Cameroon: MSF launches a new appeal for the release of its collaborators
A nurse and a paramedic from the NGO were arrested four months ago while helping a man with a gunshot wound.
REUTERS/Regis Duvignau
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
The NGO Doctors Without Borders is once again asking the Cameroonian authorities for the release of its four employees detained in the South West region.
It has been four months since a nurse and a paramedic were arrested while rescuing a man with a gunshot wound.
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The imprisoned pregnant nurse and paramedic are implicated by the Cameroonian authorities for "
complicity in secessionism
" because the man they were transporting was a member of an armed separatist group.
But Doctors Without Borders (MSF) ensures that the two aid workers were unaware of this and recalls that in any case, a medical aid NGO treats all the wounded and does not have to choose a side.
Sylvain Groulx, head of operations for MSF, insists on this point: above all, doctors treat patients.
“
Our colleagues are still being detained while just doing their job.
Even if they had known his identity, he is still a patient
, he recalls.
The state has the responsibility to identify, try and condemn criminals or so-called terrorists.
It is not our responsibility.
Our responsibility is to take care of the patients.
Our responsibility ends there.
We do not have to replace the State, its security services, to determine who is who as a patient.
»
A judicial component that is not advancing
Regarding the legal aspect, the head of the NGO explains that the file is not progressing: “
Our file is still at the
status quo, regrets Sylvain Groulx.
We have still not succeeded in having an interlocutor at the level of the authorities in Yaoundé.
We also always ask for commitment and give us guarantees to be able to continue our work.
Unfortunately, we still don't have that commitment
."
Without guarantees for the safety of its staff in the field,
MSF suspended its activities in the Southwest at the
end of March.
In the North West region, its activities have been suspended since December 2020, this time at the request of the Cameroonian authorities.
The security crisis in the two English-speaking majority regions of Cameroon has lasted for more than five years.
MSF provided free care to the population well beyond war wounds.
In 2021, for the South-West, 165,000 consultations were carried out, including more than 42,000 for children under five.
►Also listen: Guest Africa - Sylvain Groulx (MSF/Cameroon): “We hope for the release of 4 detained colleagues”
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Cameroon
Health and medicine