The Scales of Justice: When the Law Fears Dissent More Than Death

A legal system that visibly punishes the unlawful taking of life more severely than dissent strengthens itself. A system that appears to do the opposite risks sending the wrong signal — that the state’s stability outweighs the sanctity of its citizens.

By Timothy Enongene
Guest Editor-in-Chief, IndependentistNews

YAOUNDÉ February 26, 2026 – Every nation reveals its true priorities in its sentencing. Not in its constitutions. Not in its press briefings. Not in its declarations of unity. But in the quiet arithmetic of prison years.

In conflict-affected regions, two kinds of cases have come to define the national conversation: cases involving civilian deaths during military operations, and cases involving political or security-related offenses linked to protest or separatist activity. The question is not whether courts have acted. The question is what their actions communicate.

The International Benchmark

Across international criminal tribunals — from Rwanda to the Balkans — the intentional killing of civilians during armed conflict has consistently drawn the heaviest penalties available under law. Sentences commonly range from decades of imprisonment to life.

The reason is not political. It is moral and legal. The deliberate taking of civilian life stands among the gravest crimes recognized in modern jurisprudence. Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, such acts may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity, attracting penalties of up to thirty years or life imprisonment.

The hierarchy is clear: At the top sits the unlawful killing of civilians. Below it fall lesser violent crimes. Below those, non-lethal political offenses. That hierarchy is not accidental. It reflects centuries of legal development designed to protect human life above political order.

The Domestic Contrast

Within Cameroon, courts have handled cases tied to civilian deaths as well as cases involving political offenses such as “hostility to the fatherland,” insurrection, or security-related charges.

The government maintains that it prosecutes all offenses according to national law and security necessity. That assertion deserves acknowledgment. But citizens do not analyze legal codes in isolation. They compare outcomes.

And where sentences imposed in civilian death cases appear lower than those imposed in political cases involving dissent, the comparison raises an unavoidable question: does the punishment fit the harm? If the unlawful loss of life draws a shorter sentence than political opposition, even where the facts differ, the optics are powerful. Because justice is not only technical. It is symbolic.

The Principle of Proportionality

Proportionality is a cornerstone of criminal law worldwide. It requires that punishment correspond to the gravity of the offense. The greater the harm, the greater the penalty.

International human rights instruments — including the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights — reinforce equality before the law and fair trial guarantees.

When sentencing patterns appear inverted — when political dissent is punished more harshly than lethal misconduct — the public may begin to question whether the scale of justice is balanced.

Even if each case is legally defensible on its own merits, the broader pattern shapes perception. And perception shapes legitimacy.

The Danger of Inversion

No state can afford the belief that its laws protect authority more fiercely than they protect life. Where communities perceive that a uniform shields wrongdoing while a slogan invites decades behind bars, trust fractures. Courts may operate within statutes. Judges may follow procedure. Yet legitimacy depends on moral coherence. The rule of law does not collapse in a single ruling. It erodes through accumulated disparities.

In societies already strained by conflict, that erosion carries consequences. It feeds grievance. It hardens identity lines. It transforms courtrooms into battlegrounds of narrative.

What Is at Stake

This is not a call for impunity for political offenses. Nor is it a dismissal of national security concerns. It is a call for consistency. A legal system that visibly punishes the unlawful taking of life more severely than dissent strengthens itself. A system that appears to do the opposite risks sending the wrong signal — that the state’s stability outweighs the sanctity of its citizens.

No constitution can withstand that perception indefinitely. In the end, the law’s greatest test is simple: Does it protect the vulnerable first?
Or does it protect power first?

The answer is not found in speeches. It is found in years — counted carefully, compared quietly, and remembered long after verdicts fade. History will not ask whether trials were held. It will ask whether justice was proportionate. And whether the scales were balanced when it mattered most.

Timothy Enongene
Guest Editor-in-Chief, IndependentistNews