HRW reports Cameroon social media activist feared victim of enforced disappearance News
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HRW reports Cameroon social media activist feared victim of enforced disappearance

Steve Akam, a Cameroonian social media activist, is feared to have forcibly disappeared, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) news report issued Tuesday.  

Human Rights Watch issued a statement demanding Akam’s whereabouts and advocating his release. Akam was reportedly last seen in a video circulated online on July 21, in which he is being arrested. According to the HRW report, the video was filmed in the Cameroonian town of Kye-Ossi near the Gabon border approximately three weeks ago, between July 19 and 21.

Akam, known on TikTok as Ramon Cotta, made videos criticizing the Cameroonian authorities. Lawyers representing Akam “believe that Cameroonian authorities extrajudicially returned Cotta to Cameroon from Gabon and that he is a victim of an enforced disappearance,” according to HRW. Since his detention, Cameroonian authorities have refused to respond to requests for information from his lawyers, acknowledge his detention or disclose information about his location, which HRW notes is “depriving him of protection of the law.”  

President Paul Biya has been Cameroon’s head of state since 1982. The run-up to Cameroon’s imminent 2025 presidential elections has seen increasing restrictions on freedom of expression. Last month, Cameroonian authorities, with the intention to “preserve public order” introduced a decree implementing measures to curtail freedom of expression.  

In Amnesty International’s State of the World’s Human Rights, the report on Cameroon underlined freedom of expression and arbitrary detention as leading human rights concerns in Cameroon during 2023. Among the government crackdown on freedom of expression was the abduction and murder of Cameroonian journalist Martinez Zogo, whose body was found mutilated outside the capital city, Yaoundé last year. Zogo, director of the radio station Amplitude FM, was outspoken about government corruption.  

Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Africa researcher at HRW, called upon African and regional bodies to hold the Cameroonian government accountable by “sending strong messages to President Paul Biya’s administration that flagrant violations of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and other human rights treaties are unacceptable.” 

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