The Speaker of the National Assembly, Hon CavayeYeguie Djibril, has dragged the Publisher of one of the French Language dailies, Emergence, to court for defamation

The Publisher, Magnus Biaga, reports that he has been served two direct summonses to appear before the Yaounde Magistrates Court on May 22 and 27. The summonses are hinged on a front page article the newspaper carried, to the effect that Hon Cavaye’s passport was withdrawn by gendarmes from the National Gendarmerie Headquarters in Yaounde.

Although the paper did not reveal why the passport of the Speaker of the National Assembly was withdrawn, it disclosed the names of some of the gendarmes who made up the squad that seized the passport. Claiming that such an article adulterated his credibility and honour, Hon Cavaye initiated court action against the newspaper and its publisher.

On April 9, a certain bailiff in the Mvog-Ada neighbourhood served Magnus Biaga with a summons to appear before the Yaounde Magistrates Court on May 22. Curiously, on April 10, the same bailiff, Me Tchenkam, served the publisher with another summons to appear in the same court on May 27.

In the second summons, Magnus Biaga is expected to face charges bothering on claims that the paper published derogatory insinuations about the National Assembly Speaker in connection with the part he played in the release of the French Catholic Priest, Father George Vandenbeusch, who was kidnapped by Boko Haram elements.

On April 13, the Charges d’Etudes for Judicial Research at the National Gendarmerie Headquarters, summoned the publisher to appear there on April 16 at 10:30. He was grilled for over three hours in the office of one Captain Innocent Jean Baptiste Bouen, who is in charge of the file. One warrant officer, Aristide Tchetue, acted as Secretary during the grilling of the publisher.

Intimidation

Going by the Publisher, the interrogation later took an intimidating twist when the gendarmes attempted to force him to reveal his sources of information. “I was surprised that the gendarmes did not ask whether the information is true or not.

They wanted to know who gave me the information that my paper published to the effect that the passport of the Speaker of the National Assembly was seized and taken to the National Secretariat for Defense, SED,” Magnus Biaga told The Post after leaving the gendarmerie headquarters at about 1:30 pm that day.

He added that as any credible journalist, he refused to reveal his sources to the gendarmes in line with Article 50 of the 1990 Law on the Freedom of Mass Communication in Cameroon that stipulates the protection of sources of information by journalism practitioners.

Asked if the information he published was true, he declared: “I don’t publish anything in my paper that is not true. The first obligation of journalism is to the truth”.

The journalist said he saw the litigation that the Speaker of the National Assembly has initiated against him as tacit blackmail and intimidation. He maintained that if the Speaker had gainsaid the veracity of the article he published, he would have written a rejoinder in consonance with Article 52 of the 1990 Law on the Freedom of Mass Communication. In this light, the Speaker would have written a rejoinder pointing out what he would have identified as factual irregularities in the article.

The litigation that is coming just a little more than a week to the commemoration of the World Press Freedom Day on May 3, has been considered an affront to press freedom in Cameroon. Cameroonian journalists are on the red alert in view of what would be a high profile case pitting the publisher against the third personality of the State.