Cameroon bans reports on health of missing President Biya

Paul Biya has been president of Cameroon since 1982, making him the world’s longest-serving non-royal head of state and, at 91, the world’s oldest chief.

“He may additionally be lifeless,” mentioned the Columbia Journalism Assessment (CJR). “No person at present is aware of.” Biya has not been pictured since attending a China-Africa summit in Beijing on 8 September, and he missed the UN Normal Meeting assembly in New York final month. 

Final week the Africa Broadcasting Service (ABS), a US-based African satellite tv for pc TV channel, launched a video that “circulated rapidly” on social media, citing unnamed sources within the capital, Yaoundé, claiming that Biya was lifeless. Rumours have “swept” the Central African nation since, and “set the Cameroonian authorities and its journalists in opposition to one another”, mentioned the CJR.

‘One thing completely different this time’

Biya cancelled his deliberate look ultimately week’s Worldwide Organisation of La Francophonie summit in Paris, which notably “raised eyebrows”, mentioned the Monetary Occasions, given Cameroon’s “heat ties with France”. This fuelled widespread claims in Cameroon that Biya was “severely in poor health, and even lifeless”.

The federal government was pressured to launch an announcement saying Biya was alive and in “glorious” well being. Biya is on a brief keep in Geneva, in response to the federal government spokesman – a metropolis the place he spends a lot time that “he has earned the nickname ‘President of the Resort InterContinental'”, mentioned the FT. 

He’s in “good well being” and can return to Cameroon “within the subsequent few days”, mentioned Communications Minister René Emmanuel Sadi.

“Biya’s authorities does not talk a lot. That is all the time been the case for the previous 25 years of his travels,” a political advisor advised the paper. “However there’s one thing completely different this time.”

Authorities have gone as far as to ban the media from discussing the well being of Biya. Inside Minister Paul Atanga Nji advised regional governors that discussing the president’s well being was a matter of nationwide safety, and that “any debate within the media in regards to the president’s situation is subsequently strictly prohibited”. 

Offenders would “face the rigour of the regulation”, he added, instructing the governors to watch personal media channels and social networks.

The burden of proof

Cameroon has had solely two presidents because it gained independence greater than 60 years in the past. And the second, Biya, has spent a lot of his 48 years in energy overseas that rumours of his loss of life flow into intermittently – “just for him to reappear dramatically on the final minute”, mentioned AfricaNews. 

Biya spent a 3rd of his time abroad in 2006 and 2009, in response to estimates in a 2018 report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Undertaking. In the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, hashtags #WhereisBiya and #LetsFindBiya started trending on Twitter. 

Unexplained absences are “nothing out of the extraordinary for this most enigmatic of presidents”, who “typically eschews the entrance of the stage” and feels no must “interact in diplomatic presenteeism or performative summitry”, mentioned the BBC. Biya is a “recurring non-attendee” at gatherings of African leaders.

Sources counsel Biya is now in Geneva “to relaxation underneath medical supervision after a heavy diplomatic schedule in July and August”.

But when there’s something amiss, “we now have the correct to know”, a Yaoundé-based businesswoman advised Voice of America. “So we’re pleading with the federal government of Cameroon to tell us the well being state [state of health] of our president.”

She doesn’t belief authorities officers’ declarations that Biya is in good well being, and “will imagine Biya is alive solely when she sees him”, mentioned the information website.

Because of this the federal government’s denial of ABS’s story is devoid of any “smidgen of reality”, the community advised CJR. “The burden is on those that are denying the report. They might simply ask Biya to face by his resort window, wave to reporters to show he is alive, and the topic would endlessly be laid to relaxation.”