A Cameroonian journalist who freelances for the Voice of America says he was harassed by police who seized his equipment Saturday in Yaoundé, the capital. Moki Edwin Kindzeka said he was also ordered to speak only in French.

In a social media post, Kindzeka said, “These guys should not molest people just because they speak the English language.”

The Cameroon Association of English-Speaking Journalists on Twitter condemned “this act in the strongest terms.”  The group demanded an apology.

Kindzeka is also a journalist with the state broadcaster CRTV.

Timescape Magazine reports that the attack on Kindzeka came during military raids Saturday on Anglophone Cameroonians in the capital, many of whom were arrested and ordered to speak French.

Cameroon has had an ongoing separatist conflict that the U.N. says has cost more than 3,200 lives and displaced more than half-a-million people.

The conflict started in 2016 when protests by English-speaking teachers and lawyers against the dominance of French-speaking Cameroonians led some to take up arms.

Cameroon’s military declared war on the rebels, who have been fighting since 2017 to create an independent, English-speaking state.

Source: VOA

Cameroon will boost production of locally made goods as part of new measures to handle the economic hardships resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak, the country’s Minister of Trade, Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana said on Friday.

He said the Made in Cameroon initiative holds the key to the successful economic growth and recovery in the country, which is hit by the pandemic.

“We need to consume what we produce and produce what we consume,” Atangana told reporters in the capital Yaounde a day after the country’s Cabinet Meeting recommended the promotion of local production.

Cameroon needs more investments in food and local manufacturing sectors in a bid to promote domestic production and stimulate local consumption habits, he said.

Government intends to support local companies, accelerate the supply of large irrigated areas, supply improved seeds to smallholder farmers and subsidize fertilizer, Atangana said.

Containment measures against COVID-19 pandemic in Cameroon have seen the overall volume of trade in the first half of 2020 dropped by 16 percent, according to the country’s trade ministry.

Source: Xinhuanet

Security situation in Cameroon’s English-speaking region of Southwest that has been ravaged by an armed separatist conflict for over three years is “under control,” a senior military officer said on Saturday.

Commander of the 2nd Joint Military Region Benoit Eba Eba said, there had been “no major” incidents reported in the region for “quite some time now.”

“Currently we have to face only the acts of banditry. The situation is globally under control. I am satisfied,” Eba told reporters in the Southwest regional town of Mamfe after a rare visit to the restive region.

He assured the safety of the local population and thanked them for collaborating with government forces to fight armed separatists.

“I came to reassure them that we are together and the military is their family. We have to be along with the population not only with weapons. We are together for education, health and any other issue,” Eba said.

Separatists have been clashing with government forces since 2017 in a bid to establish an independent nation in the two Anglophone regions of Cameroon.

Source: Xinhuanet

Buffeted by security and political crises and embarrassed by military blunders, Cameroon’s government has been forced to give ground on human rights under intense pressure from campaigners and the UN and from allies who once chose to overlook its flaws.

NGOs have long denounced abuses in the central African country, from the detention of journalists and arrests of opponents to the killings of civilians by soldiers.

But after a massacre by security forces and the death of a detained journalist, the international outcry has been so loud that President Paul Biya, in power since 1982, has been forced to make U-turns.

Three soldiers were charged this month with murder over the February killing of 10 children and three women in western Cameroon. The UN says at least 23 civilians had died.

The military had denied the killings for two months, blaming the deaths on fuel containers that had accidentally exploded during a firefight between security forces and anglophone separatists.

The investigation and prosecution of the soldiers mark an unprecedented step by a regime deaf to such accusations for decades.

From now on, “it will be difficult for the regime to resist international pressure,” said Cameroonian political scientist Ambroise Louison Essomba.

The government “has every interest, for its own survival, to closely study this question of human rights”, said another analyst, Jacques Ebwea.

The pressure is mounting as Cameroon is battered by violence: in the north, where attacks by Boko Haram jihadists are on the rise, and in the west where a three-year separatist revolt rages on, rooted in resentment among the English-speaking minority in the francophone-majority country.

DISMISSED AS FAKE

Violence between anglophone separatists and security forces has claimed more than 3,000 lives and at least 700,000 have fled their homes.

Although rights monitors emphasise that abuses have been committed by both sides, the armed forces have become mired in a series of high-profile atrocities.

“The use of violence has become almost commonplace,” said Maximilienne Ngo Mbe, director of the Central Africa Human Rights Defenders Network (REDHAC).

Under pressure from NGOs, the United Nations, the United States and France — the country’s former colonial ruler and a close ally — Biya announced an investigation into the February killings, which found that the “uncontrolled” soldiers had tried to hide their crime and falsified their reports.

The United Nations welcomed the “positive step”, but demanded that “all those responsible” for the killing be brought to justice.

“There are more and more convictions, but unfortunately they are slow to produce the desired result, which is to establish a true rule of law,” said Ngo Mbe.

In another high-profile case, seven soldiers are on trial for the execution-style killing of two women and their babies in the Far North, a region abutting Nigeria where Boko Haram jihadists fighters have carried out brutal attacks on civilians.

The atrocity was filmed and shared on social media.

The government had initially dismissed the images as fake before — under international pressure — changing position and arresting the seven.

POLITICAL CRISIS

On top of those conflicts, Cameroon has been experiencing an unprecedented political crisis since Biya — who is 87 years old and has ruled Cameroon since 1982 — was re-elected in 2018.

His challenger and main opponent, Maurice Kamto, and hundreds of his supporters were arrested shortly after the elections.

They spent nine months in prison without trial before being released in October 2019, again after strong international mobilisation.

“The international community’s interventions inconvenience the regime… but very often only at first, and very little over the long term,” said Christophe Bobiokono, a member of the National Commission for Human Rights and Freedom, a government institute.

Local and international NGOs announced in early June that anglophone journalist Samuel Wazizi, who had been arrested ten months earlier, had died in detention at the hands of the military after being tortured.

The army finally acknowledged the death but denied the allegations of torture, claiming that he had died of severe sepsis less than two weeks after he was arrested on a terrorism charge.

Wazizi’s family said they were never informed of his death.

NGOs immediately called for an independent investigation, and hours later the French ambassador announced to the press that Biya would launch a probe after the two had met to discuss the death.

The press watchdog RSF ranks Cameroon 134th out of 180 countries and territories in its 2020 World Press Freedom Index, three places lower than the previous year.

Source: AFP

The Communist Party of Swaziland supports calls for an end to atrocities being committed by the Cameroonian military in Ambazonia, the former UN Trust territory of Southern Cameroons, also known as English-speaking Cameroon.

The Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) condemns the continued atrocities committed on the people of Ambazonia by the Cameroonian government and its security forces. A former UN Trust territory Under British administration, the people of Ambazonia have for decades been denied their right to self-determination. The region has been characterised by the systematic burning down of entire villages, targeted kidnapping and killing of human rights activists, the rape and killing of women, men and children, by the Cameroon military. The government has in some instances shut down the internet in attempts to hide the atrocities.

The CPS calls for the working class of the world to unite in the call for the halting of human rights violations in the region. The CPS also supports calls for the United Nations Security Council to mandate an Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on this conflict and for the African Union to actively resolve the conflict.

Since September 2016, the Cameroon military has carried out a systematic and ruthless military campaign against the minority Ambazonian communities. Initiated in 2016 to suppress peaceful demonstrations for the rights of the populations in the regions, the campaign has relentlessly violated international human rights law.  These include, among others, the burning down of more than 400 villages by the Cameroon military – along with the burning of the old and the sick in their own homes in some cases. The military has forced tens of thousands to seek refuge in neighbouring Nigeria, and also internally displaced close to a million people. In March 2019, the United Nations reported that about 4 million people in the region had been affected by the conflict.

The Cameroonian government and its military have ignored all calls for an end to the atrocities committed by its soldiers in the region, including ignoring a call from the African Union’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights on Cameroon to:

1. Investigate the alleged killings, rapes, inhumane treatment and human rights violations on peaceful protesters by the riot police, elements of the gendarmerie, the military and the BIR in Bamenda, Buea and Kumba;

2. Immediately end the alleged violence against civilians and take necessary steps to ensure that the human rights of its citizens and all its inhabitants are respected;

3. Uphold the right to freedom of expression, assembly,

4. Cease all arbitrary arrests and detention; and

5. Release all individuals unlawfully arrested during the protest.

In the months that followed there were peaceful protests by the people in the region, countered by more vicious persecution of peaceful protesters by the Cameroonian government.

The violent suppression of the voices of Ambazonians is clearly systematic and will not end without united decisive action from all peace-loving people across the world. The Communist Party of Swaziland calls for the African Union to also play a decisive leadership role in the conflict. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has the duty to promote and protect human rights within the African continent. Cameroon is a State Party to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The Communist Party of Swaziland thus also calls upon the Commission to engage in practical programs of action for these atrocities committed upon the Ambazonian people by the Cameroonian government to end.

Issued by the Communist Party of Swaziland

Thokozane Kenneth Kunene

General Secretary

The Biya Francophone regime in Yaoundé is moving slowly but surely towards approving dual citizenship laws as a move to end the crisis in Southern Cameroons and encourage Cameroonians living in the diaspora to support the so-called one and indivisible political fabrication.

Some docile French Cameroun MPs now say both Southern Cameroons and French Cameroun diaspora are a great partner in economic development whose relocation from their homeland should cease to be seen as a brain drain or loss.

A group of prominent members of parliament from the ruling CPDM crime syndicate have all supported a 421-page document comprising 1,245 articles whose purpose is to reform inter alia, the Civil Code, the Nationality Code and the organization of civil status in Cameroon.

The new law proposed by Biya and his Essingan gang seeks to provide a solution to the problem of dual nationality that was prohibited by the law of 11 June 1968 in Cameroon.

 Cameroon Concord News Group understands dual nationality has always caused tensions and polemics because of its application by the French Cameroun authorities with President Biya, Adolphe Moudiki of SNH, tennis super star Yannick Noah and football legends Samuel Eto’o, Patrick Mboma and Roger Milla allowed to move in and out of the country with European passports.

The predominantly French Cameroun MPs recently opined that Southern Cameroonians and French Cameroun citizens  living abroad can still contribute effectively to the Cameroonian economy without having to leave their foreign adopted countries.

The focus of the divided National Assembly in Yaoundé now is to work and develop modalities on how this engagement can be actualized without putting President Biya and his family at risk of losing power.

A well-placed source deep within the CPDM Central Committee who spoke to Cameroon Concord News but sued for anonymity pointed out that Biya and his acolytes were shifting their thinking after realizing that Cameroonians abroad can help the country immensely while living abroad.

Prime Minister Dion Ngute is expected to appeal to all Cameroonians who lost their citizenship to apply for reinstatement immediately when the new law is promulgated. Chief Dr. Dion Ngute is pushing for a united Cameroon as a nation to have strong bonds with its diaspora citizens who contribute a lot to Cameroon’s economic development.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai