Cameroon
Cameroonian 'killer unit' police detains nine children

afrol.com, 3 March - Citizens of Cameroon's economic capital Douala are worried about the arrest of nine adolescents, which have not been seen after their detention. The nine children were arrested for minor theft by the elite security corps, the so-called "killer unit", which is accused of extrajudicial executions and to be responsible of the mass graves found outside the city last year.

Residents of the Bepanda Omnisports neighbourhood are planning a public demonstration on Sunday 4 March, to press for information on the fate of the nine youths. Relatives last saw them there on 26 and 27 February. Since then, there has been no information on their whereabouts, and residents fear they might be in for the same fate as a great number of others detained by the elite security corps, which have never been seen again.

According to Amnesty International, the nine adolescents were arrested on 23 February by security forces from the BJpanda Omnisports neighbourhood in Douala, as suspects in the theft of a neighbour's cooking gas bottle. Marc Etaha, Frederic Ngouffo, Chatry Kuete, Eric Chia, Jean Roger Tchiwan, Kouatou Charles, Chia Effician, Kouatou Elysee and Kuate Fabrice were subsequently transferred to a detention facility in Bonanjo-Douala belonging to the Commandement opérationnel, an elite security corps created last year to combat armed robbery in Douala and Yaoundé. 

The human rights group has protested the detention and says "the Cameroon government must throw more light on the disappearances in Douala." Further, Amnesty urges the government to "take all urgent and necessary measures to address the concerns of the people, the media and civil society in Cameroon and to guarantee that they freely express themselves on the issue."

Since its creation last year, there have been several reports by local organisations that the Commandement opérationnel has carried out large-scale extrajudicial executions while fighting street crime in Douala. After the discovery of a mass grave with more than 36 bodies close to the Douala international airport in November last year, Amnesty International raised concerns about impunity and disregard for the rule of law. These concerns were later repeated by the United Nations.

afrol.com first reported about the mass grave found outside Douala on 7 November. The city's outspoken Bishop, Cardinal Christian Tumi, already then addressed the "blatant excesses" of a special police unit and claimed that as many as 500 persons were missing in Douala, suspecting far-reaching extrajudicial executions in Douala. These executions were put in relation to other well-documented extrajudicial executions by special police forces in the northern city of Maroua in 1998 and 1999.

Civil society groups, religious leaders and the press in Cameroon have repeatedly criticized the inconsistency of the government response to allegations of summary killings by the Commandement opérationnel, particularly in Douala, said the organization. Since October 2000, journalists and religious leaders commenting on the allegations of extrajudicial executions have come under sharp criticism from the government and felt threatened. No independent and open investigation has so far been undertaken into individual allegations or the general behaviour of members of the Commandement opérationnel.

On 23 November 2000 the United Nations Committee Against Torture, referring to Cameroon's record, called on the government to "consider dismantling special forces to combat banditry, as these forces had been accused of numerous human rights abuses", to "carry out energetic investigations into all allegations of human rights violations and torture", and to "maintain scrupulously a publicly accessible register of detainees". No such steps have since then been taken by the Cameroonian government. 

Source: Based on Amnesty International and afrol archives

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