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13, August 2018

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Canada feels the anger of the Diaspora ⁰

Southern Cameroonians in Canada have called for the Cameroon government, the United Nations, Canada and the world to investigate and help find solutions to the ongoing crisis in Cameroon. The call was made during a joint protest organized by the Southern Cameroons Relief Organization (SCRO) for Southern Cameroonians in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal which took place on August 10, 2018.

The protest began at the Cameroon High Commission in Canada with protesters singing both patriotic and sorrowful songs with placards in their hands carrying messages like, “enough is enough, say no to dictatorship”, “stop genocide in Southern Cameroons”, “stop raping our women” and many more.

A casket was also brought out as part of the protest materials. Protesters could be seen wailing over the coffin for those who have been killed, raped and jailed unfairly in Cameroon. While the protest continued in front of the Cameroon High Commission, with no official stepping out to talk to the protesters, the protesters brought down the Cameroon flag that was hoisted.

This act caused the officials to come out of the office, with the High Commissioner to Canada, Solomon Azoh-Mbi, taking the lead to frown at the act. There was nothing he could do as protesters kept singing at the top of their voices “no violence”. He walked away from the scene and came out for the second time to witness the Cameroon flag being burnt and the Southern Cameroons (Ambazonia) flag being hoisted.

Feeling they had passed on their message – though the officials made no statement – , the protesters left the premises heading for the United Nations (UN) representative’s office. While there, a petition was handed to the National Development Director, James D. Lee, who in turn called on the protesters to keep asking for what is right while waiting for a response from the UN. He promised to present their demands to the United Nations. The protest continued to the streets and ended at the Parliament Hill.

In an interview during the protest, the Vice President of SCRO said that that the protest aimed to create awareness among Canadians, the media and the international community of the genocidal atrocities being committed by the country’s army which has invaded and occupied the two English-speaking regions. Mr. Hippolyte Asaah said that more than a hundred villages had been burnt down, over 120.000 people internally displaced and many women and girls were being raped on a daily basis by the military which also carries out summary killings of men and families.

Also, the Secretary General of SCRO, Khumbah Efuange, said that it was not only Cameroonians in Canada who came out to protest, but also friends from Canada, Jamaica and Chad living in Canada, adding that if things did not change for the better, the protests would continue. He suggested that another protest might be organized on October 1, 2018; a day considered as Southern Cameroons Independence Day.

The Southern Cameroons Relief Organization (SCRO) was formed out of necessity by some Southern Cameroonians in Toronto in February 2017 to investigate the problems in Southern Cameroons and chart a way forward. The organization has, since creation organized two protests in Toronto and four in Ottawa. It has also been raising funds to assist Southern Cameroonian refugees in Nigeria. Officials of the organization used the occasion to report that the Nigerian government had not released a container it sent to Nigeria to help refugees meet some of their needs. They called on any one who can assist to contact the organization at: gtasoutherncameroon@gmail.com.

By Irene Nanyongo

13, August 2018

Turkish president says Lira crash political plot against Ankara ⁰

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the lira’s drop is a “political plot” against Ankara, and his country will begin to seek for new partners.

The lira’s crash was sparked by a disagreement with the United States over the detention of an American pastor in Turkey, which has even brought up questions over the future partnership between Washington and Ankara.

Turkey’s currency dropped some 16 percent to new record lows against the dollar on Friday.

“The aim of the operation is to make Turkey surrender in all areas, from finance to politics,” said Erdogan on Sunday.

“We are once again facing a political, underhand plot. With God’s permission we will overcome this,” he added.

Erdogan noted that his country would turn to other partners if this “economic war” goes on.

“Some close the doors and some others open new ones,” he added.

He further added that the only response to a country which chooses to sacrifices its strategic partnership and a half century alliance with a state with a population 81 million for the sake “terror groups” is “good-bye.”

“You dare to sacrifice 81-million Turkey for a priest who is linked to terror groups?,” he stressed.

Relations between the two NATO allies have taken a turn for the worse amid dispute over the detention in Turkey of US evangelical pastor Andrew Brunson on terrorism charges.

“They tell us to release the priest by Wednesday 6:00 pm, otherwise the sanctions will begin,” Erdogan added.

On Friday, US President Donald Trump announced to double steel and aluminum tariffs on Turkey, saying relations between Washington and Ankara “not good” as tensions mount between the two countries.

“I have just authorized a doubling of Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum with respect to Turkey as their currency, the Turkish Lira, slides rapidly downward against our very strong Dollar!” Trump said on Twitter.

“Aluminum will now be 20 percent and Steel 50 percent. Our relations with Turkey are not good at this time!” he added.

The United States is the world’s biggest steel importer. Washington slapped tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum in March for imports from several countries, including Turkey.

Trump’s announcement came shortly after President Erdogan called on Turks to help defend the country against the US-launched economic war against his nation. Erdogan appealed to Turks to exchange dollars and gold for Turkish lira to support the plunging currency.

Ankara and Washington also disagree over their military interventions in the Syria war, Turkey’s plan to buy missile defense systems from Russia and the US conviction of a Turkish state bank executive on sanctions-busting charges in January.

On Saturday, Erdogan warned his country’s partnership with the United States might be in “jeopardy” as tensions intensify between the two NATO allies.

Source: Presstv

13, August 2018

Fire at Taiwan hospital kills 9, injures 16 ⁰

Nine people were killed and 16 injured in a blaze that broke out early Monday at a hospice for the terminally ill near Taipei, fire officials said.

All 36 people, including three staff, were evacuated after the fire started in the hospice which is located on the seventh floor of a nine-storey hospital in New Taipei city.

The fire broke out at 4.36 a.m. and was put out at 5.37 a.m., after 76 vehicles and 208 firemen were dispatched to the scene.

Sixteen had cardiac arrests and seven were revived.

The other nine died with the cause of death given as smoke inhalation, according to the local fire department.

New Taipei fire department chief Huang Te-ching said the cause of the fire was still being investigated and denied reports that the sprinkler system had malfunctioned.

“The sprinkler device was on but there’s some distance between its location and where the fire started so the fire couldn’t be immediately put out,” he told reporters.

CCTV footage on local media showed staff rushing through the hospice corridors, carrying patients out in their arms or in wheelchairs to evacuate them after the fire broke out.

Fire inspectors inspect the damage after a fire broke out at a hospital in Taipei, Taiwan,
on August 13, 2018.

Local media said 10 of the 16 are in serious condition. Some were rushed to several nearby hospitals.

Local media quoted some patients’ relatives saying they heard a blast and suspected that an oxygen tank might have exploded, causing the fire.

Premier William Lai apologised to the public and expressed condolences over the tragedy.

“We will review the cause of the incident to prevent a similar situation from happening again,” he said.

The fire was believed to have started in Ward 7A23, where four patients and one migrant worker were staying.

A hospital bed’s faulty motor is believed to have caused a short circuit which started the fire, reported local media.

(Source: AFP)

13, August 2018

Kenyan authorities arrest public land, railway chiefs on suspicion of corruption ⁰

Kenyan authorities have detained the country’s chairmen of railway and the agency that manages public land, accusing them of alleged corruption over land allocation for the new $3-billion flagship Nairobi-Mombasa railway.

The two top officials were arrested on Saturday, the latest to be caught up in President Uhuru Kenyatta’s anti-corruption drive in the African country in recent months.

The new railway, which is linking the capital Nairobi to East Africa’s main port city, was funded by China and is now considered as one of the largest infrastructure projects of Kenyatta.

Mohammed Abdalla Swazuri, the head of National Land Commission, and managing director of the Kenya Railways Corporation, Atanas Kariuki Maina, were among 18 other officials, businesspeople and firms named in a statement listing arrests that was released by the prosecutor’s office on Saturday.

However, no Chinese companies were named in the prosecutor’s statement.

Opposition leaders and Kenyan economists have already lambasted the railway’s huge funding for increasing the country’s debt burden, which the IMF estimated at between 54 and 55 percent of economic output (GDP) in the 2017-18 fiscal year.

According to the country’s anti-corruption agency, the officials siphoned taxpayer money through phony compensation claims for land used for the railway. But the agency did not clarify who made the allegations.

President Kenyatta has vowed to deal with those “caught in the web of corruption.” In 2013, when he was elected for the first time, he pledged to stamp out corruption.

Back in May, several other corruption scandals were revealed. In one case, multi-million-dollar contracts were reportedly awarded to the friends and family members of employees at the electricity supplier Kenya Power.

In another case, fraudulent payments of 30 million dollars were uncovered at the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB).

Back in 2016, the then head of Kenya’s anti-graft agency said the county was losing a third of its state budget to corruption every year. The finance ministry disputed the claim, but Kenyatta acknowledged that corruption had reached levels that threatened national security.

Kenya, the sixth poorest country in Africa, fell to the 143rd rank among 180 countries in Transparency International’s annual corruption index for last year.

Source: Presstv

11, August 2018

French Cameroun-Southern Cameroons crisis deepens ⁰

With elections just a few months away, the political situation in Cameroon looks bleak. There is the escalating conflict in the Anglophone region, there is the Boko Haram-linked instability in the north and then there is the president who is determined to extend his decades-long stay in power.

It is the Anglophone crisis that is currently making international headlines, although it has been brewing for several years.

The conflict between state security forces and armed separatist groups appears to have intensified in recent weeks. The separatists believe that English-speakers in Cameroon — about 20% of the population of 24-million — have been marginalised and discriminated against by the predominantly Francophone government.

“If you see a civil war as a war between the government and its citizens, then I think it is headed towards a civil war, if it’s not a civil war yet,” Emmanuel Freudenthal, one of the few journalists to have reported from the affected region, told the Mail & Guardian.

Fighting on both sides has been characterised by extreme violence. A Human Rights Watch report released last month documented abuses by the separatist armed groups and the Cameroonian security forces. The report documents the separatists’ brutal enforcement of boycotts, particularly in schools, as well as the government’s excessive use of force against demonstrators, and instances of torture and extra-judicial killings.

The clashes have prompted many in the region to flee. The United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that more than 15 000 people have been displaced in the country since December last year, and that an additional 20 000 to 50 000 are seeking refuge across the border in Nigeria.

In addition, Cameroon is battling to contain a Boko Haram insurgency — another conflict characterised by extreme violence. Last month, a video emerged that showed Cameroonian soldiers executing two women and their children in the country’s far north, on suspicion of supporting Boko Haram. The video is representative of the military’s heavy-handed approach to dealing with tensions in the north and the Anglophone regions, say activists.

What does all this mean for the election? President Paul Biya has governed Cameroon for 35 years, and plans to run again in the October 7 poll — even though he is, infamously, an absentee president, spending up to a third of his time out of the country, usually in a luxury hotel in Switzerland.

“It’s going to be quite hard to organise voting in the Anglophone regions. It’s already hard to organise voting in the extreme north,” said Freudenthal. “That means a whole section of the population is not going to be able to vote.”

Things are probably going to get worse, he added. “The government’s military strategy has been to increase violence and increase military attacks against both armed groups and the civilian population…I can’t predict what the armed groups are going to do but it seems most likely they are going to ramp up their activities to make a point.”

‘Ghost towns’

The separatist movement is hard to pin down, given its fractured nature. Though the protests in 2016 were led by lawyers and teachers, with a decidedly non-violent bent, the government’s harsh reaction has strengthened the hand of hardliners and armed factions. They want to secede from Cameroon proper and form a new state called Ambazonia — although even among the hardliners there are a variety of actors who want slightly different things, and with different opinions on how to achieve them.

Though there is a group of activists who describe themselves as an “interim government in exile,” the extent to which this group is considered legitimate by a plurality of Anglophone Cameroonians is unclear. Human Rights Watch estimates that there are between five and 20 armed factions.

The sheer number of armed groups may complicate any attempt to broker a ceasefire or peace agreement — not that any such attempt has yet been made. In fact, the violence is getting worse.

According to Jeffrey Smith, head of Vanguard Africa, an advocacy group: “Since August 2016 especially, the acts of violence [by the armed groups] have become more routine and more brazen…at this point, it almost seems as if armed groups and government forces are actively bidding to outdo one another in terms of shock value.”

For example, in late July, a police officer was decapitated by suspected separatists.

In addition to brutal attacks on the Cameroonian government, the separatist movements are also responsible for the enforcement of “ghost town”days — mass boycotts of work and schools. Those who violate the boycotts are often subjected to brutal retaliation, forcing compliance with the armed separatists’ agenda.

As Max Bone, an expatriate development worker based in Buea, one of the Anglophone region’s major cities, described on social media: “The ghost town has yet to officially start in Buea, but the gunshots have. Around 30 [minutes] of back and [forth] shooting between the non-state armed groups and the military took place just now. Everyone is urging one another to sleep on the floor tonight to be safe.”

Activists say that the ghost days are intended as a form of economic sabotage. They serve other purposes too: as an information-gathering tool for the separatists, and to help telegraph the strength of the movement to the Cameroonian government.

A case in point: the July 23 ghost-town day in Buea, where the boycott was successfully implemented despite being forbidden by the mayor, simultaneously highlighted the strength of the separatists and the weakness of the government.

It is not yet clear how the separatists will use their strength in the upcoming election, which roughly coincides with the second anniversary of the declaration of an independent Ambazonia. They could throw their support behind the opposition party candidate, Joshua Osih Nabangi, running on the Social Democratic Front ticket,or they could boycott the vote. Reports from Buea claim that separatist groups there have beaten people carrying voting cards, declaring them to be the enemy.

“When they claim that simply possessing a voter card makes you an enemy, it gives a disturbing sign as to what their values actually are,” said one aid worker working in the region, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons.

Government weakness

As evidenced by the failure to put an end to ghost days, the Cameroonian government’s ability to project its authority into Anglophone regions is limited. Perhaps because of this, the government’s response to the crisis has been heavy-handed. Human Rights Watch has documented a number of testimonies concerning the government firing live ammunition into crowds of demonstrators.

Videos have emerged from the region, some purportedly showing families being massacred, others detailing the experience of a woman who claims to have been raped in government custody, and others documenting beatings and humiliation. Though the Cameroonian government has promised an investigation into the video of the execution in the country’s far north, so far the government has not publicly disciplined the security sector officials accused of misconduct in Anglophone regions. Furthermore, the Biya administration has targeted Anglophone activists in a series of arrests of high-profile activists and an internet blackout that lasted 93 consecutive days.

Biya himself presents a hurdle to the prospect of a swift and peaceful resolution of the grievances of Anglophone Cameroonians. His reputation for authoritarian repression and his persistent marginalisation of the Anglophones makes the prospect for an inclusive, peace-oriented dialogue seem dim.

Given the Biya administration’s posture towards the separatist movement — as well as its attitude towards democratic norms of accountability — and the number of armed groups that may serve as spoilers to any peace process, there is a need for external pressure to bring all the parties to the table for an inclusive dialogue. This might be a problem that Cameroon cannot solve on its own.

But if the regional and international community is going to make any difference before the presidential vote, they are going to have to act soon. Ensuring that Cameroon’s elections are free, fair, peaceful and credible — and thereby ensuring that all Cameroonians get to exercise their democratic right — demands action today.

“I am especially concerned about the blatant, increasingly complex forms of human rights abuses going on in the country for the last 18 months or more. The trends are particularly alarming,” said Kathleen Ndongmo, an entrepreneur and human rights activist.

“There is very little action from regional bodies and the international community which is extremely disturbing … It’s about time coalitions of civil society at home, in the region and globally begin to find ways to let this government know that we will not stand by and watch them continue to violate a people with impunity without consequence. If the government of Cameroon will not stop oppressing the people of Cameroon, then they should be ready to face serious consequences, one of which can be sanctions against government officials directly.”

Source: Mail/Guardian

11, August 2018

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Bishop Bushu says Rev. Father Sob was assassinated ⁰

The Bishop of Buea says a priest who died in the July 2018 in the restive South-West region of the country was assassinated disputing claims that the death was as a result of a stray bullet.

His Lordship Immanuel Bushu is reported by local press to have said Rev. Fr. Nougi Alexander Sob was assassinated. “Father Sob was with two other people in his car when he was shot at close range with a silencer gun.”

The Cameroon Catholic church reported the death of the parish priest of Bomaka, a district of Buea, at the time the report said by “unidentified individuals.”

“We have received photographs of the body of the deceased priest, Alexander Sob Nougi,’‘ an official communication by the church issued in Yaoundé read, specifying that the perpetrators of the murder remain unknown and that the body is mutilated.

Security in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions, the north-west and south-west, has deteriorated considerably.

Fighting became daily between the security forces and armed separatists demanding the creation of an independent English-speaking state.

Catholic Church as conflict mediator

The Catholic Church is the only actor capable of “promoting dialogue” between the insurgents and the government, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG) research centre in April.

It represents almost a third of the Cameroonian population, according to the ICG, which deplored the Catholic Church’s “divergent positions” on the Anglophone question and invited it to “overcome its divisions and display its neutrality”.

This increasingly violent armed conflict in the English-speaking zone, as well as that against the jihadist group Boko Haram in the north of the country, could disrupt the presidential elections scheduled for 7 October, according to analysts.

President Paul Biya, 85, declared his candidature last week for a seventh consecutive term.

His supporters believe that he is best able to respond to the English-speaking crisis, his opponents accusing him of being responsible for the crisis.

Source: Africa News

11, August 2018

CNN says North Korea has rejected all US proposals on denuclearization ⁰

North Korea has rejected “repeated” US proposals on denuclearization, considering them “gangster-like”, CNN has reported, citing senior diplomatic sources.

The US has made, and continues to make, “specific proposals for starting and proceeding to the end point of fully verified denuclearization,” including a timeline, the broadcaster reported.

It said the “vague promises” that emerged from the meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in June have resulted in a diplomatic disconnect.

The brief document produced at the summit included no time frame, no specific promises or milestones to meet, allowing both sides to interpret it as they wished, CNN added.

Washington has linked the lifting of sanctions on Pyongyang to full and verifiable denuclearization by North Korea which insists sanctions be removed first before it takes any further steps.

CNN cited an official with close knowledge of North Korea’s position on the matter as saying that continued negotiations between the US and North Korea hinge on Washington’s willingness to make a bold move and agree to a peace treaty with Pyongyang.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L) talks with North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho at the ASEAN Regional Forum Retreat during the 51st Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Ministerial Meeting (AMM) in Singapore on August 4, 2018. (Photo by AFP)

The North says the US is back-pedaling on its promises. North Korea issued a statement at the United Nations on Thursday, insisting that elements of the US government are not adhering to the spirit of the dialogue established during Kim-Trump Singapore summit.

According to the statement, while Pyongyang had taken “such practical denuclearization steps as discontinuing nuclear test and ICBM test fire” and “broadminded measures” such as the repatriation of US Korean War remains, “the US responded to our expectation by inciting international sanctions and pressure against (North Korea).”

The statement did not blame the US president, but singled out some high-level officials within the US administration, who it alleged were going against Trump’s will.

North Korea on Thursday denounced US calls for enforcing international sanctions and said progress on denuclearization promises could not be expected if Washington followed an “outdated acting script”.

Pyongyang has urged Washington to take reciprocal measures for its goodwill gestures, saying the US had responded to its expectation by inciting international sanctions and pressure.

Source: Presstv

11, August 2018

On top of the World: 5 Anambra State School girls win gold at World Technovation Challenge in US ⁰

Five Anambra girls from Regina Pacies Secondary School Onitsha, Amanbra state, Nigeria who represented Nigeria and Africa at the World Technovation Challenge in the Silicon Valley in San Francisco, US have won the Gold Medal in the contest.

The Governor of Anambra State, Willie Obiano had personally sent them off to the US in a brief ceremony at the last Executive Council Meeting, where he charged the girls to put Nigeria and Africa on the global technological map with their rare talent.

The team, led by Uchenna Onwuamaegbu Ugwu defeated representatives of other technological giants including the USA, Spain, Turkey, Uzbekistan and China to clinch the gold medal.

The girls, who have now become Africa’s Golden Girls is made up of five brilliant girls including Promise Nnalue, Jessica Osita, Nwabuaku Ossai, Adaeze Onuigbo and Vivian Okoye.

The world champions who are reported to be attracting a lot of attention in the world’s greatest technological hub won the Challenge with a mobile application called the FD-Detector which they developed to help tackle the Challenge of fake pharmaceutical products in Nigeria.

Under the tutelage of Uchenna Onwuamaegbu-Ugwu the CEO of Edufun Technik STEM, the Golden Girls spent five months researching and developing FD-Detector which swept through over 2000 competing applications to get to the finals in San Francisco.

Technovation is a programme that offers girls around the world the opportunity to learn the programming skills they need to emerge as tech-entrepreneurs and leaders.

Every year, girls are invited to identify a problem in their communities and then are challenged to solve them by developing Andriod applications that would address those problems. 115 countries participated in the qualifiers but only 12 teams from all over the world were selected as finalists for the pitch in Silicon Valley.

Source: Africa News

11, August 2018

Footage shows Cameroon forces executing unarmed people ⁰

For the second time in about a month, Cameroon is investigating video footage that Amnesty International said shows Cameroon security forces executing unarmed people in the country’s Far North region.

On Friday, the human rights group said its experts have analyzed footage that appears to show “Cameroonian security forces shooting at least a dozen unarmed people” in the village of Achigaya sometime before May 2016.

A Cameroon government spokesperson told reporters that the video was “fake news” but promised an investigation. They also told Reuters there is an ongoing “denigration” campaign attempting to tarnish President Paul Biya’s reputation ahead of October elections. (LINTAO ZHANG / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)

The shaky, grainy video, which Amnesty provided to the Washington Post, shows armed men in camouflage fatigues wandering through a village, with some structures burning around them. The camera pans to a group of people who are sitting and lying on the ground by a wall. They are then shot at repeatedly, first from a distance, and then up close.

“This shocking video shows armed men lining people up face down or sitting against a wall and shooting them with automatic weapons. A second round of shooting ensures no survivors,” Ilaria Allegrozzi, the Lake Chad researcher for Amnesty, said in a statement. “Here is yet more credible evidence to support the allegations that Cameroon’s armed forces have committed grave crimes against civilians.”

The Amnesty analysis said that in the video, soldiers “describe themselves as carrying out a ‘kamikaze’ operation.” The Washington Post was unable to verify the video, including who filmed it and who appears in it.

Henri Etoundi Essomba, Cameroon’s ambassador in Washington, D.C., told The Post that he was unaware of the latest video so could not comment directly, but said that some people are “willing to portray the country as hell on earth.”

“No one can condemn Cameroon on video without making sure that what [they are seeing] is supporting reality,” Essomba told the Post. “This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone in the sense that people are willing to portray the country in the darkest way possible.”

Last month, Amnesty released analysis of another video that had circulated on social media, in which armed men execute two women, a young girl and an infant. The group said the men’s outfits, accents and weapons signal that they belong to the Cameroon military, and that the terrain is consistent with Cameroon’s Far North region, where troops have been trying to push back against Boko Haram extremists for a number of years.

In an interview with the Post in July, Allegrozzi said it was “one of the worst videos I’ve ever watched, and I’ve watched many videos coming from perpetrators in the Boko Haram conflict.”

At the time, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, a government spokesperson, told reporters that the video was “fake news,” but Cameroon’s government promised to investigate. Bakary also denied that the outfits were consistent with Cameroon’s armed forces.

On Friday, Bakary told Reuters that the latest video would be investigated but that there is an ongoing “denigration” campaign attempting to tarnish President Paul Biya ahead of October elections. Biya, who has led the country since 1982, is running for reelection. “We are in an electoral period and it’s conducive to this kind of thing,” he told Reuters. “People want to discredit the army and president.”

Source: The Star

11, August 2018

Amnesty International says new video shows more brutal killings by Biya regime forces ⁰

A horrifying video obtained by Amnesty International shows Cameroonian security forces shooting at least a dozen unarmed people during a military operation in the village of Achigaya in the Far North region of the country, the organization said today.

Using advanced digital analysis tools, Amnesty International experts were able to confirm that the video, shot at an unknown date but prior to May 2016, corroborates previous accounts of extrajudicial executions which the Cameroonian authorities have denied.

“This shocking video shows armed men lining people up face down or sitting against a wall and shooting them with automatic weapons. A second round of shooting ensures no survivors. Here is yet more credible evidence to support the allegations that Cameroon’s armed forces have committed grave crimes against civilians, and we are calling for an immediate, thorough and impartial investigation. Those suspected to be responsible for these abhorrent acts must be brought to justice,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, Amnesty International’s Lake Chad Researcher.

“Last month we analyzed footage from another location which showed two women and two young children being killed by soldiers who were clearly members of Cameroon’s armed forces. What further evidence do they need before they act on these atrocities?”

Amnesty International has documented multiple extrajudicial killings, as well as the widespread use of torture by Cameroonian security forces who are fighting against the armed group Boko Haram in the Far North region of the country.

Amnesty International researchers analyzed the weapons, dialogue and uniforms visible in the latest video, as well as testimony and satellite imagery, to conclude the approximate timing and exact location of the executions, and determined the suspected perpetrators to be members of the Cameroonian security forces.

The footage shows a group of soldiers in their distinctive “lizard stripe” camouflage uniforms, patrolling the village of Achigachiya. Some are armed with Zastava M21 rifles, and others are mounted on a pick-up truck with a ZPU-2 anti-aircraft gun.

The video, apparently recorded by a member of the security forces, shows soldiers burning structures which are likely to be homes, and then focuses on a group of 12 people lined against a wall, all sitting or lying down. At 01:40 minute into the video, numerous soldiers using automatic weapons fire into the group for an extended period, from several meters away. A soldier then walks forward and fires again at close range at several persons in the group, presumably to ensure there are no survivors.

Speaking in French, the soldiers describe themselves as carrying out a “kamikaze” operation.

The footage supports evidence of extrajudicial executions previously documented by Amnesty International in a July 2016 report. The report documented the unlawful killings and extrajudicial executions of over 30 people, including several elderly, in Achigachiya following an operation by the security forces seeking to recover the bodies of the soldiers killed by Boko Haram on 28 December 2014, which were abandoned in front of the military base destroyed by the insurgents. This operation by the army was also done as a collective punishment against the population perceived as supporting Boko Haram.

The Cameroonian government announced an investigation following the release of the video in July, but their rapid dismissal of the video as “fake news” casts serious doubt on whether this investigation would be genuinely impartial and effective.

In failing to hold suspected perpetrators to account for the horrific crimes documented by Amnesty International and others, the Cameroonian authorities have created a climate of impunity in which the armed forces have free reign to kill and torture

Source: Amnesty International