Patrice Nganang, 47, remains accused of criticizing and threatening President Paul Biya. Legal authorities in Cameroon have dropped a serious charge against the Stony Brook University professor detained last week because his writings allegedly criticized — and possibly threatened — the nation’s president, an SBU colleague and supporters said.
On the same day that a hearing scheduled for Patrice Nganang was postponed at least 48 hours, prosecutors in Cameroon dropped the charge that Nganang insulted Cameroon President Paul Biya said Nganang’s supporters, including Robert Harvey, a colleague at SBU.But they said in a widely circulated news release that Nganang remains charged with issuing a death threat against Biya.
In another development, officials from the U.S. Embassy in Cameroon had visited him for the first time and reported that he was in good spirits, Nganang’s supporters said.
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| Breaking News - Insult Charge Against Detained SBU Prof Dropped In Cameroon |
Nganang, 47, an outspoken cultural studies and comparative literature professor, was arrested while boarding a plane Wednesday in Cameroon.
Harvey said he was in touch with Nganang’s wife, Nyasha Bakare, who was waiting for her husband in Harare, Zimbabwe, last week when Nganang was arrested.
Nganang was taken to the General Delegation National Security detention center in the capital city, Yaoundé, a day after he published an essay on Dec. 5 on the Jeune Afrique weekly news website. The essay suggested the crisis in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions might only be solved by a change in leadership. The government also alleges Nganang threatened Biya, the professor’s attorney said in a Facebook post.
Bakare said the proceeding had been postponed, but it was unclear what that meant for Nganang’s case, Harvey said. The insult charge was dropped after the postponement.
At a Saturday hearing with the judiciary police, Nganang was informed of the charges, according to a news release issued by his family and friends.
His attorney, Emmanuel Simh, had argued that Nganang, who neither owns firearms nor works with armed groups, did not pose a threat to Biya, adding that Nganang has a “long history of peaceful activism promoting democracy,” according to a news release.
Bakare told friends Monday that the dropped charge “was a big relief,” and supporters urged more people to weigh in to secure Nganang’s release.
By Monday, an open letter generated at Princeton University, written to “condemn in the strongest possible terms the illegal detention of our colleague and friend, the esteemed Cameroonian-American scholar and writer Professor Patrice Nganang,” had garnered more than 450 signatures from academics and activists worldwide. It also contained signatures of more than 100 SBU professors, including Harvey, and students.
A change.org petition, written in French, also has nearly 5,000 signatures.
A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he had not heard back from UN officials in the department of political affairs about Nganang’s case, so UN officials had no new information about the case Monday.
But Guterres, in October, condemned an outbreak of violence in the English-speaking minority areas of Cameroon and urged all sides to show restraint.
The unrest in Cameroon has caused waves of deadly violence over the past year, and tens of thousands of refugees have streamed into neighboring Nigeria amid the government’s crackdowns on strikes and demonstrations.
With Christine Chung | www.newsday.com
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