18, May 2023
Yaoundé: Calls for peace, reconciliation ahead of May 20 0
Thousands of people are demonstrating this week, calling for peace and reconciliation ahead of National Day on May 20. Peace caravans led by activists, clerics and traditional rulers are calling for an end to hate speech and the separatist conflict that has killed more than 6,000 people in Cameroon since 2017.
A band of youths leads several hundred Cameroonians in protests against hate speech in the capital, Yaounde, on Thursday. The protesters are also calling for peace and reconciliation in the central African state.
Organizers say the protests began in towns and villages across Cameroon on Monday ahead of the country’s National Day on May 20.
Thousands of Christians from Cameroon’s Catholic, Presbyterian and Baptist churches joined the protest in Yaounde Thursday.
Reverend Father Humphrey Tatah Mbui is the director of communications at the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon. He said Christians cannot be indifferent at a time when increasing hate speech and xenophobic statements are creating conflicts and damaging Cameroon’s image.
“It is wickedness and the type of hate speech that destroys the country. If we want peace in this country we must learn to start controlling the kind of words we use, the way we talk to other people and dialogue,” he said.
Mbui said clashes between communities increased in Cameroon after the disputed 2018 presidential election in which President Paul Biya was declared the winner. Opposition leader Maurice Kamto also claimed victory.
In addition, some French-speaking host communities accuse English speakers displaced by the separatist conflict in the west of being separatist fighters or sympathizers.
The tension goes the other way, too. Earlier this month, a human rights group said scores of French speaking civilians in English-speaking regions were victims of hate speech.
Meanwhile, Cameroon’s National Communication Council issued over two dozen warnings last year to radio and TV stations the NCC says hosted guests who promoted hate speech.
Cameroon’s communication minister, Rene Emmanuel Sadi, said civilians are also increasingly using social media to vilify and humiliate people, or to incite hatred and call for violence against people of different religions, languages, ethnic groups and gender.
Sadi said all social strata in Cameroon suffer the consequences of hate speech fanned by some civil society groups, intellectuals, politicians, activists and social influencers. He said the most common manifestations of hate speech in Cameroon include ethnic and social discrimination, stigmatization, tribalism, irredentist claims, calls for insurgency and sometimes genocide, gender violence and violence against minorities.
Sadi said the Cameroon government is fighting hate speech as a priorty to safeguard democracy and the rule of law and to preserve the values of peace, unity and living together.
The government says President Biya wants Cameroonians to show love for their country as they celebrate National Day on Saturday. Biya will preside over celebrations in Yaounde.
In 2021, the International Crisis Group warned in a report that social media platforms, especially Facebook, were increasingly being used by Cameroonian youths to heighten political and ethnic tensions.
Source: VOA
21, May 2023
Southern Cameroons and La Republique celebrate National Unity Day 0
Cameroon has been celebrating 51 years as unified nation with a military and civilian parade on National Unity Day in its capital Yaoundé.
For all but 10 of those years it has been ruled by just one man, President Paul Biya.
And at 91 years old he is now the oldest head of state in the world.
The country is now less united than ever: Thousands of people have been killed since 2016 and over a million people displaced after a group of Anglophone Cameroonians began to fight Biya’s Francophone government.
Some of those who watched the parade sounded optimistic about their country’s future and welcomed the day.
“It is to remind that we are one people, it’s to remind that it’s together that we can build and develop, it’s to remind that it’s together that we can be happy, it’s together that we can live in peace,” said Therese Temgoua, a Francophone Cameroonian who is a bank executive.
“I think it’s a happy day, and what I’ve seen today shows that Cameroon’s democracy is actually in the right direction,” Enobi Akepe, an anglophone Cameroonian who is a university lecturer, said.
But one francophone journalist described the unity of the country as a “facade.”
“Today, Cameroonians agree that we are living in a certain facade of unity. First, because in the North-West and South-West, you know that there are secessionists who do not let us breathe. On the other hand, we see the rise of hatred in the country,” said Pierre Youte, a journalist and the director of Soleil d’Afrique newspaper.
This rainy season Cameroon is also facing a cholera epidemic which has spread to all of its regions and is known to have infected around 20,000 people.
The figure is likely to be higher as only those infected people who manage to reach hospital are counted.
On Friday, on the eve of National Unity Day, the authorities closed down some of Yaoundé’s food markets to prevent the spread of the deadly bacterial disease.
Source: Africa News