Munmun Kaur
Published On: December 28, 2021 at 09:59 IST
Amnesty International on Monday informed that three Cameroonian students who were sentenced to 10 years in prison for making a joke about Jihadist group Boko Haram, have been released.
Three students Fomusoh Ivo Feh, Afuh Nivelle Nfor and Azah Levis Gob were convicted by a military tribunal for “non-denunciation of terrorist related information” in November 2016. This was with reference to a sarcastic text message that they shared about Boko Haram on their phones.
Apparently, in 2014, one of the students received a text from a friend which read Boko Haram recruited young people if they had passed at least four exam subjects. He forwarded it but was seen by the teacher who confiscated the phone showed it to the Police.
The students had been in detention since January 2015 and were released this weekend only after the Central African country’s Supreme Court reduced their sentence to five years.
Amnesty in a statement said, “These three students who were only exercising their right to freedom of expression should never have been arrested in the first place”. Amnesty further said that Cameroon’s authorities should protect human rights and ensure that all people can speak freely without fear of reprisal.
The group was of the view that the students were punished against all logic simply for sharing a joke.
As per the sources, more than 310,000 people joined Amnesty’s campaign to free the students by writing to Biya.