The text message read as follows: “Boko Haram recruits young people from 14 years old and above. Conditions for recruitment: 4 subjects at GCE, including religion.”
Sent among university students in the central African nation of Cameroon, it was intended as a satirical commentary on the difficult job market they faced: Competition is so fierce, even a notoriously brutal Islamist militant group will demand to see your test scores—“4 subjects at GCE”—before hiring you.
The government, however, was not amused. In December 2014, when a teacher saw the joke on a student’s phone and reported it to police, that student and two of his friends were arrested and transferred to the main prison in Yaounde, the capital, where they were kept in leg chains for four months. Last November, a military court sentenced them to 10 years in prison for “non-denunciation of terrorist acts.”