ISHR interviewed Nfor Hanson Nchanji, award winning Human Rights Journalist from Cameroon. Published on 16 July 2019.
Posts Tagged ‘Cameroon’
2019 edition of the Africa Shield Awards by AfricanDefenders
June 21, 2019
On 14 June 2019, AfricanDefenders (Pan-African Human Rights Defenders Network) awarded distinguished five human rights defenders on the African continent [for more on this and other regional awards, see: http://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/african-human-rights-defenders-shield-awards]The winners are Beatrice Mtetwa, Felix Agbor Aniyor, Donald Deya, Fatou Jagne Senghor, and the Sudan Women Protest. The Shield Awards highlight the positive impact of their outstanding human rights work and their unwelding motivation.Through their human rights work, the awardees have faced harassment, intimidation, arbitrary detention, and even the threat of death – but they have never abandoned their tenacious commitment to human rights protection and promotion. Expressing her appreciation to their efforts, Hon. Maiga said: “I congratulate all the winners for their courage, and acknowledge the risks they take, and their strength that enables them to stand up for the rights of others.”
On a special note, Hassan Shire presented the Shield of Africa award to Hon. Commissioner Maiga Soyata. This special award is presented by AfricanDefenders to valuable dignitaries who have demonstrated longstanding contributions to protecting and promoting the rights of African citizens. Hon. Maiga dedicated 12 years of her life to protecting the rights of Africans across the continent, notably promoting the rights of women in Africa through the Maputo Protocol. “This is a coronation for her outstanding role in the protection of the rights of African citizens,’’ said Hassan Shire.
Human rights cities movement or network?
June 2, 2019The third edition of the #RightsCity conference will be held on June 3 2019 in Montreal, Canada. For more on the background of the Human Rights Cities movement, see: https://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/Human_Rights_City#History_of_the_Human_Rights_Cities_movement. However, how it relates to the human rights cities network I referred to earlier [https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2018/12/14/the-human-rights-cities-network-the-beginning/], is not totally clear!
This year, particular emphasis has been placed on the role of prominent human rights defenders, journalists and global human rights leaders, and of Canada as well. The conference brings together some of the world’s human rights leaders and thinkers, including: Saudi activist Omar Abdulaziz; Canadian retired lieutenant-general and senator Roméo Dallaire; Iranian women’s rights leader Shaparak Shajarizadeh; Chinese dissident and former political prisoner Yang Jianli; and former special adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the Responsibility to Protect, Jennifer Welsh.
The event is hosted by the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia University, in partnership with the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, Amnesty International, the Canadian International Council and the Centre for International Peace and Security Studies. (The event is expected to be livestreamed via CPAC.)
Here, some of those involved with the event shed light on the human rights issues they believe are most important to address in order to ensure global stability.
Cameroon: killing and disappearances by government forces in graphic video
September 7, 2016
This animation – published by AI on 5 September 2016 – was produced based on testimonies collected by Amnesty International by interviewing over 35 direct eyewitnesses and a senior military source. All the sources confirmed that at least 200 men and boys were arrested on 27 December 2014 in the villages of Magdeme and Doublé in Cameroon. In the same operation conducted jointly by the army, the police and the gendarmerie, at least 8 people, including a child, were killed, over 70 buildings were burnt down and many possessions were stolen or destroyed.
The fate of most of those arrested in these two villages remains unknown. At least 25 of these men and boys – perhaps more – died in custody during the night of their arrest in a makeshift cell, while 45 others were taken and registered in Maroua’s prison the following day. At least 130 people, therefore, remain unaccounted for, presumed to be victims of enforced disappearance, with some evidence suggesting more may have died while in the custody of the security forces.
You can sign the petition to the Cameroonian authorities here: http://bit.ly/2cbpF7v
Video: Africartoons Studio; Music: Kalakuta Music Group
for other posts on Cameroon: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/tag/cameroon/
Profile of Tilder Kumichii, Human Rights Defender from Cameroon
May 13, 2015
Tilder Kumichii is Programme Coordinator at Gender Empowerment and Development (GeED) based in Cameroon.
On 21 April 2015 the International Service for Human Rights [ISHR] carried an interview with Tilder Kumichii, a human rights defender from Cameroon.
‘My motivation to do human rights work stems from my personal experience as a young woman growing up in a patriarchal system, which forced me to marry very young and become a very young widow’. Tilder resolved to devote her life to support other women who find themselves in a similar situation like herself. Describing herself as a woman human rights defender, she stresses that she is involved in both teaching people to understand their rights, as well as seeking accountability for violations and abuses of human rights. Read the rest of this entry »
Example of harassment from Cameroon reads like a film scenario
April 1, 2014
On 28 March 2014, human rights defender Mr Musa Usman Ndamba, a defender of the rights of the Mbororo community in Cameroon, appeared before the Bamenda Court of First Instance, and the trial was once again adjourned to the 23rd of May 2014. The trial of 28 March 2014 was the eighth such hearing in an ongoing trial against Musa Usman Ndamba led by a local wealthy landowner, Baba Ahmadou Danpullo, who has never attended any of the hearings. Meanwhile, two other defenders of the rights of the Mbororo, Messrs Abdulkarim Shehu and Mallam Yunusa are in detention whilst an arrest warrant has been issued for human rights defender Mr Fon Christopher Achobang. Musa Usman Ndamba is the Vice-President of Mbororo Social and Cultural Development Association (MBOSCUDA). Abdulkarim Shehu is a male nurse and social development worker, as well as founder and co-ordinator of the Angel of Hope Foundation, a health centre that caters for people with disabilities. Mallam Yunusa is an organiser of the Mbororo community of Banjah. Fon Christopher Achobang is a land rights campaigner and journalist sympathetic to the plight of the Mbororo.
Members of the community and their defenders have long been facing severe judicial and other harassment owing to disputes over their land. ……On 19 March 2014, authorities of the Catholic Church, led by a representative of the Archbishop of the Bamenda Archdiocese, directed a group of hired militias with a bulldozer to demolish the homes of the Mbororo in the Ndzah village. The community mobilised and stopped the demolition from taking place. However, during the stand-off both the representative of the Archbishop and Fon Christopher Achobang were injured. After the incident, at which he was not present, Abdulkarim Shehu reportedly took members of the police to the site to show them what had happened. Fon Christopher Achobang was forced to go into hiding after threats on his life following the incident. According to lawyers for the Mbororo Banjah community, the invasion took place in spite of a court case pending in the Bamenda Administrative Court with a Stay of Execution of the Order on the now disputed land, as a contested eviction notice had been issued the week before. Additionally, despite having been alerted to the impending invasion, government officials did nothing to stop it from going ahead, in complete violation of the law and the legal rights of the Mbororo community.
Front Line Defenders issued a previous urgent appeal regarding the ongoing judicial harassment against MBOSCUDA and Musa Usman Ndamba on 14 May 2013 http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/22662, while the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders also sent a communication https://spdb.ohchr.org/hrdb/24th/public_-_AL_Cameroon_04.09.13_%284.2013%29.pdf to the Cameroonian government regarding the same.
Mourning “Ndinga Man” – Cameroon’s famous musical dissident
March 24, 2014
In Foreign Policy magazine of 19 March, Alex Gladstein has written a very complete and moving story about the great Cameroonian musician, political prisoner and human rights defender, Lapiro de Mbanga. He died of cancer this past Sunday, 16 March 2014, in Buffalo, New York. Known as “Ndinga Man” to millions of Cameroonians, Lapiro escaped President Paul Biya’s regime in 2012, after three years of political imprisonment. He received asylum in the United States.
Situation of human rights defenders in Africa – overview by Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
November 6, 2013The OMCT and the FIDH, in the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, made an intervention under agenda item 9: “Situation of human rights defenders” at the at the 54th session of African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights [ACHPR] on 5 November.
Human rights defenders were attacked, received threats or were slandered in the DRC, Senegal and Tunisia. In some cases they were even killed, as in the DRC and in Cameroon, in a climate of impunity. Defenders, and in particular defenders of economic, social and cultural rights, also continued to be subjected to arbitrary arrests and judicial harassment in Angola, Cameroon, the DRC, Egypt, Mauritania and Tunisia. Obstacles to freedom of association were also recorded, as for instance in Angola, Egypt and Rwanda. A summary is as follows: Read the rest of this entry »
Controversy surrounding the death of LGBT activist Eric Ohena Lembembe; Cameroon blames the victims and continues persecution
September 25, 2013
On 23 September Amy Bergquist of the Advocates for Human Rights writes in her blog: The International Justice Program doesn’t get to travel to Geneva very often, but thanks to the United Nations’ live webcasts, we can usually see and hear all the U.N.’s human rights action as it happens. On Friday morning, I was eager to watch the U.N. Human Rights Council’s consideration of the Universal Periodic Review of Cameroon. I was especially moved when one of our colleagues from the Cameroonian Foundation for AIDS (CAMFAIDS) took the floor to speak on behalf of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association and recounted his July 15 discovery of his tortured and murdered colleague, Eric Ohena Lembembe, Read the rest of this entry »
