Enoh Meyomesse veroordeeld

8 January 2013 RAN 04/12 – update #6

Van de PEN International website.

The Writers in Prison Committee of PEN International protests in the strongest possible terms the seven-year prison sentence handed down to writer and activist Enoh Meyomesse on 27 December 2012, more than a year after his arrest. PEN believes Meyomesse’s conviction on charges of supposed complicity in the theft and illegal sale of gold to be politically motivated and calls on the Cameroonian authorities to quash the conviction and to release him immediately and unconditionally. Today it is announced that Meyomesse is to be honoured with an Oxfam Novib / PEN Freedom of Expression Award.

On 27 December 2012 the writer, historian and political activist Enoh Meyomesse was sentenced to seven years in prison and a fine of 200,000 CFA (£247), as requested by the state prosecutor. The sentencing follows Meyomesse’s conviction on 14 December of supposed complicity in the theft and illegal sale of gold. The writer had already spent 13 months in prison before being sentenced. PEN believes his detention and the charges to be politically motivated.

The three other defendants in the case were sentenced to custodial terms of between two and nine years. Meyomesse’s lawyers are currently in the process of launching an appeal.

Today Meyomesse is named as a recipient of an Oxfam Novib / PEN Freedom of Expression Award, which will be presented in his absence at a ceremony during The Writers Unlimited Winternachten Festival in The Hague on 17 January 2013.
Here is an excerpt from his acceptance speech:

‘Rulers use the most ideal and least threatening alibi for them, the accusation of having committed a common crime, to silence us, dissidents, a situation similar to what happened during the Cold War in Eastern European dictatorships, in the Greece of colonels, in Portugal under the dictatorship of Salazar, in Spain under Franco.

‘Luckily, you, people from the North, souls of good will from Western countries where democracy is truly established, stand resolutely on our side. In doing so you prove that people’s freedom and solidarity does not know boundaries.

‘In presenting this award to the wretched writer that I am, captive in the depths of a Cameroonian jail, you have joined your powerful voice to mine and to that of the many anonymous men and women who are incarcerated in my country because their opinion has not pleased some high-ranking officials in the state apparatus who therefore used judges to unleash their vengeance against them.’

(Translation by Patrice Nganang)

Lees de rest van het artikel hier.