27, September 2017
Biya regime accused of driving out Nigerians 0
Nigerian refugees claim they have been arbitrarily punished by soldiers for Boko Haram attacks in Cameroon as study alleges 100,000 have been forced out. Refugees who fled the Islamist militant group Boko Haram are being driven out of Cameroon and back to Nigeria, where they face violence and destitution, human rights organisations have said.
The Cameroonian military has forced 100,000 refugees to return to north-east Nigeria since 2015, in many cases after torturing, assaulting and sexually abusing them, according to a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The study builds on figures released earlier this year by the UN High commissioner for Refugees, the UN refugee agency. The figures were accompanied by the UNHCR’s first public criticism of the authorities over the returns in two years.
Refugees said soldiers had accused them of belonging to Boko Haram, or of being “Boko Haram wives”, while torturing or assaulting them and dozens of others on arrival, during their stay in remote border areas, and during mass deportations.
One refugee described an attack he witnessed in Minawao refugee camp: “A pregnant woman lost her place in the food line. When she pleaded with an official to let her back in, a soldier attacked her with a big stick. She fell to the ground and started bleeding. I later heard that she died before she reached the clinic.”
Another said: “They humiliated us like animals and beat us like we were slaves. They beat my 22-year-old brother so badly with a wooden stick on his head and his chest that he later died of internal bleeding.”
A 19-year-old woman who arrived in a Cameroonian village described the sexual abuse she witnessed. “The soldiers took advantage of women. They said that if we had sex with them, they would give us food and protect us. If we refused, they would come the next day to where you lived. They took away lots of men and women as Boko Haram suspects. Other times, they deported people to punish them because you said no. I know 18 women who agreed to have sex with the soldiers because of this and three of them got pregnant.”
HRW called on the Cameroonian government to stop all forced removals, and to prosecute soldiers who had been involved in abuses. The group also urged the Nigerian government to admit publicly that it is too dangerous for refugees to return to Borno state.
“The Cameroonian military’s torture and abuse of Nigerian refugees and asylum seekers seems to be driven by an arbitrary decision to punish them for Boko Haram attacks in Cameroon and to discourage Nigerians from seeking asylum,” said HRW’s associate refugee director, Gerry Simpson. “Cameroon should heed the UN’s call on all countries to protect refugees fleeing the carnage in north-east Nigeria, not return them there.”
The Nigerian military has repeatedly declared that it has won the war against Boko Haram, despite ongoing abductions and bomb attacks. One faction of Boko Haram is thought to have been pushed further and further into the islands of Lake Chad, driving out herding and farming communities who have sought shelter in Chad.
Cameroon has responded to the threat posed by Boko Haram mainly in military terms, and its soldiers have faced accusations of abuse before. In August, Amnesty International released a report detailing allegations of torture by the Cameroonian military, which the government denied as “outrageously accusatory”, accusing Amnesty of “playing the role of an organisation for the defence of terrorist interests”.
The latest accusations came just after the country’s president, Paul Biya, told the UN that Cameroon, having hosted thousands of refugees, “understands how much they feel hurt, victimised and threatened in their very existence”. “Therefore, let us mobilise and, through our policies, behaviours and actions, refocus on people,” said Biya.
Despite several appeals, the UNHCR has received less than a quarter of the $94m (£70m) it needs this year to help refugees who have fled to Cameroon from Nigeria and Central African Republic. Human Rights Watch warned that failure to address the shortfall risked sending Cameroon the message that donor governments do not care what happens to Nigerian refugees and that Cameroon is on its own in dealing with them, potentially making the country less accountable.
The number of internally displaced people in Nigeria is 1.7 million, far higher than the 200,000 estimated refugees in neighbouring countries. Towns in north-east Nigeria are struggling to cope with the thousands of people who continue to arrive. Overcrowding, flooding, a lack of food and an outbreak of cholera have made living conditions worse.
Organisations working in north-east Nigeria said forced returns have been widespread there, too, and also reported military abuses. In a 2015 report, Amnesty said the Nigerian military had executed 1,200 people and arbitrarily arrested 20,000, and that 7,000 people had been killed and many tortured in detention.
Culled from The Guardian
1, October 2017
Southern Cameroonians call for independence 0
Cameroon’s government has banned public gatherings, suspended transportation and shut businesses in the country’s English-speaking regions as activists symbolically declared independence from the majority French-speaking areas.
Tensions continue to run high in towns and cities in Cameroon’s northwest and southwestern regions country with thousands of security forces said to be patrolling the streets in a bid to quell planned demonstrations against President Paul Biya’s administration.
“Today, we reaffirm our autonomy over our heritage and over our territory,” the Southern Cameroons Ambazonia Consortium United Front (SCACUF) said in a statement on Facebook.
The government has said the move carries no legal weight.
The declaration and protests come on the anniversary of South Cameroon’s independence from Britian in 1961.
Christopher Njong, information officer with the the governing council of Southern Cameroons, also known as Ambazonia, told Al Jazeera earlier on Sunday that people were gathering to march in the town of Bamenda, but were facing “major resistance from the army and police”.
“They [authorities] are doing everything to stop people from marching, because they don’t want the world to see our call for independence,” he said.
Njong added that people were attempting to march in the towns of Buea and Kumbo with white and blue flags (the flag of the country they would name Ambazonia) and placards, but were facing similar resistance from authorities.
They also argue that oil, found in the southwestern region, has been used to the benefit of the state and not the region in which the resources are found. English-speaking Cameroonians make up one-fifth of Cameroon’s population of 22 million. They have long accused the central government of discriminating against their community, arguing that they are excluded from employment and forced to speak French in business and official affairs, despite English being one of the country’s official languages.
But the discontent goes much deeper.
Southern Cameroons joined Cameroon in 1961 through a referendum, but pro-independence groups argue that UN resolution 1608 that set the terms of an unification plan was never properly followed. Additionally, in 1972, when the country moved from a federalist system to a centralised system, with power resting firmly in the capital, Yaounde, those from the Anglophone regions said they suffered further neglect.
As a result, many Anglophones contend that the French-speaking majority annexed Southern Cameroon.
“They have turned us into servants in our own house,” Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, president of the movement for the independence of Southern Cameroons, said earlier this month.
Issa Tchiroma Bakary, Cameroon’s communication minister, told Al Jazeera that there would be no amputation or division of Cameroon.
“This division will never happen,” Bakary, speaking from Yaounde, said.
In response to allegations that the central government have deployed a disproportionate number of military to the region, Bakary said that “necessary measures had been taken to look after people and property, and to ensure people are not bullied”.
“We deployed to prevent violence; their [the protesters] aim is to provoke violence, this is why we sent them [the army] there.”
The minister would not say how many troops were sent, but rejected allegations that internet services had been slowed despite numerous suggestions that people were struggling to access social media.
Six people have been killed and hundreds have been arrested and detained as the government looked to crack down on what they see as a secessionist movement.Dissent in the two regions have been growing over the past year, with protests taking place intermittently.
Earlier this year, the internet was shut down in the two English-speaking regions for more than three months.
Many students and teachers in the two regions have also boycotted schools and banks have been closed, leaving in its wake empty towns, which activists have dubbed “ghost town” protests.
Rising dissent comes as Cameroon’s government faces a wave of criticism by rights groups over what they call the government’s growing authoritarian tendencies. They point to the imprisonment of journalists and those who are critical of Biya or his administration.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in September that the government was using an anti-terror law to quell dissent.
Ayuk Patrick, the secretary-general of SCACUF, a movement calling for independence for the two regions, said that people would be marching worldwide on Sunday for “the restoration of our nation state”.
He also denied government claims that secessionists were armed and disruptive.
“Our people are being called to march peacefully. We don’t have armed groups. Instead, we have a three- throng approach: First, we are litigating the regime, second, we are exercising our right to civil disobedience and the third thing is diplomacy,” Patrick told Al Jazeera ahead of the planned march in Johannesburg, South Africa.
“We have a right to self defence. But we are not attacking the government.”
Culled from Al Jazeera