Tournons La Page Cameroun
Jean-Marc BIKOKO
Arrested on Tue 15 Sep 2015 Released on Wed 23 Sep 2015
On 14 and 15 September 2015, members of the Réseau Dynamique Citoyenne organised a workshop to launch the ‘Turning the Page in Cameroon’ Campaign on the theme of ‘Electoral governance and democratic changeover’ at the Palais des Sports in Yaoundé. On the instructions of the sub-prefect of Yaoundé 2ème, the workshop was illegally interrupted and participants violently dispersed (participants' T-shirts were torn off, the equipment of journalists present at the event and the telephones of some participants confiscated). The meeting was deemed illegal because it had not been declared to the authorities," he says. Six people were arrested and taken to the Délégation de la Sécurité Territoriale by members of the security forces. They were questioned by police officers from 10am to 5pm, then put in a cell at Yaoundé Central Police Station No. 1 before being transferred to the Groupement Mobile d'Intervention (GMI) where they were held for 9 days. They are : Jean-Marc BIKOKO (National Coordinator of TLP-Cameroon; Agnès Adélaïde METOUGOU, Séverin Le juste BIKOKO, Bénédicte Jessie BIKOKO, Yves Léonardo EPANGUE NDJALLA, François FOGNO FOTSO).
Since their release on 23 September 2015, they have continued to be prosecuted for ‘illegal demonstration, assembly and simple rebellion’. The trial has been postponed several times, mainly because the sub-prefect (the public prosecutor) did not appear, and the hearing was set for June 2017, but was postponed because the judge in charge of the case was reassigned.
At the hearing on 23 August 2017, the new court team decided to reopen the debate. On 10 January 2018, at the 17th hearing, the trial was once again postponed until 28 February 2018 for the resumption of the debates. Unfortunately and to everyone's great surprise, the case was not included on the day's docket. The said trial was each time postponed for non-disposal of the Administration File of the Administration's representative. There have been more than thirty hearings to date. The next hearing is scheduled for August 2022.