Global Conscience

Ngome Herbert

Students' demonstrations in Kumba  

Global Conscience laments Government's nonchalance

Global Conscience Initiative is very worried with the pace of investigation into the shooting and killing by forces of unarmed demonstrating students in Buea and Kumba. Global Conscience Chief Executive has lamented that no investigations are being carried out into the arbitrary summary executions, and that the culprits are walking the streets as free persons. Global Conscience has therefore addressed a memorandum to the Governor of the Southwest Province, and is contemplating to take the matter before the African Human Rights Courts if the Cameroon Government continue to deny justice to the affected families.

Global Conscience is particularly worried about the plight of the families of the two students shot and killed in Kumba last November 9. The local administration engaged dialogue with the families and lobbied them to accept and bury the corpse without ceremony. Since after the burial, the administration has completely abandoned the families to wallow in their misery. Global Conscience can now confirm that government has not offered a dime to the two families in Kumba. Global Conscience has therefore written to the Southwest Governor on the killings by forces in Buea and Kumba, as the initial steps of taking the matter to higher levels

Read our petition to Southwest governor below

Kumba, February 21, 2008

His Excellency The Governor,
South West Province,
Governor’s Office, Buea,
S.W Province, Cameroon.

Your Excellency,

RE: RECENT POLICE AND MILITARY BRUTALITY AND KILLINGS IN BUEA AND KUMBA

It is with mix feelings that I send to you and through your office, the Office of the Prime Minister and Head of Government this correspondence in respect of the subject matter in titled hereof.

Your Excellency, as you are aware, during the recent student unrest in Kumba between October 27, 2007 and November 9, 2007, Government forces in an attempt to control the situation opened fire on the demonstrating students. We can confirm to Your Excellency that a form 1 student of G.T.C Kumba, Ngome Kwele Herbert, was shot dead, Nchabanu Derick Mbengu, about 19 years, received three bullets in the back while he was running away and, Napoleon Mwango, a form 5 student of CCAS Kumba, sustained multiple wounds on the head, all as a result of gunshots from the government forces.

Your Excellency is also aware that during the University of Buea students’ demonstrations of April 2005 and November 2006, government forces had also opened fire on unarmed students using life bullets. We can also confirm to Your Excellency that during the said University unrests the following students and/or people; Nforlem Gilbert and Abouam Dohonja Aloysius on the one hand and Yufani and Abiadong on the other hand were shot dead by government forces in April 2005 and November 29, 2006, respectively. Hundreds of others sustained serious bodily injuries from gunshots by the forces of law and order.

From the totality of the above, it seems clear to us that each time there is student unrest, our forces of law and order are unable to exercise restraint as such fatal casualties are always recorded.

As a human rights and peace focused NGO, we can not afford to remain silent in the face of all these heinous developments in our Country.

As Your Excellency is aware, Cameroon is a signatory to several international instruments which protects and sanctifies the right to life and in the same token prohibits the denial by any government of this right. We are quick to also note that these killings were all extra-judicial in nature and, as such compromises Cameroon as a State where the rule and due process of law is observed.

While we denounce any form of lawlessness from whosoever, we also denounce, and in very strong terms, the use of life bullets by any disciplined force against (unarmed) civilians. In our view, this amounts to a derogation of the responsibility of the government under national and international law. 

May I therefore, Mr. Governor, on my personal behalf and on behalf of the Organization I represent, kindly demand from Your Excellency and through you, H. E the Prime Minister and Head of Government the following;

a)      The official position of government to these killings,

b)      The measures taken by government to bring the culprits to book,

c)      The measures taken by the government to ensure that these ugly scenes do not reoccur and,

d)      The measures taken to comfort the afflicted and traumatized families?  

We urge that Your Excellency treats this correspondence as an initiation of sincere dialogue towards ensuring that acts of this nature become history as well as that the culprits of previous acts of this nature are brought to book. In this vein my Organization shall not relent in instituting the necessary legal actions commensurate to these acts before the requisite body against the government if this appeal fails.

We shall be very obliged if you can respond to this request within 45 days upon receipt.

As we look forward to working together against all forms of arbitrariness in our country, we use this opportunity to wish Your Excellency a happy and peaceful new year 2008.

Sincerely yours in Humanity

SAMBA CHIFU CHURCHILL
Chief Executive Officer
Global Conscience Initiative.

Cc. for information and action:

The National Commission on Human Rights and Freedoms, Yaounde

One shot dead, another comatosed, several others wounded

Kumba, November 9, 2007

Gendarmes in Kumba yesterday shot and killed a Form 1 student of Government Technical College Kumba, and wounded several others following clashes between striking students and heavily armed gendarmes and police.

The students from CCAS, GTC and GTHS Kumba had taken to the streets to demand for the unconditional release of about thirty of their colleagues held incommunicado in police and gendarmerie cells.

The marching students were stopped around Alaska Street in Buea Road Kumba by gendarmes in high anti-riot gear, led by Kumba Central Sub Divisional Officer Kouam David. The students then mounted barricades on the main road and brought traffic to a complete halt. They said they have been informed about plans by Meme SDO to move their detained colleagues to Buea, and thus wanted their immediate and unconditional release from the cells.

DO Kouam David called in more police and gendarmes and they used tear-gas to disperse and push back the stone-throwing students. However, DO Kouam and his forces got trapped at the CCAS junction when students surrounded and pelted them with stones. DO Kouam gave the orders and the forces immediately opened fire. A bullet got Ngome kwelegome Herbert, 14, in the head. The student dropped dead as his brains poured out on the road.  The others ran in various directions. There was more gun fire and several students dropped.

The forces picked up the death remains of Ngome and another seemingly death body, dumped them in their pick-up, and covered them with a tarpaulin. The blood flow was too much. They confused retreating forces fought with, this time, very furious regrouping students and maneuvered their pick-up through the quarters before getting to their station. A Kumba District Hospital ambulance finally took the shot students to the hospital.

News spread out wild that two students had gone down. Then more students poured out to the streets targeting the homes and properties of police and gendarmes and AES-Sonel. They students invaded the DO’s office and put it on fire. The town went just crazy and the forces and the DO seemed to have gone under cover. News came then that the Prime Minister had ordered the unconditional release of the students. The students were released immediately, but it was too late as the student criss-crossed the town in their determination to avenge their fallen colleagues.

Then some heavily armed forces Mobile Intervention Unit (GMI) in Buea drafted in to Kumba. There was commotion in every part of Kumba as there fire tear gas at every crowd they suspect to be students, and fired life bullets in the air. Many people closed down their business places and offices and retired home. By 7.00 p.m. Kumba was virtually under a curfew. The forces closed down a few drinking places and then harassed and extorted money from drivers, cyclists, passengers and just any body they spotted. Gun shots rattled the air through out the night.

We have confirmed only one death so far. Another student, Napoleon Mwango, got a bullet in his back but is convalescing in the Kumba District hospital. Another yet, Nchabanu Derrick, Doctors said was in very critical condition, but they said he had not bullet wounds. Two other students are licking bullet wounds in their legs in the Apostolic Health Centre in Banga Bakundu, while many others have consulted in the different clinics in and around Kumba. A few gendarmes and police also suffered minor injuries and received first aid treatment from The Meme Red Cross.

Genesis

The students’ demonstrations in Kumba came on the heal of an AES-Sonel transformer failure on October 29, 2007, that caused electricity outage in three main schools (CCAS, GTHS and GTC) and staff and student residential areas along Buea Road. The student waited in vain for AES-Sonel to correct the situation, and on November 7, 2007, took to the streets in protest against SONEL. They mounted barricades across the road in Buea thus obstructing traffic. Gendarmes and police, on the orders of Meme Senior Divisional Officer Abath Zangwalla Magloire, used tear gas to disperse the angry students. While AES-Sonel only then sent in a team that restored electricity in the area but left out CCAS.

The forces are reported to have besieged students’ hostels, broke into their rooms, beat them up, seized their phones and other items, tormented them in mud, destroyed their books and threw them in wells, before conducting some more arrests.

Classes resumed the following day and all was well until when the students reportedly learnt that their arrested colleagues would be taken to Buea. They students also learnt that their detained colleagues were being denied visitations even from their family members.

On Friday, November 9, therefore, the students of the three schools mobilized themselves and took to the streets in a solidarity march for their detained colleagues, before running into the bloody confrontation with the no-nonsense mostly French speaking forces.

Observations

1. The high handedness of the Meme and Kumba administration is first of all to blame for the unfortunate crises that has taken a way the life of a student. The administration minimized the students and used shear force, in the place of dialogue, to resolve a matter that never really was. Basically the administration fuelled the students’ anger firstly in ordering forces to raid their hostels and arrest them; in detaining the students, most of them minors, in horrible conditions and with hardened criminals, and then in denying their families and friends access to them. The refusal of the administration to release the students is the bane of the matter.

2. The forces of law and order came in with firearms and combat ready gear for a show down with the armless students. The students left their campuses and marched to where they were confronted by forces with no weapons. Their marching up to that level was non-violent and they carried no weapons on them. They went for stones, sticks, bottles and other weapons after the heavily armed forces confronted them with tear gas. The forces also did not make use of any sound system to try to talk the students into order, nor warned the demonstrating students that they would use force. The forces also arrived the demonstration ground with live ammunitions, apparently after having premeditated that they may need to use them against students. Students started destroying and burning properties only after  the forces shot and killed a student.

3. The Kumba and Meme Administrators and all security bosses are Francophones. About 80 percent of the security forces in Kumba are also Francophones and they express themselves in French all of the time. The use of only French by the forces and the administration as they planned their onslaught on the students was somehow provocative to the students.

4. The students were not organized and had no leaders to coordinate and direct their demonstrations. Most of them were not dressed in their uniforms and their ranks could easily have been penetrated by recalcitrant outside elements.

5. Top Anglophone elites, the Parent Teachers’ Associations of the three schools and religious leaders and school chaplains in the division were visibly absent in the face of the crises. They made no attempts at consulting with the schools’ and Meme administration, and the students, thus the students felt abandoned to fight alone for their fate.

6. Generally, AES-Sonel is notorious for negligence. In this particular case, AES-Sonel failed to realize the high necessity of electricity in this area, and apparently would not have corrected the electrical problem had the students not taken to the streets. The lackluster attitude of AES-Sonel staff is a serious source of worry. AES-Sonel often underestimates the high importance of electricity to customers.

7. The schools’ administrations also apparently failed to sensitize the students about any progresses made in their arrangement with AES-Sonel to correct the electrical fault, as well in their efforts with the Meme administration and the forces of law and order to get the arrested students released and back to class.

Recommendations

1. That the Meme and Kumba Chief Executives be relieved of their functions, while a committee is set up to properly investigate the crises.

2. That at least one Anglophone should be appointed to the top position of the division or subdivision

3. That government should also relieve the security heads in Kumba and appoint Anglophones to the key positions considering that about eighty percent of the forces are Francophones.

4. That government and other locally based human rights organisations should organize training workshops and seminars for police and gendarmes on the use of firearms, civil disorders and human rights.

5. That the Kumba and Meme Administrations should be more cautious and responsible in managing crises, and show adequate respect for all concerned parties. The administrators should know that violence only begets violence and that no forces can win any war against students.

6. That the administration should encourage people to manifest their grievances peacefully in public and not drive them into the bushes from where they can contemplate primitive and violent means to express their discontent.

7. That a criminal investigation should be carried out in the killing of the student, the molestation, destruction and looting of students properties, and punishment meted out to the culprits. Also the DO of Kumba Central who led the forces and ordered the shootings should bear the full brunt of his action. Responsibility must go to the head.

8. That forces should be stopped from carrying life ammunitions to demonstration grounds, and respect international principles in containing public manifestations of grievances.

9. That although no amount of money can compensate for the lost life, government should identify and compensate the family of the deceased. Any amount would only go to pacify the family in their depression.

10. That government should also foot the medical bills of all wounded students, and compensate the affected families for any losses they may have incurred owing to the crises.

11. That schools’ chaplains, Parent Teachers Associations, Religious leaders and school chaplains as well as elites of Kumba should closely follow and show more interest in the activities of students.

12. That schools and colleges should create students’ unions where in the student can identify and discuss their problems and channel them to the proper authorities. Student Unions would better manage students’ crisis with the assistance of all other actors.

13. That AES-Sonel should handle complaints of power ruptures with the urgencies they deserve and engage in communication with persons suffering outages. AES-Sonel should improve its customer services and especially its rapid intervention units.

Read an investigative report from three human rights organisations

It all started on Monday 29^th October, 2007 when the AES SONEL transformer supplying electricity to the campuses and student residential area of CCAS Kumba, GTHS Kumba, GTC Kumba, stopped functioning, and caused a general blackout in these largely students’ area. The population patiently waited for AES SONEL to restore electricity in the area but to no avail. It was only on Wednesday the 7^th of November 2007, that the students of the above institutions, very frustrated came out and blocked the Kumba – Buea road in protest to the protracted  darkness they have suffered, especially during the critical period of end of the term examinations.

In quick response thereafter, AES SONEL, sent an intervention team on the spot and by midnight of the 7^th November, 2007, succeeded to restore electricity to the entire area except the CCAS campus which they said had specific problems which they intended to resolve the next day.

Unfortunately during the students’ demonstration on the 7^th November, 2007, about 30 students (number still to be confirmed) were arrested and detained in the Central Police Station and the Gendarmerie Company on the instructions from the Senior Divisional Officer for Meme Mr. Abath Zangwalla Magloire.

On Thursday 8^th November, after the restoration of the electricity, classes resumed normally in all the schools and we all thought the matter was over.

Unfortunately, rumour circulated among the students that their detained mates were to be taken to Buea on Friday the 9^th of November 2007 for further detention. Also their worry that their detained mates were losing out on the tests written in class the day before, mounted pressure on them and they decided to come out again demanding the immediate and unconditional release of their arrested and detained school mate who as they claimed were innocent victims, not perpetrators, since most of them were allegedly picked up from their hostels by the forces of law and order.

The student barricaded the main Kumba- Buea road on several spots and they were in their thousands, some in school uniforms. The small contingent of forces of law and order composing of police and Gendarmes, though armed with tear gas, anti-riot shields and batons, with a few carrying guns and pistols, were visibly unable to contain the large demonstrating students’ crowd.

The nucleus of this confrontation appeared to be the main bridge on the Kumba-Buea Road before the junction to CCAS, which was blocked by the students with a providential empty container found near-by and this sealed off the bridge completely making it impossible even for pedestrian to go through. The forces of law and order succeeded once to take off the container, but the students came back in their numbers, throwing stones, sticks and anything they could lay their hands on, at the troops and succeeded in chasing the troops away from the bridge and reinstated the blockage.

Encouraged by this apparent success, the stone throwing demonstrating students continued to chase away this small contingent of troops towards CCAS junction mounted by other demonstrating students, and the troops were caught in between these two, and there, as it were, the students demanded for the Divisional Officer Mr. David Kouam to be delivered to them.

It was at this juncture that we heard gunshots of live bullets and we saw retreating students crying two of their colleagues are lying shot in a pool of blood on the tarmac (road) and samples of the live bullets were picked up by some of the students who presented them to us. A few minutes later, the contingent came back with two bodies of students carried behind the Gendarmerie pickup, one inert and the other still conscious but bleeding profusely on the head.

The contingent was struggling to move on especially as the wounded students needed urgent medical care, but had to grabble with the numerous blockages and fight-backs with stones from the students as the students were even more infuriated as one of their mates had died from gun-shot.

Even our intervention with the students to allow the immediate transportation of the wounded students did not help. Eventually, however, the contingent had to force their way through in their three pickups, others on foot, using tear gas and shields rushing the wounded students to the hospital.

The infuriated students did not stop there, they besieged the town, raided the Divisional Office, set it on fire, vandalized all official documents, and thanks to the to the prompt intervention of neighboring population who put off the fire, the building was saved from being burnt to ash. They also gained entry into the AES SONEL office in Kumba, vandalized the whole office, including three packed Toyota hilux, AES SONEL official vehicles, matriculated, LT7394S, LT6067H and LT7385S which they burnt.

Equally, the Central Police Station canteen was set on fire but fortunately it was put off before it caused extensive damage.

A:         The student victim shot dead is,

1.       A Government Technical College Kumba form two student whose only name we got as Ngome Kwele Herbert, class 1, GTC- Kumba, shot dead and the corpse is at the Kumba District Hospital Mortuary.

B:         Amongst the wounded students,

1.       Napoleon Mwango, about 20 years. F.E. 5 class, shot in the back, presently receiving medical treatment at the Kumba District hospital. He said gendarmes shot him while he was running away.

2.       Nchabanu Derick, Cameroon College of Arts and Science Kumba, form 5A, had multiple wounds on the head, is in the theater unconscious, but the Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ojong said his condition is stable at the time of writing this report.

We are still investigating reports that some two students allegedly wounded were carried to the Apostolic Hospital in Banga Bakundu along the Kumba - Muyuka road for medical attention.

Forces of law and order who sustained injuries from the demonstrating stone-throwing students.

1.       Menge Carine

2.       Officier Ekwalla

3.       Officier Obama

These officers received first aid from the officials of the Meme red Cross.

Amongst the about 30 students arrested and detained in both the Central police station and Gendarmerie company are the following:

1.       Athene Genevieve, female, 13 years old, form one of Government Technical College Kumba.

2.       Yesi Eugene, 18 years, Government Technical High School- Kumba, lower sixth.

3.       Ezekiel Okorie, 16 years, lower sixth CCAS Kumba.

4.       Taboko Robert Tarh, 16 years, CCAS Kumba, lower sixth

5.       Tayem Armstrong, 18 years, CCAS Kumba upper sixth

6.       Ewane Martin, 18 years, Government Technical college – Kumba form 4

7.       Princely Muabe, 27 years, not student, stays around CCAS.

8.       UKUMKA Mum Anokwa, female 16 year, lower sixth.

9.       Elvis Refor Government Technical High School- Kumba

10.     Kome Esa, Government Technical High School- Kumba

11.     Mboh Friday, CCAS Kumba,

12.     Agbor paul, Government Technical High School- Kumba

13.     Azuh Kingsley, Government Technical High School- Kumba.

14.     Wanda Elias, Government Technical High School- Kumba.

15.     Njong Joseph, Government Technical High School- Kumba.

16.     Tifuh Henry, Government Technical College.

17.     Ngatam, Government Technical High School- Kumba.

The parents of the detained students reported to us that they were deprived from seeing their children and even giving them food while in detention as protectors of fundamental human rights and freedoms, it is our duty to highlight excesses committed by both parties, while acknowledging the rights to peaceful demonstration. We deplore the aggressive nature the demonstration adopted, stone throwing, and the destruction of properties as well as the use of fire arms resulting to the death of a student. At the same time, we whole heartedly condemn the inability of the administration to hear out the views of demonstrators and find peaceful solutions. Had this been done 48 hours ago, the killing would not have occurred as well as the material damages. We are of the opinion that an independent investigation be immediately carried out, those found responsible be duly punished according to the law.

However, as we conclude this first report, the central police commissioner of Kumba inform us that on instruction from the prime minister and head of government his Excellency chief Ephraim Inoni, the Senior Divisional officer had ordered for the immediate and unconditional release of all the detained students. Had this taken place last night or early this morning the loss of lives, damages to properties could not have been averted.

This investigation was jointly carried out by the following:

      1) Mr. Ntebo Ebenezer: Protection officer, Global Conscience Initiative, GCI Human Right Organisation, PO BOX 269 Kumba, South West Province, Tel: 33030613 email: ceo@gcicam.,org

2) Mr., Njaru Philip: Executive Director, Friends of the Press Network, PO BOX 88 kumba South West province, Tel: 77910544, Fax: 330354240 email njaru@yahoo.com 

3) Hon Norbert Mbille Nangiya: Member/Commissioner of National Commission on Human Rights and Freedoms of Cameroon. Tel: 77615808/99357436 email: nangia1956@yahoo.,com.

Done in Kumba this 9^th day of November 2007

Signed: Mr. Njaru Philip                                      

Signed: Mr. Ntebo Ebenezer

Signed: Hon Norbert Mbille Nangiya

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