Cameroon – Anglophone Crisis: Court Hears Mancho Bibixy’s 15-Year Jail Appeal November 21 As Coffin Revolution Clocks 3

Par Atia T. AZOHNWI | Cameroon-Info.Net
YAOUNDE - 20-Nov-2019 - 21h26   4639                      
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Angry Mancho standing in a coffin in Bamenda, while talking to crowd Facebook
Mancho Bibixy Tse is expected to appear before judges at the Mfoundi Appeal Court in Yaoundé Thursday, November 21, 2019 exactly three years after he led the “Coffin Revolution” in Bamenda.

He is currently serving a 15-year jail term at the Yaoundé Central Prison. He was arrested on January 19, 2017 in Bamenda and was tried at the Yaoundé Military Court on charges of terrorism, secession among others.

This Thursday, Mancho and his lawyers will be praying the court to annul the sentence and free him. His liberation, pundits say, will be in line with President Paul Biya’s May 7, 2019 call for mutual forgiveness as a path to lasting peace.

Biya had tweeted: “The essential thing today is to forgive and to forget, to work together towards a common goal. We cannot, at one and the same time, look towards the future and live in the past. Mutual forgiveness is the path to lasting peace.”

With the release of detainees as one of the key resolutions of last month’s Major National Dialogue, and with President Biya already implementing some of the resolutions, it is hoped that the likes of Mancho will walk free again.

Cameroon-info.net recalls that Mancho’s coffin revolution coincided with an Anglophone teacher’s strike called in support of grievances expressed by Common Law Lawyers at the time.

On that fateful November 21, 2016, Mancho Bibixy, the newscaster of a local radio station, stood in an open casket in a crowded roundabout in North West Region’s capital Bamenda.

Using a blow horn with a Bible in hand, Mancho denounced the slow rate of economic and structural development in the city, declaring he was ready to die while protesting against the social and economic marginalization of Anglophone persons in a constitutionally bilingual, bicultural and bi-jural Cameroon.

Most schools in Cameroon’s North West and South West Regions have been closed since 2016, when the corporatist demands turned violent leading to fighting between Cameroon's military and armed separatists who want to create an English-speaking state. Learners and teachers have been kidnapped, schools torched and others ruined.

Saddened by the unfortunate turn of events, Mancho issued a statement in August, pledging his life to see schools resume in the restive regions. He said the Coffin Revolution was never to jeopardise the education of young Cameroonians, neither was it intended to ruin both regions.

“I’ve concluded that even if I have to die in prison, the kids must go to school this year. Let them use me as any sacrifice to have schools resume fully come September 2019. It cannot be later than now!,” Mancho had said.

He said posterity will judge those who will make learners in Cameroon’s North West and South West Regions to miss school for the fourth year, especially when those who have the wherewithal have moved their children to seek educational sanctuary elsewhere.

Auteur:
Atia T. AZOHNWI
 @T_B_D
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