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 Cameroon streets calm

    February 29 2008 at 06:02PM

Yaounde - While troops were still out in Cameroon's capital on Friday, cities were calm, but a private radio station said police had shut it down after listeners criticised the president during a talk show.

Traffic was almost back to normal on the road in the capital Yaounde and the western port city of Douala in the wake of a transport strike and after days of violence in several towns left at least 17 dead according to an AFP toll.

Thursday's high-profile army presence on Yaounde streets was on Friday more discreet, and after regular protests and clashes with riot police dating back to the weekend, there were no further reports of violence.




But the private radio station Magic FM reported Friday that gendarmes in the capital had confiscated their equipment a day earlier, after callers to a talk their phone-in programme criticised President Paul Biya.

"At the moment, we are not on the air any more," presenter and senior employee Roger Kiyeck said.

"About ten gendarmes arrived on Thursday and confiscated all the equipment, saying that we had been irresponsible in letting listeners analyse the speech of the head of state," he added.

The weekday talk show "Magic Attitude" habitually opens its airwaves for listeners to call in and give their thoughts on current affairs.

On Thursday's edition, listeners commented on Biya's televised speech broadcast late Wednesday, in which he blamed the recent violence on "apprentice sorcerers in the shadows" who wanted to overthrow him.

"For some ... the objective is to obtain by violence what they have not achieved through the ballot box," said Biya.

"What we're looking at here is the exploitation ... of the transport strike for political ends."

Biya said he would use all legal means to re-establish order, since the toll of "human and material (damage is) probably very high".

Kiyeck said the gendarmes had seized computers, the console and broadcasting equipment from the station.

The officers also questioned station owner Gregoire Mbida Ndjana and Jules Elobo, the presenter of the programme in question.

The authorities in Douala, an opposition stronghold, shut down private broadcasters Equinoxe TV on February 22.

Communications Minister Emmanuel Beyiyi Bi Essam cited non-payment of a deposit required for the broadcasting licence as the reason.

Paris-based media rights campaigners Reporters without Borders dismissed that as "a pretext for harassing a news media that has criticised the government's decision to amend the constitution."

The unrest in Cameroon started on Saturday when a man was killed as riot police broke up an opposition rally in Douala. Authorities in the city had banned all demonstrations in mid-January.

Freight transport workers and then taxi drivers went on strike on Monday.

But on the fringes of the strike groups of youths vandals vandalised petrol stations, looted shops and clashed with riot police in sometimes deadly confrontations.

Some witnessed say the death toll of 17 compiled by AFP could in fact be much higher.

Although unions called off the transport strike on Wednesday, having won a slight cut in the price of petrol, the violence continued another day.

The recent protests were also linked to the rising prices of essential goods, and to Biya's announcement in January that he wanted to remove a constitutional ban on a third elected term.

Biya, 75, has been in power since 1982, with the opposition, spearheaded by veteran John Fru Ndi and his SDF, accusing his government and ruling party of plunging the country into corruption and poverty.

In its 2007 corruption barometer, the business watchdog organisation Transparency International reported that Cameroon had the worst level of endemic official corruption in Africa. - Sapa-AFP

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