Radio in Cameroon: Voices of Freedom Muffled as President Rules

Until the late 1990s, the regime of Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, used violence to mute criticism of its policies. Police officers and soldiers invaded newsrooms with guns drawn. They smashed computers and seized printing presses. They chased off newspaper vendors and beat up and jailed journalists.

One government critic was Pius Njawé, the owner and editor of Le Messager, a newspaper critical of President Biya’s policies. Njawé has found himself in police custody 126 times, so far, and his arrests and prison stays—sharing cells, he says, with “gangsters” and “burglars”—made him a symbol of the struggle for press freedom in Africa. In 1991, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) made Njawé one of the first recipients of its International Press Freedom Dangerous Assignments Award. After years of pressure from CPJ and other foreign organizations, Cameroon’s leadership grew sensitive to criticism of its record on press freedom and stopped its heavy-handed tactics.'

Now, the Biya regime relies upon loopholes in Cameroon’s law on mass communications to muzzle media criticism. And it was Pius Njawé’s application for a license to operate a radio station that prompted the Open Society Justice Initiative to take on Cameroon’s government before the African Union’s judicial guardian of human rights: the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

On October 29, 2002, Njawé applied to Cameroon’s Ministry of Communication for a license to operate an FM radio station. As he awaited the ministry’s decision, Njawé acquired transmission equipment. He set up two sound studios with digital equipment in a new building in the port city of Douala. He hired staff . He dubbed his station “Freedom FM.” And he heard nothing from the government, despite the fact that the law gives the Ministry of Communication a maximum of six months to decide whether or not to grant an applicant a license.

After the six-month period elapsed, Njawé decided that the government’s failure to respond to his application was tantamount to approval to begin broadcasting. He took out newspaper ads announcing that Freedom FM would take to the airwaves on May 24, 2003. At noon on the preceding day, however, police officers, soldiers, and members of Cameroon’s gendarmerie surrounded his studios. They sealed the building. The Ministry of Communication informed Njawé that he had failed to follow proper procedures and could not go on the air. The authorities kept troops around the station for weeks before pressing criminal charges against him.

President Biya has led Cameroon for over two decades. Analysts say his followers had a simple, compelling reason to keep Pius Njawé and Freedom FM off the air. Njawé was a jail-tested critic of President Biya, and in 2003, Biya was preparing for another reelection campaign.
Radio is popular in Cameroon, where many voters cannot afford newspapers. (Le Messager prints about 12,000 copies each day, and it is estimated that 15 people read each copy; Freedom FM’s signal would have covered an area with three million listeners.) By preventing Freedom FM from covering the 2004 election, President Biya helped dampen criticism of his policies and win himself another seven years in office.

On behalf of Pius Njawé and Freedom FM, on June 21, 2004, the Justice Initiative lodged a complaint before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights against Cameroon’s government. The complaint attacked the government’s practice of giving radio and television station owners only provisional authorization to operate, rather than granting them formal broadcasting licenses. It argued, among other things, that the issuance of a provisional authorization leaves broadcasters in a legal limbo that allows the Ministry of Communication to silence them quickly and arbitrarily if they anger the authorities. The complaint also argued that the government’s treatment of Freedom FM amounted to an attack on Njawé’s freedom of expression.

Cameroon’s minister of communications, Pierre Moukoko Mbonjo, has disputed criticism of the practice of issuing provisional authorizations. The system, he said, has benefited radio and television owners because it has allowed them to operate without paying licensing fees. Mbonjo said Cameroon has more than 60 private radio stations and asserted that some of these do not favor the government and have not had problems.

The complaint before the Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Justice Initiative’s efforts to mediate between Freedom FM and Cameroon’s government have had some effect. On June 24, 2005, the government and Freedom FM signed a settlement agreement. The government agreed to drop the criminal charges against Njawé, to release Freedom FM’s equipment, to grant Freedom FM a provisional authorization to broadcast, and to process, in a fair and equitable manner, Freedom FM’s application for a full license. For its part, Freedom FM agreed to drop the complaint before the Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

When the government finally unsealed the radio station in July 2005, however, Njawé found that Cameroon’s harsh climate had damaged the studios and much of their digital equipment beyond repair. The Justice Initiative is assisting Njawé’s efforts to gain compensation for the damage and bring Freedom FM to the airwaves.

As of spring 2007, Freedom FM remained silent and Cameroon’s Ministry of Communication had yet to license a single radio or television station.