Series: The non-profit association Cebaph Pioneer of the Cameroonian Diaspora Fighting in Belgium :: Belgium
23 years ago, Cameroonians and friends of Cameroon decided on the official creation of the Belgian-African League for Human Promotion (Liberal) today, better known under the new name of Cercle Belgo-Africain pour la Promotion Humaine (CEBAPH).
An act which would push human rights enthusiasts to embrace the path of information and awareness on the atrocities committed by African powers, failings in terms of human rights and democracy in Cameroon.
This association will succeed in making its way into the ranks of international human rights associations and in bringing honor to the respective country of each member.
Twenty-three years later, Camer.be returned in the footsteps of this association which, before its legalization on May 4, 2000 in Belgium, had previously organized demonstrations in Brussels for the release of Pius Njawé of late memory, imprisoned in Cameroon , demonstrations on the affair of the 9 missing from Bépanda, the Ekollo Moundi affair in Douala, the affair of the Chronopost mail of the National Collective against impunity in Cameroon intercepted by the Cameroonian authorities, Recurrent incarcerations of Camille MbouaMassok, etc.
Since 1999, the non-profit association Liberal had set itself the objective of denouncing any form of obstruction of human rights in Africa as well as promoting (to the extent of its possibilities) economic development, peace and democracy. This is in accordance with the charter of the Organization of African Unity and that of the United Nations.
Several of its members will follow various training courses such as humanitarian law, administrative war writing techniques, accounting, accounting courses, organization and social deployment, etc.
In May 2000, the Liberal non-profit organization launched a lobbying campaign to challenge the presidency of the European Commission on the human rights situation in Cameroon. Under the leadership of Romano Prodi, president of this commission, a team of human rights experts will travel to Cameroon to meet Cameroonian civil society actors and local authorities. At the end of this, several resolutions will be taken on Cameroon, including the provision of European aid for Cameroon’s prisons.
On September 22, 2000, the LIBERAL non-profit organization will participate in the commemoration of the 2nd anniversary of the death of Semira Adamu, this young Nigerian, who died of suffocation on September 22, 1998 by a cushion during a forced repatriation while she was escorted by five gendarmes .
Escorted by five gendarmes, Semira Adamu was to be repatriated against her will to Lomé in Togo on September 22, 1998. But the repatriation turned into a tragedy. The 20-year-old young woman is immobilized by the police, her head buried in a cushion.
At the time, the cushion technique was authorized by the authorities under certain conditions to calm rejected asylum seekers, but that day, it would cause the irreparable. After long minutes of suffocation, Semira Adamu falls into a coma. She was then transferred to the Saint-Luc clinic in Brussels where she died in the evening. The non-profit association Liberal will be the very first in Belgium to denounce this failure. This will upset political leaders in Belgium with cascading resignations within the Belgian gendarmerie and certain authorities. It should be noted that the Belgian gendarmerie will disappear a few months later and it is the police which will acquire new powers including that of the defunct gendarmerie.
Also in September 2000, the non-profit organization Liberal will actively participate in the commemorative ceremony of Belgian rights associations in memory of Yaguine (14 years old) and Fodé (15 years old), two Guinean teenagers found on August 2, 1999, in the train Landing of a Sabena plane at Zaventem airport.
The very young organization led by Auscal Mbiakop will also be very active in Europe on the case of the 9 missing from Bépanda. A case concerning nine missing persons from Bépanda (innocent young people arrested in January 2001 for the “theft of a gas cylinder” and “disappeared” after a few days in Kosovo)
The non-profit association Liberal, from February 2001, must initiate petitions, letters of information and protest on this matter. A large demonstration will even be organized in Brussels in order to provoke the reaction of the international community. These marches supported in Belgium by the CNI (National Collective against Impunity), the ROC (Network of Civil Society Organizations), the ACAT (Action of Christians for the Abolition of Torture) and several other organizations of the Cameroonian and international civil society will contribute on April 7, 2001 to the dismantling of the Operational Command in Cameroon.
At the time, Dr Jules Bosco Kamdem, also secretary general of the LIBERAL non-profit association from 2000 to 2005, told us, “we were made up mainly of Cameroonians, then Togolese, Congolese and sat once a month at the headquarters of the “COMAC non-profit organization (Communist Action Committee).” “During our public demonstrations, several Cameroonians called us names like hell,” he recalls.
For Marcel Tchangue, one of the founding members, the non-profit association Liberal from its birth has focused on the training of its members. He remembers political training courses given by COMAC experts during the summer which attracted many members.
In summer 2002, it was the non-profit association Liberal which informed the world community of the exhibition of the Baka pygmies of Cameroon in Yvoir in Belgium.
On Friday August 16, 2002, the LIBERAL non-profit association, the Collective for the Defense of the Bakas of Yvoir, MUTI asbl, SANKOFA asbl, the CNCD (National Center for Development Cooperation) are organizing a press conference at 9 Quai du commerce, 1000 Brussels during which the press, the national and international community, will learn about the situation of the Baka pygmies exposed in an animal park in Yvoir. It is during this press conference that strong resolutions will be taken with regard to these pygmies, including the end of their exhibition. Which would not please Ms. Isabele Bassong, Cameroon’s ambassador to Belgium at the time.
The Baka pygmies taken from the Champalle / Yvoir estate by members of the non-profit organization Liberal and housed in private homes at the expense of the non-profit organization Liberal will finally leave Belgium on Saturday August 24, 2002.
On September 13, 2004 in Brussels, the Liberal non-profit organization welcomed a delegation from the Social Democratic Front, led by Sali Sardou Nana, the Cameroon Campaign Group (CCG) of Dr Fozam, the Center for African Studies of the University of London of Mukong Cletus, The Circle of Students of the VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) represented by Félix Agbor Balla and Lord Averbury (London), etc… It was a question of creating a synergy of action between the various organizations of the Cameroonian fighting diaspora for active and active participation for a new Cameroon.
History will also record that at the call of the Belgian-African League for the Restoration of Fundamental Freedoms in Africa (LIBERAL), the National Council of Resistance / Um Nyobiste Movement (CNR/MUN), the Cameroonian League of Human Rights and Cameroonian patriots, the Cameroonian diaspora will mobilize on December 9 and 10, 2003.
From this mobilization will be born the CODE (Collective of Democratic and Patriotic Organizations of Cameroonians in the Diaspora), this organization which will bring together several associations of the Cameroonian fighting diaspora, very active to this day. To be continued
