Objectified And Caricatured: Cameroon Bar Defends Top Attorney Against Toxic Media Bullying

The Cameroon Bar Association on June 16, 2026 officially filed a scathing three-page petition with the National Communication Council, NCC, demanding immediate sanctions against the private television channel, Vision 4. The move follows an aggressive on-air smear campaign targeting prominent international attorney, Maître Félicité Esther Zeifman.
The complaint, signed by the President of the Cameroon Bar Association, Barrister Mbah Eric Mbah, is sequel to news broadcasts aired on June 2 and 3, 2026 by Vision 4 television channel. In the filing, the Bar leader details a campaign of "rare verbal and psychological aggressiveness" orchestrated by the television station against Maître Félicité Zeifman, who is registered with both the Cameroon and Paris Bars.

Dehumanizing Slurs On Air
According to the official text, Vision 4 targeted Maître Zeifman during a broadcast covering the high-profile military tribunal proceedings in Yaoundé. The station explicitly labeled her a "black widow, a living natural physical phenomenon" and a "baseline specimen for museums of ugliness," while superimposing images of a spider over her likeness.
Furthermore, the station published unverified claims stating she had been struck with a "life disbarment" by the Cameroon Bar and suspended by the Paris Bar over ethical violations. Barrister Mbah Eric Mbah completely dismantled these assertions, explicitly characterizing them as malicious disinformation designed to tarnish the professional honorability of the defense attorney.

Martinez Zogo Case Backdrop
The document points out that these toxic media attacks are explicitly tied to Maître Zeifman’s legal representation of the family of Martinez Zogo, the prominent Cameroonian journalist whose January 2023 brutal assassination sparked international outrage.
While Barrister Mbah Eric Mbah notes that the connections between Vision 4's leadership and the suspects in the ongoing murder trial are "of public notoriety" (the station is owned by business tycoon Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga, who is one of the accused in the assassination probe), he emphasizes that the Bar's primary intervention is to defend the rule of law.
"Public attacks on the dignity and reputation of a lawyer... weaken public confidence in the judicial institution and in the peaceful exercise of defense rights, casting an unjustified discredit upon the entire Cameroon Bar," Mbah Eric Mbah wrote.

Demands For Regulatory Sanctions
Invoking Decree No. 2012/038, which empowers the NCC to discipline media personnel for severe ethical breaches, the Bar Association has formally requested that the regulatory body conduct an immediate investigation into the broadcast parameters. Levy strict regulatory sanctions against both Vision 4 and the individual journalists involved in producing the segment. And establish preventative measures to shield defense attorneys from media-driven intimidation.
Meanwhile, the National Communication Council, headed by its Chairman, Mr. Joe Chebonkeng Kalabusu, has officially stamped the petition as received, setting the stage for what legal experts describe as a landmark confrontation between the institutional defense corps and corporate media actors in Cameroon.

Martinez Zogo Case...