Governors to relaunch crackdown on churches

Regional governors who concluded a three-day meeting in Yaounde last week are alleged to have received strict instructions to resume a crackdown on clandestine churches operating in the country.

The imminent crackdown on the churches comes after same exercise in 2013. This time, we gathered, it will target mostly prayer houses that have been operating without government authorisation as well as others considered as a threat to social peace. Noise-making churches and those accused of deviant practices will also be targeted, The Cameroon Journal learned.

Presiding at the closing ceremony of the semester conference of regional governors Friday July 22, the director of political affairs at the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralisation informed the regional chief executives that government was poised to carry on the crackdown on churches without any mercy.

He said the proliferation of churches in the country was worrying and that government was concerned about bad practices carried out in some of the houses of worship. The MINATD official, in assigning the governors, noted that the impending move by government is to ensure that religious associations operate within the margins of the regulations guiding the sector.

In August 2013, government embarked on a merciless onslaught on illegal churches in the country. Following a government order, the doors of some 34 churches were sealed in the capital Yaoundé, the economic hub, Douala, and in the North West regional capital, Bamenda.

In protest against government action, some Pentecostal pastors staged a protest march in Bamenda and Douala against the decision. During the protest, the church leaders indicted the administrators for clamping down on churches, saying they were being chosen for persecution because of their advocacy against the then 31-year-old Biya’s regime.

Jean Paul Tsanga, the then Divisional Officer for Yaounde III sub-division who had ordered for closure of churches in the sub-division, however, rejected allegations that they were cracking down on christian denominations that have been critical of President Paul Biya. The civil administrator in closing down the churches had stated that the churches affected by the decision were mostly those that refused to respect the laws of the country. He argued that they created many problems and caused disorder, adding that some even separated families.

In a similar defence of the government move, Minister of Communication, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, told a press conference in Yaounde in 2013 that the authorization process to acquire licences to operate was long and tortuous because government needed time to check the morality of contending religious leaders and the possibility of them and their religious bodies being threats to the public.

During the press conference, Tchiroma also asserted the government campaign which targeted some 500 religious bodies considered by some observers as “controversial”, had the full backing of the wider public which had for long called for the “deep cleansing” of questionable churches.

In Cameroon, religious bodies need an authorization accorded by presidential decree in order to operate a church. Since 1990 when the freedom laws were passed, only 47 houses of worship, according to sources, have been given the presidential authorization. However, over 500 churches have been operating in the country under what government authorities refer to as “administrative tolerance.”