PART C: Protection against Torture: Procedures before the African Commission and African Human Rights Court nationality for political reasons, was convicted of illegally entering Botswana. He filed an appeal in 1978, which was never heard. He initiated a case before the Commission in 1993 and argued at the admissibility phase that the facts constituted a continuing violation. The Commission agreed on the ground that the State had repeatedly interrupted the legal process through repeated summary deportations of the author. In the case of Kevin Mgwanga Gunme et. al. v. Cameroon, the Commission similarly held that though some of the violations alleged by the complainants had taken place prior to the entry into force of the African Charter in Cameroon in 1989, the complaint was admissible as the effects of the earlier violations continued to be felt after the entry into force of the Charter. Noting that as ‘the effects of such violations may themselves constitute violations under the Charter’, the Commission explicitly held that it had jurisdiction over violations that occurred before the adoption of the Charter ‘if such violations or their residual effects continued after’ the Respondent State ratified the Charter.335 This complaint centred on the discrimination and violence faced by predominantly English-speaking Southern Cameroonians who protested against the annexation of Southern Cameroon by the Republic of Cameroon in 1961, which led to the formation of the Federal Republic of Cameroon in the same year. According to the complainants, starting in 1961, Southern Cameroonians experienced violations of a range of civil and political rights, including the right to equality before the law, the right to life, the prohibition of torture, and the right to fair trial, among others. Though Cameroon only ratified the Charter in 1989, the Commission found that the communication revealed ‘prima facie violations of the charter, all of which are alleged to have continued following Cameroon’s ratification of the African Charter’.336 The Commission has also held that enforced disappearances constitute a continuing violation of the Charter.337 The EAC Court of Justice, however, has taken a somewhat differing position regarding acts that constitute a continuing violation. Under article 30(2) of the EAC Treaty, proceedings must be instituted “within 2 months of the enactment, publication, directive, decision or action complained of, or in the absence thereof, of the day in which it came to the knowledge of the complainant, as the case may be”.338 In the case of Independent Medico-Legal Unit v. Kenya, the State filed a preliminary objection arguing that as the alleged violations (executions and acts of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment against residents of the Mount Elgon District) had taken place more than two months before the complaint was filed, the 335 336 337 338 ACHPR, Kevin Mgwanga Gunme et. al. v. Cameroon, Comm. No. 266/03, paras. 95-97. Ibid., para. 72. ACHPR, J.E. Zitha and P.J.L. Zitha v. Mozambique, Comm. No. 361/08. EAC Treaty, Article 30.2. 83