The Illegality of the Law to Which Consortium Leaders are Charged
By Barrister Jean Atabong Fomeni
The Consortium leaders (Barrister Agbor Balla Felix Nkongho, Dr. Fontem N. Neba and Mancho Bibixy) are standing trial before the Yaoundé Military Tribunal for having allegedly committed the following offences—acts of terrorism, hostility to the fatherland, secession, revolution, group rebellion, incitation of civil war, contempt on public bodies and public servants, spreading of false information. However, it should be noted that competence of the Yaoundé Military Tribunal in trying the matter rests within the ambit of Section 3(4) of the law organizing the Military Justice in Cameroon (Law No. 2008/015 of 29 December 2008). Section 3(4) provides that, “the Yaoundé Military Tribunal may in the event of exceptional circumstances …which constitute serious threat to public order, state security or terrorism, exercise its powers throughout the national territory.”
Sadly, most of the above offences attract the death penalty. They are embedded in Sections 102 (Hostility against the fatherland), 103 (Other felonies punishable with death), 111 (Secession), 112 (incitement of Civil War) of the Cameroon Penal Code, and Section 2 (Acts of terrorism) of the Law on the Suppression of Acts of Terrorism. In summary, the above provisions condemn to death whoever commits the above offences.
Conversely, the Constitution of Cameroon is against the death penalty. Cameroon is one of the countries with a Constitution that protects, promotes, and guarantees the rights and freedoms of every citizen. It is not an exaggeration, therefore, to say that this Constitution, uprooted from a sound moral background, meets with the universally acceptable standards of Constitutions, particularly in the domain of Human Rights. In fact, its preamble states that, “every person has the right to life, to physical and moral integrity and to humane treatment in all circumstances. Under no circumstances shall any person be subjected to torture, to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”. Interestingly, the Constitution has not provided for any “subject” clause or “frontiers” with respect to the right to life—it implies, therefore, that the right to live has a moral foundation, and that it cannot be taken by another human being or government for any reason whatsoever.
In constitutional law, the cardinal principle is that any national law (e.g. Cameroon Law on Terrorism) of a State which is not in conformity with the Constitution of that State is unconstitutional. This is to say, therefore, that the Cameroon Law on the Suppression of Acts of Terrorism which subscribes to death penalty as opposed to the Constitution is unconstitutional. Meaning that, all the above provisions of both the Penal Code (Sections 102, 103,111,112) and the Law on the Suppression of Acts of Terrorism (Section 2) are illegal.
Cameroon has approved or ratified a plethora of international human rights laws which frown at lawful killing (for example, the death penalty) of a human being by the State. Meanwhile, it should be remembered that ratification means ‘the action of signing or giving formal consent to a treaty, contract, or agreement, making it officially valid”.
In 1986, Cameroon ratified the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment. This text, in its entirety, condemns any form of torture on any human being. Meanwhile, Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that “everyone has the right to life….” In Article 5, it says “no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. This is to say that the death penalty is cruel, inhuman and degrading, and that it deprives the person of the right to life. Also, Article 4 of the African Charter says “every human being shall be entitled to respect for his life….”
In summary, the doctrine of supremacy is equally very important here. It emphasizes the overriding character of international law over those of domestic origin. Conscious of this, the Constitution of Cameroon has provided in Article 45 that, “duly approved or ratified treatise and international agreements shall, following their publication, override national laws, provided the other party implements the said treaty or agreement”. Implying that, since Cameroon has approved or ratified the many international laws here above cited, their provisions become applicable in Cameroon as of the time they were approved or ratified.
If we agree to the above analysis, then it is no longer a debate that the provisions of the above international laws together with the Constitution of Cameroon override the Cameroon Penal Code, and the Law on the Suppression of Acts of Terrorism. Therefore, rational thinking holds that the five provisions cited herein above are not law. And in line with Article 11(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human rights, “no one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence”. The Constitution and the above cited human rights laws are not in variance with this.
On the basis of the foregoing, I therefore make bold to state that the above five offences for which the Consortium leaders are being prosecuted are unfounded at law, and consequently illegal.
Barrister Jean Atabong Fomeni
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Exposing the Political Falsehood Of Nguini Owona: Biya’s Song Bird
February 20, 2017 baramarkofficial
Open letter to Mathias Eric Owona Nguini
I have followed you very keenly since the Southern Cameroons problem resurfaced and I will like to address your views. You gained your popularity in Cameroon by sitting on television panels almost every weekend to address current issues in Cameroon and around the world. You won the admiration of many Cameroonians. I must confess I also admired your position on governance issues in Cameroon. Permit me to react to your position on the crisis that has ridden the country in recent times.
Your stance on the non-negotiability of a two-state federation beats all logic, reason and good faith. May you be reminded that the state of Cameroon as we know it today is a construct dating back to October 1961. All intellectual or academic attempts to twist the history of this union is futile and manifestly demonstrates the type of intellectuals the francophone elite is producing.
Back to the issue of federalism, as a political scientist, I expect you to dig into the causes of the conflict of the present-day Cameroon. Unfortunately, you limit yourself to the consequences or the present day events ignoring the causes.
It may interest you to refer to the 1961 constitution, which made provisions to the effect that any constitutional revisions affecting the form of the state are subject to one third majority vote in either house of assembly. Take critical note, that section 47 of that constitution is unequivocal in its terms. Before you go bashing the leaders and strategists of the present crisis, remember citizens of the former British Southern Cameroons have since 1961 cried foul against the dictatorial style of government imposed on them by the surrogates of the French administration.
The simple fact that British Southern Cameroons did not co-sign the 1961 constitution and the constitution was not submitted to the United Nations is proof that British Southern Cameroonians did not approve of the constitution. Southern Cameroonians understood they were in a union where law meant little or nothing to the other party. Even though Ahidjo signed a unilateral decree making the constitution law, he failed to respect its section 47 when he called for a referendum in 1972. By this simple fact, the referendum lacked all legal standing.
Before 1961, it was clear that the union between British Southern Cameroons and La Republique du Cameroun was to be constructed on a federation of two equal states. Did you at any point remember that if there’s a country called Cameroon today it is because British Southern Cameroons willingly voted in a 1961 plebiscite to join in a two state-federal country? Did it occur to you that for the form of state to change, it was to be the preserve of the citizens of British Southern Cameroons if at all there was supposed to be a referendum?
The other day I followed you on TV when you refused to refer to the citizens of British Southern Cameroons as a people under International Law. May I remind you that in the 2009 case of Gwame Gunme and 13 others v la Republique du Cameroun, the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights recognized the citizens of British Southern Cameroons as a people under the intentional law. The commission stated that the commission finds that ‘the people of Southern Cameroons’ qualify to be referred to as a ‘people’ because they manifest numerous characteristics and affinities, which include a common history, linguistic tradition, territorial connection and political outlook. More importantly, they identify themselves as a people with a separate and distinct identity. Identity is an innate characteristic within a people. It is up to other external people to recognize such existence but not to deny it.
Besides scoring this very important point, I will advise you to read the recommendations of the commission because they squarely address the myopic arguments you have postulated all along. As condescending, as you sound when treating this issue, it is important you refer to the section of the document where the Commission requests for an open dialogue. As far back as 2009, the commission requested for dialogue and the government of la Republique du Cameroun sat silently as though nothing has ever happened. In your position as a political scientist, I would appreciate you review the genesis of the grievances and redirect your counsel to the faulting party. The government of la Republique du Cameroun has faulted all avenues for a peaceful resolution of this crisis. Remember, it did not start today.
When you read the commission’s recommendations, do not be too quick to go rejoicing because the commission recommends dialogue and refutes secession. You have been very eager to dismiss all potent arguments on separation or secession as groundless. You will read that the commission recognizes it is barred from adjudicating on issues and treaties that occurred or were ratified before its creation in 1989. Your reference to all advocacy for “secession” and separation as casus belli is symptomatic of the dictatorial syndrome that has affected the regime in Yaoundé. This disease would not be acute if political scientists like you show some tiny, I mean tiny degree of good faith and the intellectual capacity to conduct independent research. However, when one thinks the process and conditions that raised you to the rank of ‘maître de conference’ one immediately understands why you took part in the obnoxious Chantal Biya colloquium and why you sound so dishonest and unintellectual in your rants regarding the Southern Cameroons crisis.
All along, you keep propagating the falsehood of decentralization. However decentralization is applied or enforced in this union, the center will not hold. Take it from me that a people have the universally recognized and inalienable right to self-determination. This may sound strange to you but remember that the exercise of this right favored the construct known as the Republic of Cameroon today. United Nations resolution 1608 gives the Southern Cameroons the right self-determination. Though France and her surrogate La Rebulique du Cameroon voted against the resolution, Southern Cameroon still attained independence and have the rights and obligations that come with it. Therefore, your utterances on the authority and power that the central government in Yaoundé wields falls short to recognize the rights of an independent people under international law. It would make sense if you understand the authority and power in Yaoundé is colonial and in essence should not be exercised over Southern Cameroon. As a people, Southern Cameroonians have the right to a government. This is fact as bitter as it may be.
Your recommendation on the effective enforcement of a decentralized system of government beats all logic. The reason is simple; the people of Southern Cameroon know there’s no valid constitution in force in Cameroon. A decentralized system of government doesn’t guarantee a common law jurisdiction neither does not protect anglo-saxon system of education. A decentralized system will frustrate an administration with power from the people. We strongly believe in the role our kings play in our lives. British Southern Cameroonians believe power is in the people. We abhor ‘le commandemant’ appointed by Yaoundé. Supervisory role by appointed governors and SDOs appointed by Yaoundé is not valid within our administrative set up. We believe in an independent judiciary, which is entirely in the hands of magistrates who have proven their worth. ENAM has no place in our society. We believe in a legislature that can control the government.
The harmonization drive in Cameroon has been proven to be an assimilation of British Southern Cameroonians. Unfortunately, the experiment of British Southern Cameroon and La Republique du Cameroun cohabitation has failed. In as much as you hate it, Southern Cameroon has an identity that you cannot take away. The more you preach vice about Southern Cameroon, the stronger the will of the people. Conclusively, your proposals on decentralization are merely cosmetic.
As a university don, one expected you to publicly condemn the torture, rape and maiming of students in the University of Buea. Unsurprisingly, you are interested in establishing a situation of force. You take pride in Southern Cameroonians establishing a relationship of force with the Yaoundé regime. One wonders where leaders of the Anglophone struggle have ever mentioned force. You mention military and security forces to maintain state integrity. Why do you support a regime that deploys the military to torture students whose only weapon were shouts of NO VIOLENCE or lawyers whose only weapon were MEMORANDA AND A PEACEFUL MARCH? The whole of Southern Cameroons is militarized, her citizens are abducted, transferred to la Republique du Cameroun, held under inhuman conditions simply because they expressed their minds and seek justice. Others are simply kidnapped because they made phone calls, others because they walked on the streets, others because they are bold enough to say STOP injustice. After all these, a university don, claiming to be a political scientist, takes to social media and encourages state terrorism. How do you expect the citizens of Southern Cameroons to read your write up? Can you not condemn the internet blackout in the region?
I watched how helplessly you sat on Arene on Canal 2 International when journalists referred to your online insults. You see, a man with a clear mind fears nothing. Your helplessness and resort to anger and further insults demonstrate that you have lost touch with the realities of a true intellectual. Many people admired your position before now. Unlike citizens of la Republique du Cameroun who fall for cheap popularity and a superfluous use of words, citizens of Southern Cameroon apply reason and dig into the causes of every little thing before them. We know how our country attained independence, how la Republique du Cameroun and France forced themselves into our territory and are assimilating us. We have stood tall and we shall not fall back. Tell them, your caricature of write ups have failed.
Advise them to kill all of us and take the territory. Do not seek to identify me. In this dispensation, you can beat the drums of war and nothing will happen to you. However, those who have opposite views are termed terrorists and you are ok with it. I preserve my identity simply because I am resident in Cameroon. If freedom of expression existed in this country, I should have signed the document. Since the dictatorship which you support has banned all discussion and opinions in support of a federation or secession, I am bound to act from underground
Published by BaretaNews: Identify of author sealed.
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THE BOKOHARAMISATION OF STATE TERROR IN THE SOUTHERN CAMEROONS
By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai, Cameroon Concord News Group
President Paul Biya declared war against the terrorist organization Boko Haram from Paris in France was an act which carried symbolic weight. For those in doubt, that act conveyed in unmistakable terms the message that Cameroun was not fully independent and that for all purposes and intents it remained a French colony; call it a vassal state if you may. There can be no gainsaying that, the declaration of war from Cameroon’s neo-colonial power, France conveyed along the message that although the war was to be fought in Cameroon, it was being fought not for the interest of Cameroonians and the peoples of African descent but for the wider interest of France. It was being for the wider interest of France in that it was to cushion the effect of French Military aggression in the African Sahel which claimed the life of President Moamar Kaddafi of Libya and reinforced France’s neo-colonial grip on the resources of its African vassal states.
The war against Boko Haram is a complex war involving equally complex distinct interests. The participants in the war against Boko Haram are an unusual association, of “reversed Robin Hoods”, “Alibabas”, bloodletting dictators and genuine crime fighters. This makes the forces allied in combating the criminal terrorist group to love and hate it in equal measure. Some of the leaders involved in this war, rode on the exploits of Boko Haram to power, others see the war as an opportunity to eternalize power in their vassal states and yet others see the war as an opportunity to fine-tune and legitimize the methods and acts of terror against enemy populations whom they accuse of threatening their political and economic power and those of their slave masters. The Government of Cameroon (GOC) falls in almost all of these categories. The ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in the Southern Cameroons justifies this categorical statement.
It cannot be reasonably disputed that the GOC has paid significant ransom to Boko Haram with which it has sustained its criminal terrorist onslaught against armless civilians in the affected areas of Northern Cameroon, Nigeria and Chad. With the exception of one case involving the wife and the family of the Vice Prime Minister Ahmadou Ali, all the cases in which ransom has been paid have been those of foreigners. The fact that negotiations occurred between the GOC and the criminal terrorist gang is enough evidence that the GOC knows so well Boko Haram and the forces driving the terrorist activities of this criminal gang. It can therefore not be reasonably disputed that apart from paying ransom the GOC offers political, strategic, logistics and tactical patronage to this criminal gang. The widely stated but never denied allegation by the Chadian Government that about forty-seven percent of the arms used by Boko Haram are of French origin supports the possibility that the well-publicized payment of ransom might well have included the delivery of arms, money, political patronage, logistical and tactical support.
A careful observation and analysis of the methods deployed by the GOC against peaceful, armless Southern Cameroonians that has led to widespread and systemic crimes against humanity, genocide and egregious human rights violations mirrors the acts of terror and criminality deployed by Boko Haram against the civilian populations in the Lake Chad Basin, the wider areas of the African Sahel, Northern Cameroon and Northern Nigeria. We will examine some of them here.
The main target of Boko Haram attacks are armless civilians. The main focus of the attacks by military, para-military, administrative, political and police deployed by the GOC to the Southern Cameroons is the civilian population. Boko Haram abducts civilians and deports them from their homes and natural environments to distant areas and submits them to alien justice bordering on judicial murder. The abduction of thousands of school girls, women and men who were abducted by Boko Haram and some deported from their homes to Sambisa Forest, many who have never been seen, shocked the conscience of humanity.
Boko Haram also takes hostages to extort ransom and other resources to sustain its war efforts. The Spokesman of the GOC Isa Tchiroma who reports on these criminal actions of Boko Haram has lately issued press statements on the activities of the GOC in the Southern Cameroons. An anxious reading and analysis of his press statements and the number of hostages and abductees he admitted, the court-martial of civilian leaders of Anglophones Consortium of Civil Societies Organization, the assault on the judicial power through the abduction of a Supreme Court Judge of Southern Cameroon’s nationality Hon Paul Ayah, and other acts of criminality mirror on the crimes he in the past reported and condemned against Boko Haram.
The GOC has gone a step ahead of Boko Haram by joining the club of most oppressive governments worldwide which has used the suspension of internet facilities to conceal their elaborate criminal activities. The suspension of internet facilities in the Southern Cameroons with the complicity of foreign business operators in the country is a stain on the economic activities of those foreign firms. However, the suspension of the internet, a critical tool of learning in the technological age while imposing a return to schools the courts in the territory to parody the bastardized system of education and justice system imposed on the citizenry of the territory is a serious affront to human decency and commonsense. Furthermore, its forces deployed to the territory like Boko Haram are using rape as a state policy intended to humiliate and suppress Southern Cameroonians to submission.
Officials of the GOC, that included Ministers, and apologists of genocide and crimes against humanity, have made widely publicized statements justifying these crimes. One individual, a ruling CPDM party Senator publicly stated that he and another senior member of ruling CPDM party and Senator from the victim territory of the Southern Cameroons appealed to the GOC to place the internet ban in their own territory to collectively punish all Southern Cameroonians as well as conceal the crimes perpetrated against them from world attention. This act of impunity, and the glorification of the crimes perpetrated against the Southern Cameroons mirror the media antics of Abubakar Shakua the leader of the terrorist gang whose glorification of the crimes of Boko Haram are a fixture of deep pain on our collective consciences.
In spite of the provocations and the elaborate crimes committed against the people of the Southern Cameroons, the people have remained peaceful in their defiance and resistance. The Ghost town operations, the boycott of schools and the public symbols of oppression and colonial rule over the Southern Cameroons have dealt a humiliating blow to the forces of oppression of the GOC. The people of the Southern Cameroons have said No to emasculation! No to annexation! No to humiliation! No to exploitation! Yes to freedom. Yes to freedom now.
The world must take note that the GOC which is a supposed ally in the war against Boko Haram finds the need to talk to Boko Haram and pay ransom when its suits its needs and that of its imperial slave master France. When it comes to the case of the Southern Cameroons, it has opted to criminalize dialogue; even when organized by it. It is on record that the GOC took Barrister Felix Agbor Nkongho and Dr Neba Fontem hostage and charged them before a court-martial on the basis of the matters that were tabled before a supposed dialogue organized by it for which there was no agreement. The court-martial of leaders who believed in dialogue and id participate in it to find a solution to our problems is one very powerful reason why La Republique du Cameroun should never ever be trusted. With their destiny in their hands the people of the Southern Cameroons must know that freedom can never ever be negotiated.
Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai
Cameroon Concord News Group
