Politics
(March 27, 2017 | Washington D.C.) Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and the Anti-Torture Initiative at the Washington College of Law’s Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law, call for the immediate release of human rights defender Nkongho Felix Agbor-Balla, who has been held in military detention since January 17, 2017. He was arrested alongside Dr. Fontem Aforteka’a Neba, a university lecturer, in Buea, the capital of the Southwest Region of Cameroon, for organizing peaceful protests calling for the rights of the Anglophone minority to be respected. Mr. Nkongho is charged with 8 counts, including treason, terrorism, incitement of civil unrest and breach of the constitution and set to be tried by a military tribunal. If convicted of these charges, he could face death penalty. On March 23, Mr. Nkongho’s trial was adjourned in a closed hearing to April 27, 2017, at which point his application for bail will be heard.
Mr. Nkongho is a barrister in Cameroon, where he leads the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium (CACSC), the FAKO Lawyer's Association, and the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (CHRD). He previously worked for the United Nations as a Human Rights Officer. His arrest is linked to his high profile work on behalf of the English-Speaking Minority and took place shortly the Minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralization, Rene Emmanuel Sadi, declared CACSC an illegal organization.
“The arbitrary detention of Mr. Nkongho and Dr. Fontem on account of their peaceful protests and advocacy for the human rights of English-speaking Cameroonians is in blatant violation of international human rights law,” Professor Juan E. Méndez, the academic director of the Anti-Torture Initiative, and the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, has stated, further expressing “grave concern over allegations of excessive use of force and the use of torture against protesters and detainees, as well as over reported cases of arbitrary executions. I call on the Government to immediately release Mr. Nkongho and Dr. Fontem, to conduct an inquiry into the allegations of grave human rights abuses committed since October 2016, and to provide victims with adequate redress and rehabilitation,” the former Special Rapporteur concluded.
Cameroon has been facing a wave of protests and strikes since October 2016, as the English-speaking minority part of the country feels marginalized and discriminated against, especially in the judicial system and in education. As Mr. Nkongho himself puts it, “West Cameroonians’ education, culture, language and economic aspirations have been severely undermined. The people are thus very determined to secure their Anglo-Saxon heritage and aspirations as we enshrined in the constitution of 1961.”
Members of the civil society are being arbitrarily arrested, detained and harassed for speaking out against the current government’s policies. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, Maina Kiai, denounced the excessive use of force by security forces during demonstrations in Buea and Bamenda, in November and December 2016 where at least four people were killed. The government then proceeded to issuing an internet ban on the English-speaking that of the country.
”The Cameroonian government is cracking down on civil society in total impunity and the international community needs to stop ignoring this” said Angelita Baeyens, Programs Director of RFK Partners for Human Rights. “Felix’s arbitrary arrest and trial before a military tribunal, in complete disregard with Cameroon’s international human rights obligations is illustrative of the repression that the English-speaking minority is experiencing.”
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and the Anti-Torture Initiative call for the immediate release of Nkongho Felix Agbor-Balla and other political prisoners, for the charges against them to be dropped, and for the Cameroonian government to respect its international human rights obligations.
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- RFK Human Rights Newsroom
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The Vice President of the newly-created National Commission for the Promotion of Bilingualism and Multiculturalism has promised to learn English so as to promote bilingualism.
Oumarou Djika Saidou admitted his weakness in English when he recently failed to express himself in the Queen’s language on CRTV Ngaoundere.
Saidou, who once worked at the Prime Minister’s office, was unable to make a sentence in English; he got stuck in the middle of his first sentence. Afterwards, he promised that he would rapidly learn English following his appointment as member of the commission to promote bilingualism.
Saidou, who has been on retirement in his native Ngaoundere, exposed his shortcomings when CRTV wanted to get his reaction shortly after the Presidential decree appointing members of the commission was published on March 15.
The former Regional Delegate of Education was appointed as Vice President of the Bilingualism and Multiculturalism Commission by President Biya on March 15.
The appointment of an English-deficient Saidou as Vice President of the commission for the promotion of bilingualism has raised the question as to the criteria that President Biya used to appoint members of the commission.
Prince Aristide Ngueukam, the publisher of the French language weekly, ‘Forum Libre’, has questioned how somebody who is not bilingual could be appointed as Vice President or even a member of a national commission for the promotion of bilingualism.
Cameroonpost
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Human rights lawyer and former President of Northwest Common Law Lawyers’ Association, was on Thursday, March 16 arrested and transferred to Yaounde. Barrister Robert Fon was summoned to the Northwest Governor’s office where he was arrested and whisked off to Yaounde. Close collaborators of Barrister Fon told The Post that no charges have been leveled against him yet. Meantime, most prominent Bamenda lawyers have fled town for fear of being arrested.
One of his colleagues posted the following statement on her Facebook wall after the arrest was made:
Sad to inform you that our Learned colleague, Barrister NSOH FON Robert of Bamenda was this morning arrested and transfered to Yaoundé for reasons yet to be made clear. Unconfirmed information holds that he went to the NW Gendarmerie Legion yesterday to report the fake message circulating about him and others and was requested to report back today. Upon arrival this morning, all seem to have been put in place to arrest and convey him to Yaounde. That's what exactly happened and he's presumably there right now. Join us in prayers that justice prevail over his predicament. HG KEMENDE.
Cameroonpost
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To be born an English speaker in a world where the language remains the lingua franca of trade and diplomacy is normally to draw first prize in the linguistic lottery of life.
But in one corner of Africa, having English as a mother tongue has proved a curse thanks to a colonial anomaly that left a seething Anglophone underclass in a slither of overwhelmingly French-speaking Cameroon.
For the past four months, the two English-speaking regions of western Cameroon have risen up against a perceived decades-long assault by the Francophone elite on their language and British traditions, staging a campaign of general strikes, demonstrations and the occasional riot.
A ruthless response by the government, characterised by the killing of protesters and a two-month internet shutdown in English-speaking regions, has hardened antagonisms, pitching the West African country into deep crisis and raising questions about its survival as a unified state.
Amid growing secessionists mutterings, Britain has become more active in recent days in attempting to defuse the confrontation. Last week Brian Olley, the British High Commissioner to Cameroon, met Paul Biya, the country’s 84-year-old president, and is understood to have called on him to end the use of force against protesters.
“We have raised our concerns with the government of Cameroon and will continue to raise these issues, including allowing access to the internet,” a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.
But such quiet diplomacy has also angered some Anglophone activists, who accuse Britain of abandoning its responsibilities in the former British Southern Cameroons, which united with the much larger French Cameroons in 1961.
“Britain made us what we are and now most people in Britain don’t even know we exist,” an activist involved in the demonstrations said.
Despite the anger, Anglophone Cameroonians, who make up less than a fifth of the county’s 23m people, remain stubbornly loyal to their colonial traditions. To the bewilderment and often the derision of French speakers, they insist on forming orderly queues, referring to bars as “off-licences” and dressing up their judges and lawyers in powdered wigs.
Both British common law and the GCE O-and-A-level syllabus remain deeply cherished.
It is a loyalty that has rarely been reciprocated by Britain
The British Cameroons were made famous by the writings of naturalist Gerald Durrell, who visited in the Forties to search for the elusive hairy toad. He was memorably assisted by an uproarious Anglophone king, the Fon of Bafut, a gin-and-bitters-swilling pidgin speaker with a large retinue of drum-playing, bosom-jiggling wives whom Durrell taught the Conga.
But Britain generally wanted little to do with the place. William Gladstone turned down a plea for annexation from local kings in 1884, allowing Bismark to take it for Germany.
After the First World War, Britain turned over five-sixths of the territory to France, agreeing to an arbitrary border line drawn up by Francois Georges-Picot, the French diplomat jointly responsible for the Middle East’s controversial modern boundaries.
Heartbroken local kings, like the Sultan of Bamum, protested in vain.
“I wish to follow the King of England and to be his servant, together with my country, so that we may be freshened with dew,” the sultan wrote in a letter to George V “who puts the evil men to flight and the troublesome to prison.”
After independence in 1960, the British Cameroons were wooed into union with the much larger French Cameroons by a promise that they would be equal members of a federal, bilingual state — a pledge broken when the federal constitution was abandoned in 1972.
Since then, English speakers say they have been shut out of jobs, denied fair political representation and deprived of revenues from oil, much of which is extracted from former British territory.
Matters came to a head in November when a group of lawyers staged a small protest outside the courthouse in Bamenda, Cameroon’s largest Anglophone city, to demand the withdrawal of judges who spoke no English and had no understanding of British common law. The protest was broken up with tear gas.
The authorities must have assumed that, as in the past, the protests would peter out. Instead, the movement grew, drawing in Anglophone teachers, angered by state attempts to replace them with French speakers with knowledge of neither English nor the GCE syllabus.
Students joined in too, only to see their halls of residence raided and female students beaten and sexually abused by the police, according to activists.
The government admits to six protester deaths, though activists say the true toll is much higher.
With force alone appearing to fail, Mr Biya has since January attempted to seal off Anglophone Cameroon from the outside world by cutting off internet access to the two regions.
An absolutist gerontocrat who has clung to power through a series of controversial elections, there are signs that even French-speakers are finally losing patience with a leader who spends so much time in Europe his people view him as an absentee landlord.
Last October a Cameroonian stood outside the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva, where the president is said to have spent most of the Summer, and hurled insults at Mr Biya through a loud-hailer.
Since then the president has shown signs of increasing paranoia. He was mocked by even French speakers after the present Miss Cameroon was stripped of her crown in January, allegedly for calling on the government to listen to Anglophone concerns.
So far, however, there is little sign that Mr Biya will relent. Most of the leaders of the protest movement have been arrested in recent weeks and charged with “terrorism, hostility against the fatherland, secession, revolution, contempt of the president… group rebellion, civil war and dissemination of fake news.”
Facing the death penalty, their trial before a military tribunal has shown Cameroon’s problems in microcosm. Bewigged defence lawyers, seated across the room from bare-headed Francophone prosecutors, struggled to follow proceedings conducted in French. When an interpreter was eventually provided the translation was so poor that few were any the wiser.
It is a sign, Anglophone Cameroonians say, that they will never be understood or accepted by the French speaking majority.
“The Anglophones are a people,” Henry Ngale Monono, a barrister, wrote recently in a Cameroonian newsletter. “We have a common culture, a common language. The Francophones want is to think like them behave like them, act like them — which is not possible.”
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A new platform to to provide peaceful and durable solutions to the ongoing crisis in the English speaking regions of the country has been born. Baptised the Anglophone Dialogue Forum in Buea, the founder Dr Simon Munzu says membership is open to all who can bring useful suggestions on how best the crisis could be resolved.
He says President Paul Biya's call for Cameroonians to "listen to each other" and "remain open to constructive ideas" should be followed by practical solutions. Dr Munzu believes it is time for the for the Anglophone problem to be resolved once and for all through frank, honest and truthful discussions.
Senators, MPs, he clergy, traditional rules, the educaton family, te media and business community have been invited to rally behind this body and bring useful suggestions that will be forwarded to Government for prompt action. The Anglophone problem goes beyond issues of bilingualism and multi culturalism, the problems of anglophone lawyers and teachers. It embraces a plethora of grievances felt by the anglophone community that have risen over several decades of institutional mismanagement and dismantling of the political, administrative, infrastructural, economic and cultural heritage that Southern Cameroon brought into the federal union.
The Anglophone Dialogue forum belives that measures taken by the Head of state to address aspects of the problem are a positive step in the right direction. However these measures cannot lead to the achievements of peace and unity.
Aware of the rising demand for the restoration of the statehood of Southern Cameroon, the body believes on the goodwill of ALL sides, and only dialogue can assure the country's unity in diversity including its diverse colonial heritages.
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Fru Jonathan last week in Santa assured the population that schools were sure to begin in Mezam II this Monday March 27 2017.
“We have been holding meetings with the Fons and all the traditional authorities; we have even been in touch with the religious authorities to explain to them what government has done. We are confident that they understand and we are confident that they are going to respect the declaration which they took. To set an example Militants of the CPDM have accepted that they will take their children to school on Monday” says Fru Jonathan.
According to the CPDM die heart, Santa people in collaboration with the police, gendarmerie and the administration have overcome fear so there is nothing to worry about as far as sending children to school is concerned.
Fru Jonathan says “Santa has a mobilized group of young men called Santa Peace Force who have decided to go out and protect the population of Santa to ensure that nobody comes from outside to burn, to destroy, kidnap or to cause any problem to anyone. The population is confident because the peace force works with the gendarmerie, police and the administration and together they have succeeded to conquer fear.
On the other hand protesters of the ongoing North West and south west strike have demands to be met before schools can reopen.
“We have two conditions before schools can reopen; we need our internet installed back in the northwest and southwest regions and we demand for the unconditional release of all those who were arrested and taken to Yaounde” says a disgruntled protester. “If these two preliminary conditions are not met then the government is wasting its time” he adds.
The big question that lingers in the minds of many now is: For how long will the government and protesters continue this tug of war?
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Subcategories
Biya Article Count: 73
# Paul Biya and his regime
Explore the political landscape of Cameroon under the rule of Paul Biya, the longest-serving president in Africa who has been in power since 1982. Our Paul Biya and his regime section examines the policies, actions, and controversies of his government, as well as the opposition movements, civil society groups, and international actors that challenge or support his leadership. You'll also find profiles, interviews, and opinions on the key figures and events that shape the political dynamics of Cameroon.
Southern Cameroons Article Count: 549
.# Southern Cameroons, Ambazonia
Learn more about the history, culture, and politics of Ambazonia, the Anglophone regions of Cameroon that have been seeking self-determination and independence from the Francophone-dominated central government. Our Southern Cameroons section covers the ongoing conflict, the humanitarian crisis, the human rights violations, and the peace efforts in the region. You'll also find stories that highlight the rich and diverse heritage, traditions, and aspirations of the Southern Cameroonian people.
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