Human rights organisation REDHAC and others suspended by the authorities

General

Disappearance of political activist

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), on 24th December 2024, Yérima Djoubaïrou Tchéboa, a political activist and government critic, was forcibly disappeared by the authorities in N’Gaoundéré, northern Adamawa region. Witnesses interviewed by HRW claim Djoubaïrou was picked up by at least two men. On 21st January 2025, weeks after Djoubaïrou’s disappearance, authorities released a document, dated 6th January 2025, stating that police suspected Djoubaïrou of planning to burn voting booths and was in police custody.

Abduction of magistrate

According to information received by AFP from the CSO Conscience Africaine, on 29th December 2024, Nchang Augustinwa Amongwa, magistrate from Bamenda, in the English-speaking region of the North West region of Cameroon, was abducted from his residence by unidentified armed men. Other civilians were kidnapped on the same day and taken to an unknown destination by armed men. According to Conscience Africaine, three other people were abducted and killed in December because their families were unable to pay the ransoms demanded.

Report on French colonisation in Cameroon

On 28th January 2025, a report on France’s role in the repression of independence movements in Cameroon was submitted to the French President Emmanuel Macron, the Cameroonian President Paul Biya and released for the general public. In the officially commissioned report, 14 historians say that France had waged a war marked by "extreme violence" during Cameroon's fight for independence in the late 1950s. Despite the progress the report represents, researchers deplore not having been able to access Cameroonian national archives dating from after 1964, illustrating the difficulty of shedding light on this period.

Association

Suspension of associations

On 6th December 2024, the Minister of Territorial Administration, Paul Atanga Nji, ordered the suspension of four organisations active in Cameroon - the Réseau des défenseurs des droits humains en Afrique centrale (REDHAC; Network of Human Rights Defenders in Central Africa), Reach Out Cameroon, Nanje Foundation INC and the Association Charitable Socioculturelle (ACS) – on accusations of dubious financial practices such as illegal financial schemes, failure to account transparently for the origin and use of funds, and the absence of administrative authorisations required to carry out their activities on Cameroonian territory. These suspensions confirm the repressed status of civic space in Cameroon, and CIVICUS has issued a statement calling on the Cameroonian authorities to immediately reverse this decision.

According to the Minister, citing reports from the national financial investigation agency dating from 2021 and 2024, the four Cameroonian CSOs have received 16 billion CFA francs from abroad, but have spent and invested less than 400 million CFA francs. the Minister did not give NGOs the opportunity to provide evidence in their defence. REDHAC denounced the lack of evidence supporting these accusations. The Pan-African Human Rights Defenders Network also denounced the decision. Hassan Shire, its Chairperson, notes: “The erosion of civic space in Cameroon has reached alarming levels, with repressive measures and unlawful administrative decisions becoming a distressing norm”.

The activities of REDHAC, Reach Out Cameroon (with head offices in Buea) and ACS are suspended for three months and all their activities or meetings are prohibited throughout the national territory. L. M. Nanje Foundation was suspended for lack of authorisation and activities likely to undermine the integrity of the national financial system.

On 9th December 2024, the sub-prefect of the municipality of Douala 1 had seals affixed to the premises of REDHAC, preventing the staff from entering the office. Alice Nkom, chairwoman of REDHAC’s board of directors, lawyer at the Cameroon Bar and longtime defender of LGBTQI+ rights, broke the seals as she considers these seals illegal as they did not comply with the necessary procedures for suspending an organisation, which were established by law in 1990.

The same day, REDHAC’s lawyers filed an administrative appeal, claiming that the decree constitutes an ‘abuse of power’ violating, among other things, the 1990 law on freedom of association and the April 2016 regulation of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) on the Regulation for the Prevention and Suppression of Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Proliferation in Central Africa. This regulation stipulates that only the Agence Nationale d'Investigation Financière (ANIF) and the financial and judicial authorities are empowered to initiate proceedings against offenders.

Illaria Allegrozi of HRW commented:

According to news reports, on 27th December 2024, the Littoral Region administrative court sitting in Douala rejected the appeal lodged by the co-chairs of REDHAC’s Board of Directors, Prof Lumbu Remy Ngoy and Ms. Alice Nkom. According to the first order, the two chairs did not have standing to act on behalf of REDHAC. In another order dated the same day, the judge declared the application of REDHAC inadmissible for lack of personality, legal existence and legal capacity of the Network of which Maximilienne Ngo Mbe was the Executive Director.

Judicial harassment

Alice Nkom, chairwoman of the board of directors, Maximilienne Ngo Mbe, executive director of REDHAC, and five other members of REDHAC were summoned to the Central Police Station No. 1 of the city of Douala following the issuance of the order to suspend the human rights organisation. Nkom was first summoned by the prefect of the Wouri department on 10th December 2024, but she requested to postpone until January to ensure the presence of her lawyer during questioning. Alice Nkom received a second summons for 16th December 2024 to explain her actions regarding the seals.

According to Amnesty International, Alice Nkom was also summoned by the head of the national gendarmerie’s central judicial investigation department on 10th and 14th January 2025 for further investigation, reportedly over accusations of ‘undermining state security’ and ‘financing terrorism’. The accusations follow a complaint made to the Douala military court on 18th December 2024 by the Cameroonian NGO Observatoire du développement sociétal (ODS; Observatory of Social Development) accusing Nkom of raising funds to oppose the current authorities and support armed groups in the English-speaking regions. This accusation is based on Nkom’s participation, five years earlier, in a forum on peace and transition organised in Munich by an organisation of the Cameroonian diaspora. Two Cameroonian lawyers, Kah Walla and Emmanuel Simh, who attended the event, co-signed a letter addressed to the government commissioner of the Yaoundé military court to denounce these serious and spurious accusations. Amnesty International also called on the Cameroonian authorities to stop the harassment of HRD Alice Nkom and civil society organisations.

Attack on lawyer

On 27th November 2024, in a video circulating on social networks, Mr Tamfu Richard, a lawyer at the Cameroon Bar, member of REDHAC’s legal counsel and member of the platform for the rule of law in Cameroon, is seen being thrown into the back of a pick-up truck and trampled by gendarmes in front of a crowd.

On that day, 27th November 2024, while the lawyer was assisting one of his clients, who was about to be arrested in Douala’s Bonaberi neighbourhood, gendarmes immediately took the lawyer and his client to the Douala Territorial Gendarmerie Headquarters, where the lawyer was subjected to violence and suffered injuries. He was released shortly afterwards and was brought to the Laquintinie hospital.

On 28th November 2024, the Secretary of State for Defence in charge of the National Gendarmerie launched an investigation into the incident. According to the results of this investigation, published on 6th December 2024, the lawyer is accused of violence against civil servants, rebellion, destruction of military property, obstruction of justice and insulting the four gendarmes. Richard Tamfu condemned the results of the investigation, which he says has not been impartial but produced by the perpetrators. In a letter dated 9th December 2024, Mbah Éric Mbah, President of the Cameroon Bar Association, criticised the investigation as it did not take into account the acts of torture evident in the video that went viral, denouncing a ‘flagrant injustice and manifest partiality’. The Cameroon Bar requested the investigation to be conducted de novo by an impartial organ or a joint team.

On 29th November 2024, Richard Tamfu lodged a complaint against the head of the Littoral regional gendarmerie for ‘complicity in torture’.

Human rights CSO victim of burglary

During the night of 18th to 19th January 2025, the premises of the human rights CSO Nouveaux droits de l’homme (New human rights) in Yaoundé were broken into. The perpetrators stole all the essential work equipment, such as computers, as well as several documents and most of the data storage devices. Cyrille Rolande Bechon, director of the CSO, believes this was not an ordinary burglary, as for months there has been an upsurge in threats and intimidation directed at organisations denouncing the degradation of freedoms in Cameroon. According to a statement issued by the CSO, “this burglary, whose objective is clear (to prevent NDH from continuing its work), is yet another act of violence and harassment against human rights defenders in Cameroon”.

Expression

Two years after his murder, still no justice for journalist Martinez Zogo

Two years after the abduction, torture and murder of Amplitude FM director Arsène Salomon Mbani Zogo, popularly known as Martinez Zogo, the trial is bogged down in procedural issues. Seventeen individuals, including high-ranking officers of state security agencies and an influential businessman, were arrested in connection with the case and have been on trial before the Yaoundé Military Court since March 2023. Several controversies have marked the court proceedings, including the dismissal of two judges and the provisional release of two key suspects. So far, none of the witnesses has reportedly been heard in relation to the murder.

Journalist detained, assaulted while covering protest

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), gendarmes in Buea, Southwest Region, detained Nsoyuka Guy-Bruno Maimo, a journalist for Volcanic Times newspaper, while he was covering a protest on 24th October 2024, organised by a local women’s group outside the premises of the Buea gendarmerie. Maimo was held for five days in detention, reportedly without access to a lawyer or his family, until his unconditional release on 29th October 2024. However, upon his release, gendarmes hit him, including with a belt, insulted and threatened him, while forcing him to clean the toilets. Maimo told CPJ that he was accused of interfering in the work of the gendarmerie, and believes gendarmes accessed his mobile phone while in detention.

Peaceful Assembly

Lecturers on strike

On 6th January 2025, state universities’ lecturers started to strike. The National Union of Higher Education Teachers demands the full payment of the debt owed to university teachers by the government. The strike was ongoing as of 14th January 2025.

Protest banned and harsh discourse on LGBTQI+

On 14th December 2024, Sylyac Marie Mvogo, the Senior Divisional Officer of the Wouri department in Douala, issued an order banning a planned protest by members of REDHAC and its sympathisers. The protest, dubbed "Lundi en noir" (Black Monday), was scheduled for 16th December 2024 in Douala. The order warned that any gathering, display of discontent, or unauthorised public demonstration would not be tolerated in the Wouri department from 15th to 17th December; that authorities would conduct systematic searches of vehicles and individuals and that violations would be subject to penalties. Expecting expression of solidarity with LGBTQI+ people, the Prefect called on the citizens “not to take part in this deplorable cause”.