Freedom in the World 1999 - Cameroon

1999 Scores

Status: Not Free
Freedom Rating: 6.5
Civil Liberties: 6
Political Rights: 7

Ratings Change

Cameroon's civil liberties rating changed from 5 to 6 due to increased attacks on the press and numerous extrajudicial executions.

Overview

A new coalition government, formed in 1998, that included parties apart from the ruling Cameroon People's Democratic Movement (CPDM) did little to improve the administration's record on political and human rights. President Paul Biya and his supporters continued to wield nearly all the power in this ethnically and linguistically divided country. Cameroon's main opposition leader, John Fru Ndi of the Social Democratic Front (SDF), warned that the political stalemate could lead to widespread unrest. Attempts at dialogue in 1999 failed, largely because the government continued to reject the SDF's demands for an amendment to the constitution which would provide for an independent electoral commission to oversee future elections. The SDF and three other opposition parties boycotted the 1997 presidential election because there was no such commission.

Cameroon has an appalling human rights record. Journalists and members of the political opposition face persistent harassment and arrest. Scores of people were extrajudicially executed by security forces in 1999. Security forces operate with impunity and prison conditions are life-threatening.

Cameroon's population comprises nearly 200 ethnic groups. The country was seized during World War I, in 1916, and divided between Britain and France after having been a German colony from 1884. Distinct Anglophone and Francophone areas were reunited as an independent country in 1961. Approximately one-fourth of Cameroonians are Anglophone, and this linguistic distinction constitutes the country's most potent political division. For more than three decades after independence, Cameroon was ruled under a repressive one-party system. In 1992 and 1997 President Biya held fraudulent multiparty elections, which he won after a boycott by the SDF.

Political Rights and Civil Liberties

Although Cameroon's constitution provides for a multiparty republic, citizens have not been allowed to choose their government and local leaders by democratic means. Presidential elections have been devalued by rampant intimidation, manipulation, and fraud. Legislative elections have been equally fraudulent. The ruling CPDM won 116 seats and the SDF won 43 in polling in 1997 overseen by regime loyalists in the ministry of territorial administration. Demands for creation of an independent election commission were dismissed by the Biya regime, and most election observers were barred.

Institutions of representative government are largely a facade. The national assembly meets only about two months each year; for the other ten months, the president rules by decree. Constitutional amendments in 1995 gave even more power to the presidency and only nominally strengthened a pliant judiciary.

The president's own Beti ethnic group often receives preference in employment. In the north, powerful traditional chiefs known as lamibée run their own private militias, courts, and prisons, which are used against the regime's political opponents. Torture and ill-treatment of prisoners and detainees are routine in Cameroon, despite legislation passed in January 1997 that prohibits torture. Indefinite pretrial detention under extremely harsh conditions is permitted after a warrant is issued or to "combat banditry."

Several hundred people have been extrajudicially executed since a campaign against armed robbery began in the north of the country in March 1998, according to Amnesty International. More than 50 people from Cameroon's Anglophone provinces were detained for more than two years in connection with violent events in March 1997 before finally being brought before a military tribunal in May 1999. Authorities blamed the violence, in which three gendarmes were killed, on the Southern Cameroons National Council, which supports independence for Cameroon's two English-speaking provinces, and the affiliated Southern Cameroons Youth League. At least ten of those arrested subsequently died as a result of torture or lack of medical care. The trial of these prisoners and some 20 other defendants was neither independent nor impartial, Amnesty International said. At the conclusion of the trial in October, three people were sentenced to life and 30 others were sentenced to terms of up to 20 years.

Cameroon's executive branch controls the judiciary and appoints provincial and local administrators. Various intelligence agencies operate with impunity, and opposition activists are often held without charges. Numerous nongovernmental organizations, however, still operate. Freedom of religion is generally respected.

Serious restrictions on and intimidation of media inhibit open political exchange. Authorities censor, suspend, seize, and close independent publications, which in any case have little impact outside of urban areas. Criminal libel law is regularly used to silence regime critics. Anselme Mballa, editor in chief of Le Serment, was sentenced to prison in July 1999 in connection with an article critical of a government minister. Several other journalists were detained during the year.

In 1990 the national assembly passed a bill calling for liberalizing the audio and visual media, but Biya has yet to sign the decree that would bring the bill into force. Radio Reine, run by the Roman Catholic Church, is one of the country's newest government-tolerated private radio stations. The government reportedly has approved a Canadian-funded project to set up five rural radio stations. The project takes advantage of a legal loophole that requires private, but not necessarily community, broadcasters to have a license.

Violence against women is reportedly widespread. Women are often denied inheritance and landownership rights even when these are codified, and many other laws contain unequal gender-based provisions and penalties. Female genital mutilation is widely practiced in some parts of the country.

Trade union formation is permitted under the 1992 labor code, but some of the code's provisions have not been implemented and many government workers are not covered. The Confederation of Cameroonian Trade Unions (CCTU) is technically independent, but still influenced or intimidated by the ruling party. In 1996, the regime launched the Union of Free Trade Unions of Cameroon to further undermine union autonomy.

Privatization is underway, but graft and the absence of independent courts inhibit business development. Transparency International has ranked Cameroon as the world's most corrupt country. There are hopes that a proposed pipeline running from Chad through Cameroon will help bring in jobs, and civil society has been active in trying to assure that the needs of the local population are met. But the project has been delayed now that two key members of the pipeline consortium announced that they were reassessing their level of financial involvement.