Cameroon Can Stop Persecution of Human Rights Defenders

The subject of the relationship of the Cameroonian human rights defender to the status quo is both delicate and risky. Delicate because few people want to discuss it and even fewer authorities may want to talk about it. Risky because if you dare speak honestly on the subject, some people may hear what you did not say and refuse to hear what you actually said.

By Azore Opio

Cameroon’s current relationship with human rights protection and promotion seems to be a contradiction with the principle of human rights defence.

Nasako Besingi found that out when he challenged a local subsidiary of a US agro-industrial firm Herakles Farms, SG Sustainable Oils Cameroon (SGSOC).

SGSOC wanted to implant a large-scale palm oil plantation, which would lead to massive deforestation and threaten the livelihoods of residents in biodiversity hotspot. The agro-industrial firm had just courted resistance that came from several fronts. Nasako’s Struggle to Economize Future Environment (SEFE), a local environmental NGO based in Mundemba, Ndian Division, Southwest Cameroon, being one of them with Nasako as its Director.

On August 29, 2012, Nasako was on his way to a village called Mengwe. His mission- to address to villagers on the impacts of Herakles establishing an oil palm plantation in their midst. Enroute, a group of men attacked him. One of the men was identified as a junior manager of Herakles Farms.

Then men dragged Nasako off his motorcycle and beat him up. Only the arrival of some France 24 journalists saved him. The activist did not however go off free of injuries. The thugs left him with optical and nerves injuries.

The encounter with the Herakles muggers worked as a warm-up to a more sinister experience on November 14, 2012 when more than a dozen heavily armed gendarmes raided SEFE offices. The gendarmes ransacked the SEFE offices and manhandled over 50 members of the local population who had turned up to collect T-shirts for a peaceful campaign against SGSOC’s large-scale oil palm plantation venture.

Without warrant, the gendarmes arrested Nasako Besingi along with Ms. Ekpoh Theresia Malingo, Isele Gabriel Ngoe, Mosongo Lawrence Namaso, Ochoe Charles Tatana and Nwete Jongele. In addition to the unlawful arrest, the gendarmes undressed some women. The women were left half-naked. While Ekpoh Theresia Malingo was released during the night, the rest detained without charges and incommunicado. For three days, they faired under horrible conditions and were only freed on November 17, 2012, on a 750,000-francs bail CFA (about 1,140 euros).

The detainees were not formally charged. But Nasako was charged with “publication of false news via the Internet”. The complaint had been filed by Herakles Farms in New York.

The SEFE Director was required to appear before the Mundemba Court on September 23, 2013. He faced six months imprisonment and a fine of 2,980 euros. That case was postponed ten times and only resumed on June 24, 2014. It is still going on.

Following the assault on Nasako, the activist lodged a complaint at the legal department on October 29, 2012, but the state counsel offered no judicial help to Besingi. Instead, on January 2014, he was told that his complaint had “disappeared from registers”.

Nasako Besingi remains a regular visitor to the courts and detention cells.

Calls from human rights groups; both domestic and international, have fallen on hard rock. The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), has condemned in no uncertain terms Nasako’s constant harassment by the judiciary, and hopes that more voices would add their calls for Nasako’s eventual freedom and for him to enjoy his human rights.

Free Nasako!

The Observatory is asking for the guaranteeing of the “physical and psychological integrity of Mr. Nasako Besingi, Ms. Ekpoh Theresia Malingo, Mr. Isele Gabriel Ngoe, Mr. Mosongo Lawrence Namaso, Mr. Ochoe Charles Tatana and Mr. Nwete Jongele as well as of all human rights defenders in Cameroon; Put an end to all acts of harassment – including at the judicial level – against them as well as against all human rights defenders in Cameroon; order a thorough and impartial investigation into Mr. Nasako Besingi’s physical assault, in order to identify all those responsible, bring them before a civil competent and impartial tribunal and apply to them the penal sanctions provided by the law.

“Conform in any circumstances with the provisions of the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, adopted on December 9, 1998 by the United Nations General Assembly, in particular: article 1, which states that “everyone has the right, individually or in association with others, to promote the protection and realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms at the national and international levels”.

And article 12.2 which provides that “the State shall take all necessary measures to ensure the protection by the competent authorities of everyone, individually and in association with others, against any violence, threats, retaliation, de facto or de jure adverse discrimination, pressure or any other arbitrary action as a consequence of his or her legitimate exercise of the rights referred to in the present Declaration”.

And finally, ensure in all circumstances respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in accordance with international human rights instruments ratified by Cameroon.

Humanitarianism Not Cheap

We could understand and, perhaps, even, excuse foreign investors; that they have the intention to “invest and alleviate poverty”. But how can we excuse present day law enforcers and keepers of order and the peace; protectors of property and lives of citizens, for not dealing honestly with vulnerable children? Akem Colins Aminkeng, too, was about to find out that the men in uniform, fondly called Cameroonian gendarmes (Francophone men in arms), are more than friendly protectors of life, human rights and property.

Akem found out that being a humanitarian officer at an organization for less privileged children in a marginalised society is not cheap.

Akem had joined the Less Privileged Society in April 2008 when he was still just in high school in Buea, the capital of Cameroon’s Southwest Region. He was just twenty-one. His task – to deal with the increasing population of miserable homeless children hawking, and sometimes living on Cameroon’s streets.

As Akem patrolled the streets, he discovered hordes of less privileged children, victims of diverse social and domestic crises – those orphaned by AIDS, jetsam of divorce, wreckages of biting poverty or victims of trafficking. Akem cared for and loved the children whose rights had been wrenched from them by the merciless hands of society. The moments were weighted with emotions. Akem grew to know how difficult it was to hustle for a meal for the less privileged children, how to coordinate medications for the sick ones; when the despondent child in his care had a complicated health or emotional problem.

Akem thought he would spend his years as a respected humanitarian worker – the link between abject poverty, hope and a bright future for the vulnerable children. But this thought was shattered one night when he stumbled on a scene that would turn his life upside down. A terrible betrayal of his life’s vision.

It was a chance meeting. When Akem discovered a uniform officer harassing a female teenager who had been hawking boiled groundnuts, it was not long before the gendarmes started to tumble out of their station closets to hunt him down.

He had made one ‘grave mistake’- he was a speaker at a seminar his organisation organised to condemn the atrocities the forces of law and order committed under the cover of darkness and the uniform. It was not a great advert for the gendarmerie corps. In 2010, they caught him and locked him up at the gendarmerie brigade in Buea without a formal charge. Then in December 2013, as if for good measure, the gendarmes once more rounded up Akem and caged him. Then released him. Once again, without any charge.

In 2014, Akem decided it was high time he furthered his studies and he travelled to the UK. Two years after, in January 2016, Akem’s father’s death drew him back to Cameroon. But hardly had the soil on his father’s grave settled than the gendarmes smelled him out. Akem had to hightail it from Buea even without a good-bye to his elderly mother. It is now Akem who must search frantically for safety in the constant shadow of an end that could be violent.

Beyond muzzling human rights defenders who dare to raise their voices above the barricade, there is increasing legally unwarranted treatment of civilians by men in uniform in Cameroon, sometimes for very banal reasons.

Gendarmes and soldiers alike shoot their ‘enemies’ at will, without recourse to the rule of law. In 2015, a soldier shot a civilian in Garoua, North Region of Cameroon. This arbitrary violent action vexed the local population, which fearlessly descended on the military camp and burnt it down. In the same Garoua, another soldier shot a fellow officer near a bar. Then early this year, on Sunday, January 24, 2016, in Wum, Northwest Region, a soldier stabbed to death a young man called Leonard Mih Ngong after rivalling over a woman. The population reacted violently and burnt down a military camp and a couple of trucks.