SCNC Protestors Stage Sit-in At Court Premises

When the judge handling the matter of application for bail by SCNC adherents incarcerated in the Bamenda Central Prison did not show up in court on Thursday, February 22, some 300 SCNC activists decided to stage a sit-down strike on the lawn of the Bamenda High Court.
Catherines

Their aim was to prod the hierarchy to speed up the trial of Nfor Ngala Nfor and 13 others who are languishing in the Bamenda Central Prison.

In a two-page press release dated February 22, and signed by the National Chairman of the SCNC, Chief Ayamba Ette Otun, the decision of the Bamenda High Court is nothing short of a "diabolic plot to prolong the detention of SCNC leaders and activists and to further endanger their health.

Many are suffering from health problems consequent upon deplorable conditions and total lack of medical care in prison." Chief Ayamba recalls that, in October 2006, the SCNC lost two of its leaders namely, Philip Tete and Henry Nchadzeka, at the same Bamenda Central Prison.

Surprisingly, Ayamba said, when an external authority, whose name he did not mention, was anxious to know the condition of Nchadzeka, he was told that Nchadzeka had been released and had died.

The SCNC Chairman said though the SCNC Communication Officer, Ngiewih Asunkwan, was granted bail on February 20, it was only at 6 pm the following day that he was liberated by the judiciary, portraying the state of impunity in which Cameroonians find themselves.

Chief Ayamba expressed fears that the Preliminary Investigations, PI, have been overstretched and some of the SCNC leaders who are sick might die before the trial proper begins.

He called on the UN Human Rights Council to send, as a matter of urgency, a fact-finding mission to the former UN Trust Territory of Southern Cameroons under British administration to investigate the brutal annexation and occupation of the territory by La République du Cameroun "in gross violation to blood boundaries inherited at independence."

He warned that any further delay "is a direct invitation to a blood bath and inevitable destabilisation of the West African sub-region still bleeding from civil wars."According to the Defence Counsel for the SCNC detainees, the activists are suffocating under Section III of the Penal Code, which hinges on session, punishable by death or life sentence.

As we went to press, the detainees had resumed their hunger strike that will last, they say, as long as they remain in prison.