After Banjul Decision: Cameroon Government not still ready for dialogue
Heavily armed forces October 28 disrupted a meeting of Southern Cameroons Associations scheduled to launch a book on the recent African Commission ruling in the case pitting the Southern Cameroons National Council and La Republique du Cameroun.
The Liberal Democratic Alliance party organised the meeting and its president, Mola Njoh Litumbe, said he duly declared the meeting to the local administraion in accordance with the law on freedom of assembly and had no objection to holding the meeting.
The meeting brought together over fifty southern Cameroonians and started at about 3.30 pm but thirty minutes later, police and gedarmes in high anti riot gear clamped down on the meeting and seized all the books and documents that were on display. Moment later, the Senior Divisional Officer for Fako arrived the scene and said Mola Njoh Litumbe had misled him about the agenda of the meeting. He characteised the meeting as secessionist and said he could not allow it.
The forces refused to return the seized books and documents and a microphone even after Mola Njoh requested as such and proposed the forces keep some of the documents to inform themselves with. The adamant forces simply asked everyone to leave.
One of the SCNC legal advisers, Barrister Bobga Harmony Mbuton, lamented that they had spent money to print the books and documents, hire the hall and mobilise logistics for the meeting.
The LBA organised meeting comes on the threshold of a ruling of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights recommending dialogue between the people of the Southern Cameroons and the government of La Republic following a plaint by the former of excessive human rights abuses and marginalisation of her peoples.
The Commission established that the Southern Cameroons qualified under the Arican Charter to be called a people and had a right to the claim of self determination but recommended that the parties initiate dialogue to reconcile the differences and end the abuse against the Southern Cameroons. The ACHPR gave the disputants 180 days to initiate dialogue and to report any advancement and challenges to her.
However, the Cameroon government authorities have simply misrepresented the decision of the ACHPR as a victory for them over the “secessionist” SCNC and are determined to maintain the statusquo. A communiqué from Cameroon’s Communication Minister, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, simply states that the ACHPR threw away the SCNC case as non-substantial.
