Six pastors and three deacons of the Cameroon National Baptist Convention, (CNBC) who were detained on Dec. 2, have written a memo to the Northwest Attorney General, complaining of poor conditions in detention, a Cameroon-based news agency reported Thursday.

According to the Cameroon Post news agency, the Dec. 13 letter--signed by CBNC President the Rev. Ilaja Jam and all the detainees--stated that they "tasted hell on earth for over a week" in dark cells in Bamenda, the provincial capitol of Cameroon's North West Province.

The church leaders, who were released recently, said for eight days they were locked up in three gendarmerie cells, where they excreted and urinated in containers.

"After being interrogated in the Legion Commander's office in Bamenda, we were driven to three detention camps in Bamenda where there was little or no light at all, and made to sleep on bare floors," the pastors stated in the letter. "The worst thing was that no one was supposed to see or talk to us, and even our wives were driven when they visited us."

The leaders said their lawyers, too, were barred from visiting them in jail.

"We saw real hell on earth during the eight days we were in the cells for no crime committed at all," said the pastors. According to the memo, the pastors said the humiliating treatment they received was worse than treatment given to murderers.

The memo also recalled that the CBNC pastors were detained on allegations by top officials from the Cameroon Baptist Conference (CBC) and those of the Belo Field District that the breakaway CBC group, which now calls itself the CBNC, disturbed planned celebrations of the CBC 50th Anniversary in Belo, Boyo Division.

According to the 2000 International Religious Freedom Report, in November 1997, 81 of 87 churches of the CBC in the Belo Field District, in Boyo Division of Northwest Province, reportedly withdrew from the CBC and formed a new denomination--the Cameroon National Baptist Convention (CNBC).





Kenneth Chan
Ecumenical Press