Allafrica.com,3 April - Some 29 or so people said to be members of a supposed Southern Cameroons Youth League, SCYL, Defence Force, are reported to have been arrested in the towns of Mutengene, Mile 16 and Muea in the Southwest Province by gendarmes and detained.

The Post gathered that the said members were picked following a tip-off that volunteers were being recruited into the so-called Southern Cameroons Defence Force code named "SOCADEF."

Those arrested are said to have been initially detained at the Mutengene Gendarmerie Brigade and were later transferred to the SONARA Gendarmerie Brigade on or about Monday, March 27.

When The Post approached Adjutant Chef Samuel Mengue of the SONARA Brigade, on Friday, March 31, he said he could not comment on the matter. However, one of his colleagues said the matter was still under investigation.

The National Organising Secretary of the Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC, James Sabum, told The Post on Sunday, April 2, that he had got wind of the arrests. But when asked what part the SCNC had in the recruitment exercise, he said they had denounced the move.

"The motto of the SCNC has not yet changed from the Force of Argument, so we can't start carrying arms now," he said.He said they were awaiting the final outcome of their case in the Banjul Court in The Gambia come May 9 - 22 this year when the Court next sits.

"It would be foolhardy for us to abandon the case and take to war," Sabum added.

He said further that an SCNC delegation would soon be visiting the UN where they are expected to address the UN General Assembly on their claims for an independent Southern Cameroons territory.

Sabum is one of the six who were arrested along side Justice Frederick Alobwede Ebong in January 2000 and detained in Yaounde for some 14 months.They had on December 30, 1999, seized control of Radio Buea and announced the independence of Southern Cameroons.

The Post gathered from other sources in Mutengene that the recruitment exercise had been going on for close to a month now. They said the coordinator of the exercise was picked up in one cyber café while he was keying in the names of the recruits on a computer.

His arrest culminated in the arrest of the others who had already indicated their intentions by inscribing their names on forms that been circulated round.The said form is said to have requested for information like shoe size, full names and place of residence among others.

In a related development, gendarmes recently arrested and brutalised eight students of Government Bilingual High School, Mamfe.The students were reportedly detained in Mamfe for protesting against La République du Cameroun during the German Ambassador to Cameroon's visit to the area.

According to a press release dated Wednesday, March 29, signed by the Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC, Chief Ayamba Ette Otun, the students demonstrated with placards "crying out against the atrocities they suffer consequent on the annexation of Southern Cameroons by La République du Cameroun."

The German Ambassador was in Mamfe to inaugurate a rehabilitated government hospital. The students who are under detention at the Gendarmerie Brigade Mamfe are; Mbame Egbe, William Enow Tabot, Ayuk H. Ayuk, Kenneth Bissong, Okapi Eyogn, Divine Array Taku, John Eying Tambe, and Etta Obi.

Ayamba claims that the students were only expressing their right of peaceful protest as defended by law. He wondered why gendarmes would brutalise unarmed protesting students.

"That unarmed protesting students, except for their placards, are arrested, brutalised and detained in squalid cells in the presence of a foreign diplomat only paints how insensitive and tyrannical the Biya regime is," Ayamba complained.

"The students violated no municipal or international law to be incarcerated. So, they should be released to continue their studies," he added.