Cameroon: Amnesty International and more than 25 Rights organisations want the President of Cameroon to release arbitrary detained
2 min readPublished on February 3, 2022, Amnesty International together with some national and International Civil Society Organisations have written to the President of Cameroon on issues relating to arbitrary arrest and detention
This letter, which was signed by 27 Cameroonian and international organisations, calls on the Cameroon President to reform laws used to criminalize protest and to ensure the release of all people arbitrarily detained because of acts of free expression and free assembly.
The letter focuses on the arbitrary arrest relating to freedom of expression and assembly by the Cameroonian government especially in the course of the Anglophone crisis.
To mention just a few of these people, there’s Dorgelesse NGUESSAN, a hairdresser and single mother who was moved to join the MRC-led protest about how regional elections were being organized. She was arrested and detained for over a year and then sentenced to five years in prison by a military court. It was her first-ever protest.
There’s PENN Terence KHAN, vice-principal of CCAST (Cameroon College of Arts, Science and Technology) Bambili high school and a father of four. He was arrested, tortured, charged with terrorism and tried by a military court. The only evidence against him in the judgment is a T-shirt that reads ‘Diaspora South Africa standing behind West Cameroonians 4 a Federal Cameroon’ and ‘We are Cameroonians We are not extremists’. He got 12 years in prison after joining protests in the Anglophone regions five years ago.
There’s also TSI Conrad, a young independent journalist from the Anglophone regions who headed out to a protest with the intention of covering it – that is, doing his job. He was arrested on the spot and later sentenced to 15 years in prison by a military court. Like Penn Terence, he’s now heading into his sixth year in prison.
At least three other Anglophone journalists are also arbitrarily detained with Tsi Conrad. MANCHO Bibixy TSE and Thomas AWAH Junior were arrested in January 2017 and were convicted by the same military court to 15 and 11 years in jail, respectively. Mancho is also known for his human rights activism around the Anglophone crisis and for standing in a coffin as he gave a speech to fellow protesters.
Another journalist, Kingsley FUMUNYUY NJOKA, who was arrested on May 15, 2020, has been detained (at first incommunicado) without trial for more than 20 months.
And Intifalia OBEN, a young trader who made custom T-shirts with MRC political slogans on them, not realising that it was the security forces who’d placed the order. They came to arrest him for having made the T-shirts. He was tortured so badly
you can read the full letter HERE or below
Berinyuy Cajetan is the founder and publisher of Human Rights and Legal Research Centre (HRLRC) since 2017. He has intensive experience in strategic communications for Civil Society Organizations, campaign and advocacy, and social issues. He has an intensive experiencing in human rights monitoring, documentation and reporting.
