Civil Society Want Human Rights Respect, Resumption of Dialogue

Civil society organizations in the Southwest Region have intimated that it will take the resumption of Frank dialogue and strict respect of all human rights for the current deadlock in the Anglophone problem to be unlocked. The civil society was speaking in Buea recently, during a meeting with an eleven-member delegation from the National Commission on Human Rights and Freedoms, NCHRF, that was on a three-day working visit to the Southwest Region. The delegation was led by the commission’s Vice President, Professor James Mouange Kobila. The meeting was attended among others by religious, traditional, legal, administrative, civil society leaders, and a cross-section of the population. Deliberations raised during the meeting were centered on the situation of human rights in the region-the search for solutions to the questions raised by striking teachers and lawyers among other things. The Global Forum for the Defence of the Less Privileged, GFDLP a Cameroon-based Non-Governmental organization an affiliate of the National Commission on Human Rights and Freedoms made a statement on the occasion. Baudouin Ngah Akoh, Founder and Executive Director of GFDLP recounted cases of flagrant violation of human rights by security forces in the wake of the social tension in the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon. He condemned in very strong terms the abuses, torture, and arbitrary arrest that students of the University of Buea were subjected to on November 28, 2016, when they embarked on a peaceful demonstration on their campus to denounce some irregularities relating to students welfare. The Chief Executive Officer of GFDLP expressed discontent with the excessive militarization of the Northwest and Southwest Regions, as well as the continuous intimidation and wanton arrest of persons by security forces as part of a government crackdown on the perpetrators of ghost towns. Attendees at the meeting were unanimous that for the present deadlock to be unlocked there should be the resumption of frank dialogue and the strict respect of human rights and freedoms. The Vice President of the National Commission on Human Rights and Freedoms said the respect of human rights must be both vertical and horizontal. Prof. Kobila said administrative authorities have to respect the rights of citizens and vice-versa. He also underlined the need for each and everyone to respect the rights of those around them.