"Jungle justice" on the rise in Cameroon

By Tansa MusaFri Jul 21, 2:29 PM ET

It is 40 a.m. in Douala, Cameroon's business capital, and a severely beaten man with his hands lashed behind his back lies on the road in Bepanda district surrounded by an irate mob.

Blood oozes from his nostrils and ears as his tormentors place two tires around his body.

"Bring me petrol!" a man barks from the crowd. A boy runs to a nearby filling station and returns with a quart of fuel.

Just as the man lifts his hand to light the matches, a police van screeches to a halt and the savage ritual stops. The officers rush the victim to hospital, but it is too late: the 23-year-old man is dead.

This is just one example of a wave of mob rule, known locally as jungle justice, that is sweeping Cameroon where people complain that the police are corrupt and inefficient.

Residents of Bepanda say the dead man was one of four armed robbers who terrorized them. That night, the gang had broken into two homes, seizing mobile phones, money and jewelry, and raped a woman after tying her husband with ropes.

"Our intention was to set fire to that bastard so as to serve as a lesson to others," said one middle-aged resident. "These are people who don't want to work, and only wait for others to work and they come and deprive them of the fruits of their hard labor. We have had enough of them."

EVERYDAY EVENT

Hardly a day goes by without scenes like this being reported on the radio or in newspapers in the Central African country.

Such mob justice is not unique to Cameroon. In many African countries where law and order has broken down because of war and rampant corruption, mob lynchings or beatings are common.

In Kenya this month, a mob beat to death six young men accused of robbing a house before setting their bodies on fire.

In January, angry villagers in Cameroon's North-West province beat their chief to death and burned his corpse after they accused him of selling farmland to wealthy cattle breeders.

In May, villagers in the small locality of Batibo, also in the North-West, stormed a gendarmerie station, pulled out two suspected armed robbers from a cell and lynched them in front of the police. There are countless other examples.

The 2006 State Department human rights report on Cameroon blames the sharp increase in mob justice on the absence of an effective criminal prosecution system.

In the town of Kumba, 80 miles north of Douala, Manfred stands over the charred corpses of two young men whom he says were lynched for stealing. The mob placed tires around their bodies and set them alight.

"It is too much. We no more have any quiet sleep in this neighborhood because of bandits. You can no more walk on the street as soon as darkness steps in ... They will beat and even kill you," Manfred, who declined to give his full name, said.

Asked why residents did not hand the alleged criminals over to the police, he laughed.

"Take them to the police? You are not serious, my man! As soon as you turn your back, the police will take money and free them, and before you know it they are drinking with you in the bar and threatening to deal with you."

Cameroon's police and judiciary are among the most corrupt institutions in the world, according to Berlin-based corruption watch Transparency International.

The experience of Marie-Noelle seems to prove the point. She raised the alarm in her neighborhood of Yaounde when her purse was snatched. The suspected thief was quickly caught and a crowd gathered, demanding that he be handed over for lynching.

She refused and took him to the police. But when she came back the next morning, the boy was gone. The police said they had received instructions "from above" to free him.

"I will never go to the police again, they are all thieves," she vowed.

CABINET MEETING

Prime Minister Ephraim Inoni called a cabinet meeting in May to demand steps to restore confidence in the judicial system.

He called on the justice minister and the human rights commission to educate people on fundamental rights, especially on the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial.

But the police themselves are guilty of excesses. In Kumba, a policeman set fire to a young man suspected of stealing a bicycle. It turned out to be a case of mistaken identity and the policeman is now serving a five-year jail term.

A new criminal code integrating the principle of 'habeas corpus' -- a writ ordering the prisoner to be brought before a court -- was due to come into effect on August 1.

But the national assembly postponed its adoption until next January, saying the judicial police and magistrates needed more time to be schooled on the code.

"In the last three months, 18 people have lost their lives to mob justice in this town," said Gabriel Ngounou, chief administrator in the northwest town of Bamenda.

"Maybe some of them were killed for nothing; maybe some of them were really bandits and we will never know their accomplices, now they are gone."