Following the publication of a Mongabay article, police and authorities have harassed and summoned civil society activists in Cameroon for questioning five times. The Mongabay investigation, which reported and verified the working conditions at plantations operated by the leading Cameroonian sugar producer, the Cameroon Sugar Corporation (SOSUCAM), includes denunciations by the activists against the company. According to a police commissioner, the authorities’ interrogations are in response to a complaint filed by SOSUCAM and suspicions regarding the civil society organization’s motivations. Mongabay contacted SOSUCAM to learn more about the company’s involvement in the repeated summonses, but the company did not respond to our requests for comment. According to Adonis Febe, one of the activists from the Cameroonian organization #OnEstEnsemble, the interrogations have practically become routine. On April 22, 2024, he went to a special police precinct in Nkoteng, a Cameroonian town located 115 kilometers (71 miles) north of Yaoundé, the nation’s capital, to be questioned after receiving a summons signed by Police Commissioner Divine Forsi. This was his fifth trip to the precinct since Mongabay’s investigation was published last January, he said. Both he and other activists from the organization have responded to other, similar summonses to appear before the General Delegation for National Security (DGSN) at Cameroonian police headquarters in Yaoundé as well as the Nkoteng Sub-Prefecture, an administrative department attached to the Ministry of Territorial Administration. Some of these summonses have not included formal notice. View of a sugarcane plantation operated by SOSUCAM in Nkoteng. Image by Mongabay. According…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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