Lambo Sandjo Pierre
Roger (7 April 1957 – 16
March 2014), better known as Lapiro
de Mbanga, was a Cameroonian singer who is noted for his 1985 recording
of "Pas argent no love" and for being imprisoned in 2008 after
criticising Cameroon president Paul Biya in
the song "Constitution constipée" ("Constipated
Constitution").
Music career
For several years, Lapiro's music career took him
to West African countries like Nigeria and Benin where he
recorded his first single that made no headway. He returned to Cameroon and
then quickly moved to Gabon where he did his first popular song "Pas
d'argent, no love" with Haissam Records. He returned in 1985 to Cameroon,
where he proceeded to compose and record what Index on Censorship has described
as "a long list of biting texts on the socio-economic realities in his
beleaguered country." His first song in this regard was "No Make
Erreur".
Nicknamed "the guitar man," Mbanga
became "the idol of the downtrodden and forgotten workers who people the
slums and bus stations of Cameroon" and "the spokesman for the youth
of his country." His hits of that period included "No Make
Erreur," “Surface de Reparation" “Kop Nie," “Mimba We," and
"Na You." He was regularly censored by the Cameroonian government.
Imprisonment
In 2008, Mbanga criticised Cameroon president Paul
Biya in the song "Constitution constipée" ("Constipated
Constitution"). The song denounced the proposed amendment of Cameroon's constitutional clause,
which limited presidents to two seven-year terms. The Cameroonian government
banned "Constitution constipée" from the airways, however thousands
of Cameroonians students used the song as an anthem as they rallied and rioted
in the streets in February 2008 in protest against the proposed constitutional
change, which would allow Biya to run for a new term in 2011.
Mbanga was arrested on 9 April 2008, and charged
with "complicity in looting, destruction of property, arson, obstructing
streets, degrading public or classified property, and forming illegal
gatherings." Two days later, the Cameroonian parliament adopted the new
constitution that Mbanga had attacked in "Constitution constipée.”
On 24 September 2008, Mbanga was sentenced by the
Tribunal de Grande Instance (TGI) to three years in the New Bell prison near
Douala. In December 2009 he contracted typhoid fever and
nearly died of that disorder and respiratory complications. When authorities
refused to send him to a hospital, his wife brought medications that helped
save his life. In an interview, Mbanga said that he and his fellow prisoners
had "penal rations twice a day. At 1pm we are given boiled corn and at 5pm
there's rice in some warm water. It's the same every day. It's way below
minimum requirements.”
Freemuse, a Danish-based
NGO, mounted an international campaign for Mbanga's release. In a 2010
interview from prison, he said that "If my wife didn't travel four hours
here and four hours back every day to give me food and if Freemuse hadn't
publicised my case worldwide, I'd have been dead long ago." In addition to
Freemuse's campaign, the US-based lawyers' organisation Freedom Now monitored
Mbanga's case throughout his incarceration. In April 2010, the Writers in
Prison Committee of International PEN also launched a campaign to help win
Mbanga's freedom. In 2011, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary
Detention declared that Mbanga's arrest was an infringement of the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
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