclusion is: The opaque and unpredictable approach on free speech by the Cameroonian government not only creates a constant threat to Cameroonians, but also makes it all the more difficult to report on censorship from the outside.

Die Kasseler Liste, March 2024