From Facebook to SED: How Yaoundé Hunts Voices

On 29 October 2025, social-media activist Geneviève Tina Ella, widely known online as “Reine des Bois,” was arrested in Bafoussam and transported to Yaoundé’s State Secretariat for Defence (SED) after what the regime called a “joint ANTIC–National Gendarmerie investigation.” That phrasing alone tells the whole story: ANTIC has become the regime’s official online-hunting office. It scans Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp channels and X posts, flags anti-regime content, and passes the names to security units for arrest.

According to information obtained by Cameroon Concord from civil-society lawyers in Douala and Yaoundé, Tina Ella was not arrested for any act of violence. She was reportedly picked up after commenting under posts that denounced the Constitutional Council president Clément Atangana and the rigged proclamation of Paul Biya’s eighth mandate. At SED, she was told the complaint came from Bruanus Bidjang, one of the regime’s most aggressive TV communicators, who has been publicly promising to “deal with” those insulting the head of state. The message is crude but clear: anyone who challenges the narrative that “Cameroon re-elected Paul Biya” can be tracked, named and picked up.

This is not new. Each time the regime feels vulnerable, it opens the same toolbox. After the 2018 post-election marches led by Maurice Kamto, dozens of activists were jailed, some after being identified on videos and Facebook lives. After the Sept. 22, 2020 protest, young militants were filmed, profiled and later charged at the military tribunal. Now, after the 2025 revolt over Tchiroma’s claimed victory, the same method is being rolled out — but more automated, more digital, and more vindictive.

How the method works

1. ANTIC surveillance: ANTIC, created on paper to “secure cyberspace,” now operates as a political monitoring cell. Technicians follow high-traffic opposition pages, collect usernames, IP trails when possible, screenshots of “incitement,” and build small dossiers.

2. Transmission to security forces: These dossiers are sent to the Central Criminal Investigation Service of the Gendarmerie or to military intelligence (SEMIL/SED).

3. Friendly media amplification: CRTV and regime-linked pages then present the arrest as a “cybercrime” or “incitement to insurrection,” giving cover to what is in fact political policing.

4. Intimidation-by-example: The goal is not only to punish one person but to frighten 10,000 Cameroonians who now believe that a Facebook comment can lead straight to SED.

This is exactly what happened in Bafoussam. A woman, arrested in the presence of her blind grandmother, was reportedly told at SED that she was there because she had written that the house of Clément Atangana “should be burned.” Whether she said it or not is almost irrelevant — the regime wanted to show that comments under anti-Biya posts are now being watched. That is the real headline.

Precedents: the Roman Couta case
For those who think this is an isolated arrest, they only need to look at the Roman Couta affair. A Cameroonian critic of Biya, he was tracked across borders and abducted in Gabon, then quietly sent back to Cameroon. That operation, widely circulated on social media and reported by dissident outlets, showed two things:

• the regime is willing to outsource repression and ask friendly autocrats to help seize critics abroad;

• the target is not “terrorism,” it is speech.
  This is why so many Cameroonian bloggers now live in Belgium, Germany, Canada, the US and South Africa — not because they cannot pay rent in Yaoundé, but because the state has blurred the line between opinion and crime.

Pattern of authoritarian control
Since Paul Biya’s circle forced through the disputed 12 October 2025 presidential result, the state has operated on three fronts at once:

• street repression (New Bell, Nkolouloun, Garoua, Bertoua — live rounds against protesters);

• elite protection (snipers around Tchiroma’s residence, raids on his relatives, attacks on his cooks and staff);

• information chokehold (arrests of bloggers, intimidation of journalists, threats to admins of viral pages).

The arrest of “Reine des Bois” is therefore not a side story — it is the continuation of the same authoritarian reflex: if the people will not believe CRTV, then beat, jail or scare the people until they stop talking.

Why now?
Because the regime knows the 2025 result is weak. It knows that Tchiroma published the original polling-station PVs in a public drive and openly challenged Yaoundé to dispute them. It knows international voices — Tibor Nagy, major Western media, even the EU — have not congratulated Biya but instead condemned the killings. When legitimacy is thin, the only tool left is fear. Online fear. Street fear. Workplace fear.

Cameroon Concord position
As an independent newsroom that has documented the arrests of political activists, church whistle-blowers, and journalists since the early days of the Anglophone conflict, Cameroon Concord:

• condemns the arrest of Geneviève “Reine des Bois” Tina Ella;

• denounces the instrumentalisation of ANTIC as a partisan surveillance arm of the CPDM state;

• calls for the immediate release of all citizens detained for comments, videos, lives and posts related to the 2025 presidential crisis;

• reminds the authorities that freedom of expression is not suspended because a 92-year-old man wants a lifetime presidency.

A state that shoots demonstrators and jails commenters is not defending “republican order.” It is defending a regime at the end of its political oxygen. And every arrest like this only proves what Cameroonians have been shouting in Douala, Garoua, Bertoua, Maroua and Bonaberi since October 26: if the vote had been clean, there would be no need for guns — or ANTIC.