Cameroon: Artists Tackle Death Penalty in Posters
By Shout-Africa Cameroon Correspondent – 100 posters will be exhibited from Wednesday to Saturday at Maison des Jeunes in Bepanda, Douala.
The posters bear images that strongly convey messages that challenge death penalty sentence. Without any misconception as to the fact that the application of death penalty is not lawful in Cameroon, the posters suggest that mop justice, however, is the most probable of death penalties passed and applied by the public. The public – groups of people or communities – use allegations such as assault on people and property, banditry, witchcraft and sorcery mostly to justify application of death penalty. It is in line with this worry that Douala’s civil society organization, Un Monde Avenir, in collaboration with France-based organization, Humanispheria, brought together Cameroonian artists and human rights associations to think differently about human rights and consider a new way of leading actions towards it under the theme: “Visual arts, human rights and advocacy”.
The aim is to sensitise the public, governments, and authorities on the question of death penalty which still exists in the society through lynching. “We are trying to see if there is a way to show it on pictures and we want to have the public debate on this and also that the artists can help the associations to produce communication tools that speak on these issues.”
The best 100 posters out of 2094 entries as selected by The Posters for Tomorrow Jury were designed by graphic designers the world over, used to challenge the public to rethink together the meaning of death penalty, the way it is felt, demonstrated and shown with the goal of laying to rest that violation of man’s right to life. “Human rights leaders can help artists to build their argumentation to rethink and differently too because there is death penalty, mop justice and related human rights issues. Whether it is good or not we think artists can contribute greatly to the debate through their works,” said Flora Boffy, Project Coordinator for Humanispheria in Cameroon after a meeting of artists and human rights experts on Monday.
