Detained SCNC activist laments poor treatment

“I am suffering from various illnesses. Besides that, I am developing sight problems. I have not been taken to court for over one year four months, in my two year six months in detention.”

This is the lament of Maxell Oben, arrested and detained since February 2014, in the build-up to President Biya’s visit to Buea in the Southwest Region, for the celebration of the 50 years of Reunification.

Maxwell Oben was first picked up between Mutengene and Buea and whisked to Yaounde on the charges of “inciting insurrection and civil war.”

At the time of his arrest, he had on him one of the forms on which they were collecting 50,000 signatures from those demanding the independence and sovereignty of the former British Southern Cameroons [to forward to the United Nations], and a book written by Che Guevara on self-determination.

After detention in Yaounde for one month, he was ferried to Buea and brought before the Military Tribunal in Buea.

His lawyers argued that he could not be tried in a Military Tribunal because he did not commit any crime using firearms; he was not caught with firearms or any other tool used by the military. He was later charged for holding a meeting in a public place without authorisation.

Oben and his lawyer, Nke Emmanuel, have argued that the prosecution should name the public place where he is alleged to have held a meeting, the people who attended the meeting, the hour and the day, but prosecution has been unable to. Besides, the court has requested for proceedings from the Military Tribunal where Oben first appeared, to no avail.

When The Post visited him in the Lower Farms Prison in Buea on July 12, Oben opined that he is being punished because of his political ideas, not for any other crime.

“I believe that I am being punished because of my political opinion, because, the two and the half years I have been in detention in the awaiting trial section of the prison, is more than five times the term servedbypersons who are sentenced for holding a meeting in a public place without authorisation,” he asserted.

Oben was supposed to appear in court on July 12, 2016, but the production warrant from the court did not come, neither did his lawyer. He said people who used to visit him in prison no longer do.

“I suspect they have been intimidated, even my lawyer, to stay away from me.”He, however, said he has written to the Attorney General of the Southwest on his plight.

Oben asserted that, in spite of the suffering he is going through, he will never give up the struggle for the self determination of the Southern Cameroons.

“Southern Cameroonians out there should not give up. It is a just cause.

It is a true cause, and God knows it,” he stated, while calling on human rights organisations to, not only come to his succour, but to support the Southern Cameroons cause because, “it is a human rights cause.”