Cameroon: Military tribunal acquits five Doctors Without Borders workers

By David Atangana

A military court in Cameroon’s South West regional capital, Buea has acquitted five staff members of Doctors Without Borders, (MSF), charged and detained for ‘complicity with secession.’

Doctors Without Borders, an international NGO, known by it’s French acronym MSF issued a statement January 10, 2023 celebrating the court’s decision.

Five members of the organization involved in humanitarian activities in the restive South West region were arrested by defense and security forces almost one year ago — on allegations of collaborating with separatists.

According to reports, the aid group engaged government in legal and diplomatic battles to have its members released.

While others had regained freedom earlier, two MDF staff still being held — until they were discharged an acquitted recently.

One of them charged in absentia was also acquitted.

“The international medical humanitarian organisation
Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is extremely relieved at the acquittal of five of our staff, who faced trial in Cameroon, accused of complicity with secession,” MSF said in a statement.

Recalling events leading to the legal battles and their subsequent release, MSF said its members had to endure many months in detention.

“On the 26th of December 2021, an MSF nurse and ambulance driver were arrested in Nguti (South-West region of Cameroon), while transporting a patient with a gunshot wound to a
hospital in Kumba. After being detained in prison for five months, for the charge of complicity with secessionists, both aid workers were provisionally released in May 2022,” MSF said.

“Two other colleagues, a community health worker and assistant field coordinator, were detained in January 2022 under the same charge while another was accused in absentia,” the organization said, adding that: “on the 1st of November 2022, the Buea Military Tribunal ruled ‘no case to answer’ regarding one of the aid workers in question, citing a lack of evidence. The MSF staff member was released soon after the ruling, having spent 10 months in prison.”

One of the remaining MSF members was acquitted on December 29, 2022 bringing the number to five.

“We are enormously satisfied with the judgement that exonerates our five staff members – and, by extension, MSF as an organisation – of any wrongdoing,” says Sylvain Groulx, MSF
coordinator in central Africa.

Condemning the near one-year detention of her staff the organization, “has categorically denied
any complicity with armed groups or parties to any violent crisis or conflict. Our staff are guided by medical ethics – these accusations were groundless from the first instance, especially as the authorities knew exactly how we were providing medical support.”

Expressing their readiness to continue their life saving activities, the organization said the environment must be safe and enabling.

It should be recalled that MSF was suspended from carrying out humanitarian activities in the North West Region while the arrest and detention of her workers in the South West region forced them to shutdown activities in the region.

MSF has operated in Cameroon since 1984 and in the South-West Region since 2018 following the escalation of the Anglophone crisis.

Mimi Mefo Info