Attempts at dialogue in 1999 failed, largely because the government continued to reject the SDF s demands for an amendment to the constitution which would provide for an independent electoral commission to oversee future elections. The SDF and three other opposition parties boycotted the 1997 presidential election because there was no such commission. Cameroon has an appalling human rights record. Journalists and members of the political opposition face persistent harassment and arrest. Scores of people were extrajudicially executed by security forces in 1999.
Security forces operate with impunity and prison conditions are life threatening.
Cameroon s population comprises nearly 200 ethnic groups. The country was seized during World War I, in 1916, and divided between Britain and France after having been a German colony from 1884. Distinct Anglophone and Francophone areas were reunited as an independent country in 1961. Approximately one-fourth of Cameroonians are Anglophone, and this linguistic distinction constitutes the country s most potent political division. For more than three decades after independence, Cameroon was ruled under a repressive one-party system.