Cameroon is poised to upgrade its emergency response towards COVID-19 outbreak following the approval of an emergency loan by International Monetary Fund (IMF), Cameroon’s Minister of Finance, Louis Paul Motaze said on Wednesday.

“It is (IMF loan) very good news for the country. You know that we are facing the crisis (COVID-19) and there is a plan that has been designed by the government and we needed money for that. We are very happy to know that the negotiations have led to a positive conclusion,” Motaze told reporters in the capital, Yaounde, adding that the loan will be used “specifically” to equip hospitals, supply needed material in a transparent way.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic is having a “significant” impact on Cameroon’s economy, and could lead to a historic fall of GDP growth, he said.

“We are losing a lot of money to COVID-19. That means that we are going to face a lot of difficulties in the future and this is why it’s very important for us to see how we can look for funding for all the projects we have, because life should continue after the crisis,” said Motaze.

On Monday, IMF declared it has approved a disbursement of 226 million U.S. dollars to help Cameroon meet the urgent balance of payments the country needs stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.

To date, Cameroon has registered in 2,265 confirmed novel coronavirus cases, including 108 deaths and 934 cured cases, according to the latest statistics from the Africa CDC.

Source: Xinhuanet

Everyone fears coronavirus, but for Augustine, a villager in Cameroon’s Southwest Region, the dread is especially deep.

If he were to fall seriously ill from the new virus, he would need to make a five-hour trek by road and canoe from his home in Ekondo to a health centre able to care for him.

The trip would unfold in the midst of a brutal conflict in this remote corner of Cameroon between armed separatists and government forces.

His first step, Augustine said fatalistically, would be to “pray intensely.”

Since October 2017, when anglophone militants took up arms against the French-majority state, more than 3,000 people in the Southwest and neighbouring Northwest Region have lost their lives, according to humanitarian organisations.

Around 700,000 people have fled their homes.

Healthcare infrastructure has been one of the collateral victims of the fighting — 115 medical centres have been destroyed and attacks on medical personnel are frequent, leaving people in remote areas almost stripped of defences at a time of pandemic.

In Ekondo, “we try to practice barrier gestures as much as we can, because we have to do everything possible to prevent the virus,” said Augustine, reached by AFP by phone from the Gabonese capital of Libreville.

So far, the two regions have been relatively spared from the virus — only 30 cases had been recorded as of Tuesday.

But Cameroon overall has had 2,077 cases and 64 deaths, the second highest in sub-Saharan Africa after South Africa.

In addition, the country is beginning to ease coronavirus restrictions that have been especially tough for the poor, who amount to a third of the population, according to the traditional benchmark of poverty.

Restaurants and night clubs, for instance, have been authorised to re-open, and it remains possible to travel between highly contaminated and uncontaminated areas.

– ‘Not enough mortuaries’ –

If the pandemic reached remote anglophone areas, “there’s not enough (medical) workers, enough amublances, roads or even mortuaries to take care of the sick and the dead,” said Sarli Nana, who works for an NGO helping displaced people.

“Many healthcare professionals have been driven out of their jobs” and in those medical facilities which survive, “there’s a lack of equipment, medicine, water and electricity,” he said.

Aid workers are especially worried about any virus outbreak in makeshift camps that have sprung up in the equatorial forest where thousands are sheltering after the conflict destroyed their homes.

“There’s no (running) water or access to care, the conditions are catastrophic,” said Marc Serna Rius, coordinator of a local NGO called Reach Out.

“The people who are holed up in the bush are the most vulnerable of all,” he said. Many are elderly and greatly at risk from COVID-19.

Because of the poor security, access to these areas by aid groups is very difficult.

– Civilians in the middle –

On the ground, both the separatists and the armed forces seem to have turned a deaf ear to the UN’s appeal, made on March 23, for a global truce in combat zones on account of the pandemic.

“Nothing’s really changed,” said Nana.

“The separatists and the army are still carrying out attacks. People in the region are still being targeted for killings and are fleeing.”

The rebels, as well as the security forces, have been frequently accused by rights watchdogs of crimes against civiliians.

“Several separatist attacks” have been carried out since late March, said Blaise Chamango, the head of an NGO in the Southwest Region.

Last weekend, troops carried out an offensive against a separist camp in Bafut, in the Northwest Region.

In late March, the authorities announced a two-year reconstruction programme for the battered regions, including refurbishing schools, water access, thousands of homes and health centres.

A total of 90 billion CFA francs ($150 million / 136.5 million) has been earmarked — but the scheme was announced before the pandemic got into its stride and inflicted widespread disruption.

Culled from AFP

Cameroon government lies and deception over the COVID-19 pandemic continues to thrive on state radio and television (CRTV) while hundreds are dying. A secret document from the Governor of the Littoral Region pleading that Yaoundé should make available 100 coffins to bury abandoned bodies of those killed by the virus has greatly contradicted latest figures published by the Minister of Public Health claiming that the nation has recorded only 60 deaths throughout the national territory.

Cameroon Intelligence Report correspondent in Douala reported late yesterday that the true figures were 80 times greater than those quoted by the Biya administration. A senior medical practitioner in Yaoundé who spoke to us at the time of filing this report blurted out the truth. He observed that “Every hour in Douala and Yaoundé, 100 people contract COVID-19 and every 20 minutes a person loses their life due to the virus.”

Facing a major health crisis that the despotic regime was ill-equipped to combat, the 86 year old President Biya has disappeared from the political scene and his so-called Prime Minister and Head of Government; Dr Dion Ngute has characteristically resorted to blaming the crisis in Southern Cameroons, rather than Biya’s own manifest incompetence.

The virus was first detected in an Air France flight that transported the Speaker of the National Assembly, Cavaye Djibril from Paris to Yaoundé. Another Air France passenger plane reportedly flew hundreds with the virus from Paris to Douala. The visiting French citizens and the members of the Francophone diaspora almost certainly brought the infection to Cameroon.

The government in Yaoundé staged a rerun of parliamentary elections in Southern Cameroons and this outrageous decision quickly spread the virus all over the Northern Zone of Ambazonia. Now the real level of contagion in Cameroon has catapulted the country to the top of the list of Africa’s worst-affected nations.

In response to the coronavirus crisis, WHO instead shipped 14 posh vehicles to the Francophone Beti Ewondo regime while the Swiss government made a 3 billion FCFA donation. But an official from the Cameroonian Health Ministry told our undercover reporter in Yaoundé that the vehicles and the money from Switzerland have all been handed to the military for the war in Southern Cameroons.

The pandemic is now sweeping across Cameroon, overwhelming hospitals, and leading to the surging death toll. The Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR), the Francophone dominated army, the gendarmerie and the police have diverted almost all of the available face masks, sanitizers, protective clothing and other key medical supplies, for their own personal use and for the use of CPDM regime barons and their families leaving Cameroon’s doctors and nurses with little or nothing to protect themselves or to treat the public.

Reports from Douala, the hub of the Cameroon coronavirus outbreak, show that 20 to 40 people are dying of COVID-19 every day and mortuaries can no longer deal with the number of abandoned corpses.

Despite the need for social-distancing, President Biya recently lifted the ban on bars and drinking parlours undermining the country’s Health Ministry lockdown provisions and exposing the government’s total ineptitude in dealing with the crisis.

Archbishop Samuel Kleda’s cure

Such is the level of outrage and confusion that Cameroonians have been flooding into the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Douala, where Archbishop Samuel Kleda claims he has found an herbal cure for COVID-19.

Kleda told state media CRTV on April 25 that he had treated several dozen people, including eight medical staff members, for conditions affecting their respiratory systems, just like the coronavirus does.

Kleda, speaking via a messaging application from Douala, said he could confirm that his 30 years of medicinal plant research experience, especially on herbal treatment, had enabled him to find a cure for COVID-19.

He said he was very happy because everyone who had taken the herbal remedy had been cured of COVID-19.  He added that that his goal as a servant of God was to help poor and suffering people, and that was why he gave away the cure, which he named Essential Oils, free of charge.

Last week, the Cameroonian government sent a team of researchers and doctors to determine the validity of Kleda’s claimed cure. Public Health Minister Malachie Manaouda said the government’s support would be determined by the outcome of the investigation. He said if Kleda was proven to be right, the government would make it more widely available for COVID-19 patients.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai in the United Kingdom

When the United Nations Secretary General, Anthonio Guterres, called for a global ceasefire for the world to fight the common, insidious and disruptive enemy, Southern Cameroonian factions immediately signed up to the ceasefire agreement, with their commanders calling on their fighters in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions to suspend operations so as to give medical experts a chance to save the lives of their people.

The insidious enemy, the novel Coronavirus also known as COVID-19, was spreading across the globe like wildfire early this year and the  United Nations knew that without a cessation  of hostilities, many refugees and IDPs in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon would be left to their own devices to face a vicious enemy that has the nasty habit of  attacking any and everybody.

As the virus rolled into Cameroon with the fury of an 8.0 magnitude earthquake, it was clear that Ambazonian fighters had to make compromises. They knew the Yaounde government was as usual ill-equipped to deal with the virus and if the fighting had to continue, then the helpless and innocent population would be compelled to deal with a double whammy.

Even the most ferocious fighter, Field Marshal, had to suspend operations. But the Yaounde government instead saw this as an opportunity to expand its military operations in Southern Cameroons, especially in the north west region where hundreds have been murdered by army soldiers over the last month.

For over two weeks, the Minister of Defense, Joseph Beti Assomo, and Territorial Administration Minister, Paul Atanga Nji, have been ordering violent and covert military operations in Bafut where hundreds have been killed and thousands rendered homeless as the military burns homes and kills anybody in its path.

As the sex-starved and alcohol-inflammed soldiers implement their scorch earth policy, some of them fall into booby traps set by pockets of Southern Cameroonian fighters who are determined to defend their positions.

To the Yaounde government, the novel Coronavirus has offered it an opportunity to burn homes and kill anybody they suspect to be associated with the brave Southern Cameroonian fighters.

Today, it is unsafe for anybody to travel to the small towns in Southern Cameroons. Government officials who are making the most of the situation are targeting people they hate. Southern Cameroons has been transformed into Stalin-Leninist Russia where a few people make the laws.

It is easy for these government officials to brand anybody a terrorist and then haul them to Yaounde for them to face a long jail term.

In Mamfe for example, residents have been reporting that the current Manyu Senior Divisional Officer and senior council officials, some of whom have left office, have been taking advantage of young girls who are running away from the fighting that is still raging in many parts of Manyu Division.

As the population flees, many of them leave their home without belongings.  For the girls, the war has been a disaster. Many of them are homeless and desperately poor.

In many cases, these government officials will make huge promises to these girls, some of whom are teenagers, and in the process, the girls are abused sexually.

Since there is no mechanism that can help investigate some of those issues, many young girls just end up bearing their pain in silence, hoping that they would one day return to their villages if the fighting ended.

But there is no end in sight and there will be no peace for these girls who have been transformed into prostitutes. The government is in no mood to negotiate and its officials in Yaounde and in the two English-speaking regions have developed a war economy that is putting huge amounts of money in their pockets.

These girls and other victims of abuse cannot take the matter to the police as the police bosses are in cahoots with the Senior Divisional Officer and his military criminals.

As the world focuses its attention on the Coronavirus, it must remember that the guns in Southern Cameroons are still at work. The country’s government is taking advantage of the situation and it is mowing that many of its communities in Southern Cameroons.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai in the United Kingdom

Cameroon’s military says it killed at least 22 separatist fighters in a week of raids on seven rebel camps in the country’s troubled western regions.  Villagers, however, say the military killed at least 13 civilians in the raids, which involved hundreds of troops.  

The commander in Cameroon’s English-speaking Northwest region said more than 300 troops were involved in successful raids this past week on rebel Ambazonian camps.  

General Valere Nka spoke via a messaging application Monday from the town of Bafut, where he was praising troops on behalf of Cameroon’s President Paul Biya.

“A good number of Ambazonians were neutralized and we have [recovered] 50 guns, pistols, ammunitions, motorcycles and even a Fortuna car, two horses and so on,” he said.

Nka said troops on Thursday and Friday killed 15 rebels in Bafut, including an infamous fighter calling himself “General Aladji,” who in 2018 kidnapped dozens of schoolchildren. 

He said Cameroonian troops killed seven other rebels during raids on camps in several villages and the town of Bamenda with no civilian casualties.

But villagers disputed that claim and said at least 13 civilians were killed in the clashes.  

Thirty-two-year-old Oumarou Tanda said seven civilians were found dead after the military left his village of Bangolan. 

Speaking through a messaging app from the village, he said three of those killed were fellow Muslims with whom he was praying on Friday when the military opened fire.

“The military men that are Muslims went into the mosque to pray,” he said.  “The Amba boys break in [attacked the troops].  So instead of the military to shoot the Ambas, they instead turned and be shooting but the civilians.  Now in the village we do not know who we are counting on, because we were counting on the military but now the military are shooting but us.”

Tanda said his village had welcomed the military in hopes that they would prevent rebel attacks and abductions.

In the northwest town of Tatum, farmer Innocent Ngumulah said crossfire during raids in three neighboring villages killed six people, including teenagers. 

He told VOA that villagers had expected the army to protect them from the rebels.

“It is rather unfortunate. They had been hoping that the military will come in and solve their problems so that this killing left and right will come to an end. They regret that they are now like orphans.  They are tired. They want peace and that the rule of law should reign,” he said.

The separatists on social media blamed Cameroon’s military for the civilian casualties, acknowledged their own losses in the raids, and claimed responsibility for an unclear number of military deaths.  

Cameroon’s military denied suffering any losses and said only a few of its troops were wounded.  

Cameroon’s anglophone rebels have since 2017 been fighting to carve out an English-speaking state from Cameroon’s French-speaking majority. 

The rebels and Cameroon’s military routinely accuse each other of atrocities against civilians, which rights groups have documented on both sides. 

The United Nations says the fighting in the English-speaking  regions has cost more than 3,000 lives and displaced more than half a million people.

Culled from VOA