Cameroon: Arbitrary arrests, killings, torture – 1,000 people accused of supporting Boko Haram held in horrific conditions in Cameroon | Amnesty International USA
More than 1,000 people, many arrested arbitrarily, are being held in horrific conditions and dying from disease and malnutrition or have been tortured to death, as part of the Cameroon government and security forces crackdown on Boko Haram, Amnesty International revealed in a new report published July 13, 2016.
Cameroonian soldiers on Nov. 30, 2015 killed about 150 people near Nigeria’s Banki border post, and set huts ablaze. Amnesty International says Cameroonian security forces have unlawfully killed and tortured and forced the disappearances of others in mass arrests of suspects in fighting the Boko Haram Islamic insurgency. A report published Wednesday, July 13, 2016 accuses forces operating in Cameroon’s Far North province, bordering northeast Nigeria, of crimes under international law.
The report Right cause, wrong means: Human rights violated and justice denied in Cameroon’s fight against Boko Haram details how the military offensive against Boko Haram has resulted in widespread human rights violations against civilians in the Far North region of the country.
“In seeking to protect its population from the brutality of Boko Haram, Cameroon is pursuing the right objective; but in arbitrarily arresting, torturing and subjecting people to enforced disappearances the authorities are using the wrong means,” said Alioune Tine, Amnesty International West and Central Africa Regional Director.
“With hundreds of people arrested without reasonable suspicion that they have committed any crime, and people dying on a weekly basis in its overcrowded prisons, Cameroon’s government should take urgent action to keep its promise to respect human rights while fighting Boko Haram.”
Amnesty International observed the trial of four women who were convicted and sentenced to death in April 2016 solely on the basis of a statement made by a member of a local vigilante committee after they returned from Nigeria where they were working as domestic servants. Their only contact in the whole process with a lawyer was during a short break in the court proceeding.
“After being arrested without reasonable cause and suffering in dire prison conditions while awaiting trial, people from all across Cameroon risk being convicted and sentenced to death by military courts, based on little or no evidence, in patently unfair trials,” said Tine.
Amnesty International documented 29 cases of people being tortured by members of the security forces between November 2014 and October 2015, including six who subsequently died. Most cases of torture were committed while people were held incommunicado at illegal detention sites in military bases run by the BIR in Salak, near Maroua, and Mora, before being transferred to the official prisons. Victims described being beaten for long periods with sticks, whips and machetes, sometimes until they lost consciousness.
One 70 year-old man detained at Salak told Amnesty International how he had watched men in plain clothes torture his son in the BIR base for 10 days, and how he saw two men beaten to death.