BBC Journalist: “We were humiliated” in CMR because of Ebola

The lack of education about Ebola poses a great threat to the eradication of the virus and the effect is the alarming increase worldwide in the stigmatization of citizens from Ebola-affected countries, which the U.N.'s high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, has warned against, according to news reports.

A situation that has caught the attention of New York based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The rights organisation said Cameroon authorities on October 13, deported three Sierra Leone sports journalists and two sports ministry officials who arrived in Yaoundé on October 8 to cover international soccer matches between the two countries.

Peter Nkanga, CPJ's West Africa representative said Cameroon police and immigration officers barred BBC correspondent Mohamed Fajah Barrie, and Frank Magnus Ernest Cole and Mohamed Kelfala Sesay, both journalists with Mercury Radio, from leaving their hotel because the Sierra Leone Football Association had not included their names in the official list of delegates declared free of Ebola.

“We were humiliated. It was very disgraceful,” Barrie said. “We were confined at the hotel, isolated at the airport, and escorted even up to the entrance of the plane.”

For journalists, media professionals, and news outlets, the price of telling the important stories around this epidemic ravaging West Africa should not come with the cost of lives, Nkanga said before adding: “Journalists worldwide have begun sharing their experience and ways they are covering Ebola, according to news reports. Yet, the death of media workers is having a deflating effect on the morale, journalists repeatedly told me”