NEWS
Cameroon: election crackdown lands in a Paris court, as the Anglophone crisis turns ten
July 2026
The facts
On 12 October 2025 Cameroon held a contested presidential election: Paul Biya, 93 and in power since 1982, was declared the winner. The crackdown on post-election protests killed at least 23 people, according to the civil society collective “Stand up for Cameroon” (Africanews, allAfrica, accessed July 2026). On 12 June 2026 Issa Tchiroma Bakary — a former minister and opposition candidate now exiled in Gambia — filed two criminal complaints with the Paris Judicial Tribunal invoking universal jurisdiction (case no. 26163000304). The targets: Paul Biya and around twenty senior officials, including Secretary General of the Presidency Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh and Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji. A separate list names seventeen uniformed men accused of firing on demonstrators. The second complaint concerns specifically the death in detention of opposition figure Anicet Ekané; Tchiroma also cites the death in prison of Souleyman Tobi. Several thousand Cameroonians reportedly remain detained in conditions Tchiroma calls illegal (Cameroon News Agency, allAfrica/RFI, accessed July 2026).
The government has rejected the move. Minister Grégoire Owona called it a bid for attention; Justice Minister Delegate Jean de Dieu Momo raised a sovereignty argument, questioning the legitimacy of a foreign court judging the highest authorities of an African state (statements reported by RFI/allAfrica, Guardian Post Cameroon, accessed July 2026).
In the background, an armed conflict between the government and Ambazonian separatist groups has been under way since 2016 in the Anglophone North-West and South-West regions: over 6,500 dead, around 900,000 internally displaced (International Crisis Group, accessed July 2026). The BTI 2026 report documents indiscriminate violence by government forces, including the destruction of entire villages and cases of rape and torture; separatist groups are in turn accused of ransom kidnappings, extortion and attacks on civilians deemed collaborators (BTI 2026 Cameroon Country Report, accessed July 2026). The UN Security Council has devoted a single meeting to Cameroon since 2019 (Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, accessed July 2026).
Legal commentary
The post-election crackdown raises questions under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UN Convention against Torture — instruments not yet mapped on this site. Among those already mapped here, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (art. 19, freedom of expression; art. 5, prohibition of torture) still offers a grounding in principle. Tchiroma's complaint rests on the principle of universal jurisdiction, recognised under customary international law and incorporated into French law, which allows serious crimes to be prosecuted without a territorial link to the forum state. The Anglophone conflict instead falls under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, applicable to both parties in a non-international armed conflict.
Implications — the symmetry test
On the Anglophone conflict the symmetry test holds fully: indiscriminate violence and village destruction by the state, kidnappings and extortion by separatists — neither side comes out clean. On the electoral crackdown there is no armed “counterparty” to judge by the same standard, but the legal tool invoked — universal jurisdiction — is by construction neutral as to who is subject to it: it would apply the same way to any government, not only Cameroon's.
Sources: Africanews · allAfrica/RFI · Cameroon News Agency · International Crisis Group · BTI 2026 Cameroon Country Report · Global Centre for R2P