Cameroon
Protest against torture of Cameroon's M'bororo

afrol News, 17 June - According to the rights group Survival International, four members of the M'bororo pastoralist people of Cameroon have been imprisoned without charge and tortured, and are facing arbitrary trial by a military tribunal. The group had protested to Present Biya and Cameroonian authorities.

The group states that "the only crime of Ousman Haman, Ahmadou Hassan, Adamu Isa and Yunusa Mbagoji is to have resisted the plans of Alhadji Baba Ahmadou Danpullo - a multi-millionaire rancher with interests in South Africa, Europe and the USA and prominent member of Cameroon's ruling party - to take over yet more of the M'bororo land." 

Mr Alhadji Baba reportedly already was "the biggest landowner after the government in Cameroon's Northwest Province, and has been waging a campaign of terror against the M'bororo for sixteen years." The M'bororo, who are a nomadic branch of the Fulani people, herd their cattle in the mountains of north-west Cameroon, "but their land and way of life are increasingly under threat," the group that "supports tribal peoples" says.

Ousman Haman had been arrested while filming a disputed piece of grazing land, and eye witnesses told Survival "he was taken to one of Alhadji Baba's ranches, where he was flogged by Captain Fotsing Benjamin, a squadron commander of the state Gendarmerie, as Alhadji Baba watched. He was then taken to join the three other men in the central prison of Bafoussam, which is in a different province, where their relatives will find it hard to reach them. They have been held there since 23 May 2002." 

Ahmadou Hasan, Adamu Isa and Yunusa Mbagoji had been arrested in the southern city of Douala for an alleged crime that occurred near Sabga in Mezam judicial division. They were transported first to Bamenda and then to Bafoussam to be tried in a military tribunal, the London-based group said. 

Also Amnesty International said on Thursday that it was concerned over the safety of the activists detained in Bafoussam. All the four had suffered various types of torture, the two groups said, adding that the arrests were part of systematic human rights abuses against the M'bororo of the North West Province.

- Several weeks after their arrests, no charges have been brought against [them], Survival added. "The four were arrested in relation to a dispute over grazing land. At no time since Cameroon gained independence in 1961 has any dispute over grazing land been taken to a military tribunal. The detention of the M'bororo men suggests a wider campaign of intimidation against this politically marginal ethnic group."

Sources: Based on Survival and afrol archives

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