The self-determination process of the people of the Southern Cameroons is irreversible. Respondent States is grossly mistaken in its blind faith in the use of force, in the use of corrupted chiefs and other reactionary forces in the Southern Cameroons as fifth columnists so as to maintain its colonial subjugation of the Southern Cameroons. The lesson of history, ancient and modern, shows how unsustainable and unrealistic such expedients always have been.
THE AFRICAN COMMISSION ON PEOPLES’ AND HUMAN RIGHTS
37th SESSION – BANJUL, THE GAMBIA 26 April to 12th May 2005
COMMUNICATION NO. 266/003:
DR. KEVIN GUMNE AND OTHERS (ON BEHALF OF THE PEOPLE OF THE PEOPLE OF THE SOUTHERN CAMEROONS, THE SCNC, SCAPO AND ON THEIR OWN BEHALF) v. REPUBLIQUE DU CAMEROUN
ORAL SUBMISSION BY COMPLAINANTS – FRIDAY 6TH MAY 2005
Madame la Presidente,
Honorables Commissaires de la Commission Africaine
Je vous remercie pour le privilege que vous m’accordez de prendre la parole, une fois de plus, devant cette auguste Commission sur laquelle les victimes des violations de droits de l’homme en Afrique fondent un espoir legitime.
Je prend la parole devant vous dans une affaire tres douleureuse; douleureuse parce qu’il s’agit des violations graves et systematiques perpetrees de facon continue, depuis a peu pres un demi siecle deja, par l’Etat Repondeur contre le peuple, et plusieurs individus, du Southern Cameroons; douleureuse aussi parce qu’il s’agit de la domination, de l’oppression, et de la colonization d’un peuple africain par un Etat africain; a l’instar de l’Ethiopie imperiale a propos de l’Erithre, et l’instar du Maroc a propos du Sahara Occidental. Nous assistons donc a un spectacle inedit: certains pays africains, eux-memes beneficiares du droit a l’autodtermination deviennent colonisateurs de leurs voisins infortunes. On comprend alors le tout recent rappel du Secretaire General de l’ONU: le colonialisme n’est pas encore vaincu.
Honourable Commissioners, this case is about one of the most egregious and impudent violations of human rights on this long-suffering continent. It is a case in which an African State has assumed and is exercising a colonial sovereignty over another African country in defiance of international and human rights law and the universal outlawry of colonialism.
As to individual human rights violations
Complainants have in their Submissions on Admissibility and on the Merits adduced compelling and conclusive evidence of a continuing and consistent patter of gross and reliably attested violations by the Respondent State of individual human rights in the Southern Cameroons.
The delinquent conduct of Respondent State violates Articles 1, 2, 3(1), 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, and 14 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Today, let me be permitted to call attention to Article 4 which protects the right to life and to the physical integrity of the person; and to Article 5 which outlaws torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment.
Honourable Commissioners, just last week alone and in its continuing policy of genocide-like killings in the Southern Cameroons the repressive apparatus of the Respondent State executed six people extra-judicially in Victoria and Buea, seriously inflicted gun wounds and systematically tortured scores of other persons. Five of the six killed were among striking students of the University of Buea, some cowardly shot from behind. In Victoria a taxi driver was shot dead at point blank range and decapitated because, in the words of Respondent State, ‘he was a gambler’. It speaks volumes that in the Respondent State’s own territory, where University students have been on strike for weeks, not a single student there has been hurt. The extent, nature and consistency of individual human rights violations by Respondent State in the Southern Cameroons have known no respite all these years.
As to violation of peoples’ rights
Forty-five years ago in 1961, Respondent State forcibly occupied the Southern Cameroons and established its colonial rule there, complete with its structures, and its administrative, military and police personnel, applying a system and operating in a language alien to the Southern Cameroons. Respondent State continues to exercise a colonial sovereignty over the territory to this day. The Southern Cameroons descended into hell and is still held captive under Camerounese bondage and darkness.
According to the fantastic claim of Respondent State the Southern Cameroons is part of its territory that was transferred back to it by the UN and the UK Government. The stubborn fact of the matter is that Respondent State is a latter-day colonizer. It has grabbed and is trying to steal territory it has no rightful claim to at all. Its conduct is in violation of international law and a breach of its obligations under the African Charter.
Complainants have always argued and adduced conclusive evidence in support, that the occupation and assumption of a colonial sovereignty over the Southern Cameroons by Respondent State amounts to a violation of Articles 19 and 20 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, both of which outlaw domination, and colonialism in all its forms and manifestations. Article 19 places an absolute ban on the domination of one people by another. Article 20 emphatically asserts the right of every people to existence, to self-determination, and of resistance to colonialism or oppression by resorting to any internationally recognized means of resistance.
Complainants’ Submissions at the Admissibility and Merit stages of this case establish conclusively the elements of ‘people’, ‘domination’, ‘colonialism’ and ‘oppression’: the people of the Southern Cameroons are without any shadow of a doubt a people, a people under the domination of the people of Respondent State, a people under the colonial rule of Respondent State, and a people oppressed by Respondent State.
Respondent State’s invocation of the bogey of ‘secession’ may fool only a very naïve inquirer. That is a ploy resorted to by Respondent State in the misplaced belief that it can declare its annexation and colonial occupation of the Southern Cameroons off limits to external scrutiny and internal challenge.
It is trite law that the territory of a colonized people remains separate and distinct from that of the colonizing State. Respondent State will not lose a blade of grass of its own territory when it is assisted by the Commission to respect international law by retreating to its rightful borders. Its clinging convulsively to the territory of the people of the Southern Cameroons when its own is safely under its control has no rational explanation besides the vainglory of expansionism.
For, it is also trite international law that the borders of a newly independent state ossify on the date of attainment of its independence. Any claim to territory outside its borders as they stood at the time of its achievement of independence would be expansionist and bound to fail. The attempt by imperial Ethiopia to grab Eritrea failed; that of Indonesia to grab East Timor failed; and that of Morocco to grab the Western Sahara also failed; that of Republique du Cameroun to grab the Southern Cameroons must similarly fail. Just a few weeks ago the UN Secretary General reminded the world that colonialism was not yet ended and that there was need to ensure that the several peoples of the world were free.
While the Southern Cameroons might appear de facto as part of Republique du Cameroun, de jure it has always remained and will always remain distinct and separate from that of the colonizing Authority. The situation is on all fours with that which obtained when the Southern Cameroons was administered, for over forty years, by Britain as an integral part of Nigeria. Maps of the time showed the Southern Cameroons as part of Nigeria and the people of the Southern Cameroons were considered and referred to as Nigerians (even today Respondent State is wont to refer to the people of the Southern Cameroons as Nigerians or ‘Biafrans’). The nearly half a century of cohabitation with Nigeria engendered the perception that the people of the Southern Cameroons were Nigerians, so much so that when the Southern Cameroons political leadership left and established a Government in Buea the move was regarded as ‘secession’ from Nigeria. It took the ICJ in the Land and Maritime Dispute (Cameroon v. Nigeria) to recall the legal position that at international law the Southern Cameroons had all along remained a separate and distinct territory from Nigeria and that the Southern Cameroons-Nigerian border had all along remained an international boundary. By parity of reasoning the Southern Cameroons/Republique du Cameroun boundary has de jure always remained and will always remain an international boundary, notwithstanding Republique du Cameroun’s occupation and specious sovereignty claim over the territory.
The people and territory of the Southern Cameroons are thus under captivity in the land of their birth! The solution to captivity is freedom. The solution to colonization is de-colonization. The solution to alien domination is self-determination. Nothing else will do. At stake here are the fate and the humanity of the people of the Southern Cameroons. The categorical words of Article 19 of the African Charter are: “Nothing shall justify the domination of one people by another.” And, the arresting words of Article 20 are: “All peoples have the right to existence … [and] … to self-determination. … Colonized or oppressed peoples … have the right to free themselves from the bonds of domination.”
There is not a single instrument of International Law that Respondent State is able to point to that gives it title to the Southern Cameroons.
Respondent State’s claim to the Southern Cameroons, asserted in its annexation law of 1 September 1961 and several of its policy statements, apparently arises from a pretended entitlement to that territory as its own; territory which it claims it is entitled to take and keep; a supposed part of its territory that simply reverted to it on 1 October 1961. No credible basis is advanced for this claim, which can only be expansionist. The Southern Cameroons has never been part of the territory of Respondent State whether prior to or at the latter’s independence from France on 1 January 1960 or at the time of its admission to membership of the UN in September 1960.
In support of its annexation doctrine, Respondent State has variously advanced the following claims, claims that can possibly exist only in the realm of fantasy: (i) that the Queen of England handed the Southern Cameroons as ‘a little gift’ to French President Charles de Gaulle who in turn made a gift of it to Republique du Cameroun; (ii) that the 1961 UN-sponsored Plebiscite in the Southern Cameroons was “un referendum de rattachement”, that is, a ‘referendum’ by which the Southern Cameroons voted for incorporation, and was incorporated, into Republique du Cameroun; (iii) that UN Resolution 1608 endorsed that fusion; (iv) that the UK Government handed sovereignty over the Southern Cameroons not to the Southern Cameroons political leadership but to that of the Respondent State in recognition of the fact that the Southern Cameroons was an estranged part of its territory it was entitled to receive back. In the view of Respondent State, therefore, the Southern Cameroons was never de-colonized but simply transferred back to the Respondent State as part of its territory.
Complainants have always stated the following incontrovertible facts:
(i) that the Southern Cameroons and Republique du Cameroun were two separate Class B UN Trust Territories under two separate colonial Authorities with well-defined international boundaries (see 1958 Map showing the Southern Cameroons as a UN Trust Territory under UK Administration; Nigeria is to the west and the Trust Territory of French Cameroun is to the east) ;
(ii) that the Plebiscite Questions as framed by the UN invited the people of the Southern Cameroons to pronounce themselves on the achievement of independence by ‘joining’ either Nigeria or Republique du Cameroun;
(iii) that the pre-plebiscite Agreements between the Southern Cameroons and Respondent State and the voting at the UN in April 1961 leading to the adoption of Resolution 1608 clearly envisaged three concomitant events to happen on 1 October 1961, namely, achievement of independence by the Southern Cameroons, entry into a federal association with Republique du Cameroun and the consequential termination of the trusteeship over the Southern Cameroons;
(iv) that operative paragraph 5 of Resolution 1608 called on the Government of the Southern Cameroons, the UK and Republique du Cameroun to finalize before 1 October 1961 the arrangements by which the agreed and published policies on a federal association would be implemented;
(v) that said paragraph 5 was not and has never been implemented;
(vi) that on 1 September 1961 Respondent State passed an annexation law asserting sovereignty over the Southern Cameroons; and
(vii) that on 1 October 1961 Respondent State sent its troops into the Southern Cameroons, grabbed it as part of its territory, and has since been exercising a colonial sovereignty over it, the fierce protest of the people notwithstanding.
These facts show that the Southern Cameroons still remains a territory under colonial occupation. The British departure and the UN termination of trusteeship did not result in independence, which the people of the Southern Cameroons were entitled to by International Law, and which the people were promised and legitimately expected. Instead, there has been continuing colonial subjugation, this time by Respondent State. The status of trust territory was superseded by another colonial status, that of a Non-Self-Governing Territory under the colonial Authority of Respondent State.
Lost in its self-mystifying mystification and in its inconsistent consistency, Respondent State may try, as it has done before, to bully the Commission, to make a political speech and to resort to dilatory tactics by pleading for yet more time. In the manner of all colonizers it may, without any compunction, even tell the Commission that that the people it has colonized are very happy with their unfortunate lot and that it has brought along with it in its briefcase persons who speak for the people of the Southern Cameroons. Respondent State will then in effect invite the Commission to endorse its colonial appetite, to put the Commission’s imprimatur on its colonial occupation and plunder of the Southern Cameroons, and to massage its egocentricity. The Commission cannot possibly do that. The appetite in question is gluttonous, illegitimate and illegal. Further, the job of the Commission is to decide according to law and not politics, to decide without fear or favour.
This case is a litmus test for the Commission’s independence and operational integrity; a litmus test for the ability of this continent to demonstrate that indeed it places a high premium on the peaceful resolution of even disputes such as the present case. The standing of a judicial or quasi-judicial body is enhanced not by its decisions in the ordinary run of cases, however good those decisions might in themselves be. It is enhanced by the just and bold decisions it makes in critical cases such as this one.
A few examples will illustrate the point. When the SADR met the stipulated conditions for admission to OAU membership, Mr. Edem Kodjo the Organisation’s Secretary General at the time did not quibble over the issue. He did not look across his shoulder. He did the legally right thing by signifying SADR admission to membership, the whining by some States notwithstanding. When the US Supreme Court was invited in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) to pronounce itself on the issue of racial segregation it did not cavil at being invited to sit in judgment over a practice that was then very much in vogue (de jure and de facto) in a large part of America. It rose to the challenge and did the legally right thing by rejecting the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine and thereby outlawed racial segregation in America.
In the UK, at an époque during which slave trade and slavery were permissible, commonly practiced and justified, Chief Justice Mansfield sitting in 1772 in the case of James Summerset, a case about a runaway slave brought to court by Granville Sharp, did the legally right thing by boldly ruling that whatever the factual situation, English law did not recognize slavery and that as soon as a slave set foot on English soil he automatically became free. In Roach & Pinkerton v. US (1987) the Inter-American Human Rights Commission did the legally right thing by boldly declaring the US execution of child murderers as a human rights violation, the Commission being unimpressed by the argument based on absence of a US Federal prohibition within US domestic law on the execution of persons under 18 years of age who commit serious crimes. When at last Eritrea secured its liberation from imperial Ethiopia after a long war of national liberation the OAU did not hesitate for one moment to welcome Eritrea into the family of free African States.
The self-determination process of the people of the Southern Cameroons is irreversible. Respondent States is grossly mistaken in its blind faith in the use of force, in the use of corrupted chiefs and other reactionary forces in the Southern Cameroons as fifth columnists so as to maintain its colonial subjugation of the Southern Cameroons. The lesson of history, ancient and modern, shows how unsustainable and unrealistic such expedients always have been.
And the Lord said to Moses, go to Pharaoh and tell him: LET MY PEOPLE GO! Complainants rest their case, trusting in the Almighty and fully confident that alas the long-suffering and traumatized people of the Southern Cameroons will be uncaged!
Professor C Anyangwe
Counsel for Complainants
Thank prof. for this statemant now i´m in exile in Germany because of this fight my Education carraer destory well we shall fight we here trying to send fanacial surport to this fight
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Posted by: eryclifyini | October 21, 2007 at 03:43 AM
"In every civilised and democratic society the liberty of its citizens is considered paramount above every other thing. As soon as a citizen is rightly or arbitrary arrested there are both positive and negative reactions with divergence opinions. However, the Code of Justice is written in our genes and everyday there are situations where we react based on what this Code says or prohibits.
If there is any place where justice should be handled carefully and with respect it should be in the courtroom. Justice must be rooted in confidence, and when the latter is destroyed in a judicial setting then anarchy is bound to follow.
Arrest Without Warrant
On or about January 20, 2007 in Bamenda, Northwest Province , and without a warrant of arrest, some armless Southern Cameroonians were ruthlessly brutalised, tortured, arrested and incarcerated by the forces of law and order on the grounds that they were holding an illegal meeting.
It is germane to state that if the arrest was at the behest of the Senior Divisional Officer for Mezam Division, then the entire arrest and subsequent detention is illegal.
Under Law No. 90/054 of December 19, 1990 on the maintenance of Law and Order, administrative authorities do not have the status of State Counsels or Examining Magistrates.
Section 2 of the above cited law states: Administrative authorities may at all times and depending on the circumstances, take the following measures within the framework of operations for the maintenances of law and order:
-Control the movement of persons and goods
-Requisition persons and goods according to law
-Requisition the police and the gendarmerie to maintain or restore order
-Take measures to detain persons for a renewable period of fifteen days in order to fight banditry.
Succinctly, while the law authorises administrative authorities to act within the context referred to above, the powers to order the arrest and detention of any individual is strictly limited to situations related to the fight against banditry.
The arrest and subsequent detention of any person on the verbal or written instructions of an overzealous Administrative Authority under the guise of maintenance of law and order is illegal.
Maintenance of law and order does not per say require arrest and detention.
Torture
The acts referred to above were further exacerbated by the fact that the detainees were allegedly tortured and treated inhumanely, contrary to the provisions of section 122 (1) (2) of the Criminal Procedure Code, which states:
-[“]The suspect shall immediately be informed of the allegations against him, and shall be treated humanely both morally and materially.
-The suspect shall not be subjected to any form of physical or mental constraints, or torture, violence threats or pressure…''
Pursuant to the provisions of section 3(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code, sanctions against the violation of any rule of the Criminal Procedure Code render the entire procedure a nullity.
The UN Convention against torture, cruel and other inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of December 10, 1984 was ratified by Cameroon pursuant to the law No. 97/007 of January 10, 1997.
It is apposite to state that torture is an offence under international law. It forms part of customary international law meaning that it is binding on every member of the international community regardless of whether a state has ratified international treaties in which torture is expressly prohibited. It is prohibited and cannot be justified under any circumstance.
A state of war, internal political instability or any public emergency or orders from a superior authority cannot be invoked as a justification of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment on a victim.
[…]
Freedom Of Political Expression And Opinion
The above not withstanding, it is mentioned in the Preamble of the Cameroon constitution of 1996 thus:
"No one shall be harassed on grounds of his origin, religion, philosophical or political opinion or belief subject to respect for public policy.''
More importantly is Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, which states:
"Ever[y] one is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set out in the declaration without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, or other status.
Further more, no distinction shall be made on the bases of the political, jurisdiction or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.''
The freedom of expressing a political opinion or belief during a peaceful assembly is a right enshrined and recognized in the Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR) to which Cameroon is a signatory.
[…]
The advocates of the Southern Cameroon National Council, SCNC, are merely through a peaceful approach fighting for the liberation of the Southern Cameroons ' territory by the Force Of Argument and Not The Argument Of Force.
[…]
Tools Of Oppression
[…]
Exceptionally, Justice Bea Abednego Kalla, a distinguished Judge, sitting as the presiding Magistrate in the Court of First Instance, Bamenda, could not lend his blessings to such manipulation in a similar case pitting the People of Cameroon Vs Henry Nya & 4 other (members of the SCNC) on October 29, 2001 and recently that of Dr. Ayongaba. In delivering the ruling he said:
"The Magistrate in this our state of law is free to render or capable of rendering justice without fear of favour. Those who cherish the status of this country as a state of law should keenly follow up the outcome of this case before the superior court and or why not any development in the career of this magistrate after this case.''
Posted by: Mongo Steven | July 25, 2008 at 09:27 AM