Human Rights Violations:

D’la Shooting Further Soils Biya Regime

Celestin Djamen shot on the leg by police in Douala during peaceful protest

Biya’s Government’s report card is definitely red. Apart from favorable gesticulations from supporters of the Cameroon People Democratic Movement (CPDM) to which Paul Biya is National President, very few Cameroonians in the last few months ever wrote or said anything good about the Biya regime. Diplomatic missions have also expressed concerns over growing insecurity in the North West and South West hit by armed conflict, hoping the situation gets better.

                The Regime already has a dampened image at the International Scene. This has forced it to hire lobbyists, paying them huge sums to mend its really battered international appearance resulting from reports of Human Rights violations in the two English-speaking Regions as well as reports of consistent scenes of war crimes. Cameroon already has enough to handle and the International Community might have as well seen enough already.

                Reports of gross Human Rights violation are now being filed in from places other than the two English-speaking Regions, a thing that would only go a long way to reap Biya off the auxiliary good image.

                The government Saturday confirmed that Celestin Djamen, a militant of Prof. Maurice Kamto’s Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM) was shot on the left leg by anti-riot police in Makepe, a neighbourhood Douala, in the Littoral Region, Saturday January 26, 2019.

                In the same line of protest, Barrister Michele Ndoki who hitherto was assaulted was also shot several times on the thigh.

                Celestin Djamen and many other CRM militants were participating in a peaceful protest called by Kamto, Chair of the CRM against what he describes as Electoral Hold-up and the declaration of war in the two English-speaking Regions of Cameroon, when police clamped down on them, government spokesman, Rene Sadi, confirmed Saturday evening. Djamen is a former militant of the Social Democratic Front (SDF) who resigned to join the CRM on August 9, 2018.

As a former member of Union for Active Diaspora while he lived in France, Celestin Djamen, on the behalf of this organization, filed a lawsuit against Paul Biya in December 2010 in a Court in Paris, Franc, for embezzlement of public funds in Cameroon.

                Prior to this, Denis Nkemlemo, National Secretary for Communication of Cameroon’s leading opposition party, the Social Democratic Front (SDF) had announced with consternation the “brutalization and abduction of two parliamentarians of the nation – Hon. Joshua Osih and Hon. Jean Michel Nintcheu in Douala on Wednesday 23 January. According to the SDF, the two lawmakers were taken to an unknown destination. The SDF in a swift reaction demanded the immediate release of the duo in a strongly worded press release. Nintcheu and Osih were freed sometime around 7:00pm.

                Osih, First Vice Chair of the SDF and Nintcheu, SDF Littoral Boss, were allegedly bundled out from the Douse neighbourhood in Akwa, Douala where a crowd had gathered to stage a peaceful protest to call on the government to punish those responsible for Cameroon’s inability to host the 2019 African Cup of Nations (AFCON), following CAF withdrawal. The peaceful protest attracted security forces that appeared to disperse the demonstrators with teargas. At every roundabout in Douala, the anti-police vehicles were on display, while in some areas, combat-ready security forces made rounds.

                The demonstration which was planned by the Social Democratic Front had been banned by the Divisional Officer for Douala I, Jean-Marie Tchakui and the Divisional Officer of Douala V, ZachaeusBokomaElango.  The two SDF MPs dismissed the ban as “d’irrecevables” (inadmissible). The SDF warns that faced with the gravity of the curtailing of collective and individual rights of the citizens and the levity with which the dignity of the human being is considered by the despotic regime in Cameroon since 1982, the party and the people will not continue to tolerate these aberrations that increase in magnitude on a daily basis.