a taboo subject. The government proceeded to ban any media discussion on federalism. It criminalized any advocacy of a federal system of government. It criminalized any support for the ongoing teachers and lawyers' strike. Its argument for taking these unwarranted, extreme and draconian measures is the fiction that federalism is the same thing as "dividing the one and indivisible Cameroun". 34. The Complainants submit that after a couple of meetings the parties could not agree and negotiations stalled. When negotiations failed, the lawyers, who had formed a Civil Society Consortium decided to call for civil disobedience, which included intensifying the school boycott, court boycotts and other services, including private taxi services. The form of nonviolent civil protest that has been instituted is denoted ~s "operation ghost towns": every week there is suspension of daily life in the following manner - on Monday and Tuesday everyone stays at home with no shops and markets opened, effectively making the streets quiet; Wednesday to Saturday normal resumption of daily life; and Sunday, day of prayers. Meanwhile school and court boycott continu indefinitely. -.:r ,>\ r-. ~-i,:: r. ' I » " 35. The Complainants submit that in response.to the call for Civil disobedience and operation ghost town, the government resorted to further acts in terrorem, heavy handedness and intensified military crackdown occasioning a number. of deaths, injuries and abductions by the military and police. Anyone in the Southern Ca,neroon suspected of being a member of the teachers' or lawyers associations or of the consortium is, like many protesters before them, liable to abduction, taken to Yaounde in former French Cameroun and imprisoned under life-threatening conditions while. the authorities fish for charges. Almost all the leaders of the Co~sortium were picked up in the Southern Cameroon and whisked to Yaounde, the capital of former French Cameroun. 36. The Complainants submit further that some of the arrested leaders and activist arrested have been charg!?d with capital offences, such as terrorism, treason, secession, and subversion. They;'~re being tried fu· military tribunal in French and under the French system. As government crackdown intensifies, other leaders of the Consortium and many English speakers fighting for self-determination of the Southern Cameroons have managed to esc~pe and sought refuge i.1),Jriendly countries. Common law bar associations have unbelievably be"ert banned as terrorist organisations, along with a number of other associations. Pleas by even the Catholic Church, the Presbyterian Church and the Baptist Church have all been dismissed with contempt by the Yaounde regime. The Complaint 37. The Complainants allege that since December 2016, there has been massive, indiscriminate and arbitrary arrests, disappearances of suspects in Southern Cameroon, all of them picked up during the night without any due process of an arrest warrant and taken to Yaounde where they are locked up and. tortured. The indiscriminate arrest includes~ .. ~*A+~ ~~U~N Curt. ~ State Prosecutors, teachers, lawyers, and other senior elites of SouI' ~~cm'mElrC500 ... ~ < extraction. To date, it is estimated that over 200 people have been a~a:ud:~ff'o~ the-. Southern Cameroon by government security forces, some have been ,f~un lio~~d uI\in, " life-threatening jails in Yaounde, some have not been traced and ther~ G\.J; ru&'Q'hl'sthlaf ~ they have been killed and buried in mass graves around Yaounde. j~< ~~ AU-UA I.s_'.r. ~. 0/.0 -..: c . ~"'o ,,,> "l 1\1 ,.q;:RICAII'\\:. '~""~~ ~-""-,.. 0'" C ~\.\ R' •