Some 63 civilians who were held on Monday in the Lebialem County in Southern Cameroons were released Wednesday night, according to local authorities.

“The armed group released 25 people on Tuesday and the rest of us were released late Wednesday. Some of us who could afford paid a ransom before we were freed. We were maltreated,” one of those who held said but preferred not to be named.

Cameroon government army spokesman said, the abduction was led by a separatist commander nicknamed “general Aekeh” who is “notorious for atrocities against civilians” in the locality.

The 63 civilians who included children and women were abducted at their homes and a bar in Mmouck Leteh, a locality in Lebialem County.

Southern Cameroons have seen a rise in clashes between French Cameroun government forces and armed Ambazonia Restoration Groups in spite of repeated calls by the United Nations for the establishment of a ceasefire amid COVID-19 pandemic.

Since 2017, Southern Cameroonians have been fighting to maintain an independent nation which they established and named as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

By Fon Lawrence with files from Xinhuanet

Cameroon has rejected a Human Rights Watch report that says its military forces civilians to serve on guard duty against Boko Haram militants. The rights group says Cameroon’s military has abused villagers along the border with Nigeria who refused to join militias.

Governor of Cameroon’s Far North Region Midjiyawa Bakari insists that members of military-organized civilian militias are all volunteers.

Speaking via a messaging application from the region’s capital, Maroua, he said the state encourages the militias to keep a watch out for Boko Haram.

He said President Paul Biya asked all Cameroonians to help stop Boko Haram terrorism by denouncing suspects and strange visitors in their communities. Bakari said people who join militia groups are volunteers who have agreed to collaborate with the military and government by sharing information on any potential attack.

Last week, Human Rights Watch reported that the military in the northern border town of Mozogo was forcing civilians to perform night guard duty against Boko Haram terrorists.

The report said soldiers beat and threatened the poorly equipped and untrained civilians who refused to keep guard.

Many civilians who were scared of doing night duty fled, the report stated.

Human Rights Watch Central Africa researcher Ilaria Allegrozzi said fighting Boko Haram is the job of the military – not civilians.

“We ask the Cameroonians authorities to immediately stop forcing civilians to perform night guard duties. We ask them to investigate the abuses that we have uncovered including the beatings, the threats and the forced labor and hold those responsible to account. It is not the job of the ordinary people to protect their town from Boko Haaram.  It is the security forces who should do so,” said Allegrozzi.

Bakari denied that civilians who join the militias were poorly equipped, and said they receive what he described as great assistance.

But, 37-year-old cattle rancher Bouba Nouvadjava said the military forced him to join an under-equipped militia without guns in the northern town of Kolofata.

He spoke via a messaging application from Kolofata.

He said they have bow and arrows to intervene when possible and have been given telephones to call the military if the attackers are heavily armed.

Independent researcher on Boko Haram, Touman Oussmaila, said the militias need to be properly trained and armed.

He said very often the government gives the militias flashlights, telephones, and boots but then leaves them to fend for themselves. There is a credibility and morality crisis among civilians who join the militias, said Oussmaila, because they are forced. Some militia members can be accidentally killed by the military, he said, because they do not know how to communicate with the troops.  The militias, said Oussmaila, lack basic self-defense training.

Cameroon authorities say Boko Haram last year was targeting the militias because they were a barrier to the Islamists’ small-scale attacks on schools and markets.

Governor Bakari said that in 2019, the regional government gave a half-million dollars’ worth of food and an unspecified amount of money to support the militias.

He pledged to give $1 million more to the militias by the end of this year.

Source: VOA

Delphine Tsanga Tsogo, the first female cabinet minister of the United Republic of Cameroon has died in Bastos, Yaoundé at age 85 from a stroke.  Delphine Tsanga was the Minister of Social Affairs who curbed the power of the late President Ahidjo’s Cameroon National Union, CNU and raised the profile of the Cameroonian woman in political circles in Yaoundé.

Nicknamed the Cameroon Shakespearean Juliet, Delphine Tsanga was also credited by West Cameroon admirers with championing equal opportunities for all- a CNU policy that favoured President Biya’s ascension to power in 1982.

The current board member of Elections Cameroon was expected this morning at the agency’s Yaoundé head office in preparation for the regional elections.

Condemned to a wheelchair by an undisclosed illness for several years, the former Minister was rumoured to have died on 21 March 2020.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Southern Cameroonians in Nigeria and in Ground Zero have joined those in the diaspora calling on the disgraced former Acting leader Sako Ikome and his con man Chris Anu to take a back seat amid anger over both men’s mishandling of some two million US dollars donated by Ambzonians to finance the liberation struggle and the deteriorating humanitarian situation created by the war in Southern Cameroons.

From Taraba, Cross River and Benue states in Nigeria to all the counties in Ambazonia, thousands of Southern Cameroonians have opined that Sako Ikome and Chris Anu were completely detached from the reality and that the Ambazonia leader, President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe took a wise decision to get rid of them from the Interim Government.

 Many Southern Cameroonians contacted by our cream of reporters both in Nigeria and in the homeland said they were fed up with the lies coming from Sako Ikome and his gang and that Sako’s exploitation of the struggle for his own financial gains makes them sick.

A 79 year old woman in the Akwaya sub constituency in Manyu who received a face mask that was donated by Vice President Dabney Yerima in line with the Interim Government’s policy of combating the coronavirus outbreak, chanted “shame, shame to Dr Sako.”

Another Southern Cameroonian refugee in Douala, who declined to be named, said the so-called Sako-IG’s complete absence in the numerous crises in Ground Zero despite claiming to have raised more than two million US dollars recently pushed her to the conclusion that “Southern Cameroons leaders are in French Cameroun jail and those truly representing Ambazonia in the West are with Dabney Yerima.”

A senior Amba commander in the Meme County was quoted as saying that “the most deadly virus in Southern Cameroons is not COVID-19, but Sako’s corruption.”

By Isong Asu with files from Oke Akombi Ayukepi Akap

The US reportedly cut Cameroon from a trade pact over allegations of human rights violations. President Donald Trump said Cameroon failed to address concerns over its “persistent gross violations of internationally recognized human rights” allegedly committed by troops loyal to Africa’s oldest president who takes no chances with his own security as his citizens suffer what aid agencies call “the worst humanitarian crisis that most people are unaware of”.

The US also cut more than $17 million in security aid and support to Cameroon in February over concerns about its human rights record. In a letter addressed to Congress, President Trump cited accusations of torture and extrajudicial killings of citizens by the country’s military as reasons for removing Cameroon from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

AGOA helps sub-Saharan countries improve trade ties with the US. Eligible countries must meet criteria including a good human rights record to benefit from the trade. But the US trade pressure has not changed anything in the behavioral patterns in Yaoundé. 

Cameroon will be receiving two refurbished Island Class patrol boats from the United States this year, requesting them under the Excess Defence Articles programme.

News of the acquisition was revealed by the United States Embassy in Cameroon in January this year when it said “in 2020, the Cameroonian Navy plans to purchase two 110 foot American patrol boats to greater extend its ability to patrol Cameroon’s economic exclusion zone.”

The embassy did not identify the type of vessels but according to the Excess Defence Articles (EDA) database, in April 2019 Cameroon requested two Island Class patrol boats with mid-life extension, and two have been allocated by the EDA programme. They have not yet been accepted nor delivered.

According to the EDA database, the total acquisition value is $40.5 million, but the total current value is $4 million.

Island Class patrol boats were originally acquired for the US Coast Guard in the 1980s and built by Bollinger Shipyards. A total of 49 were built for the Coast Guard.

Island Class boats are based on a Vosper Thornycroft design. They are 110 feet (34 metres long), have an endurance of five days and top speed of nearly 30 knots. They can accommodate two officers and sixteen enlisted personnel. Navigation and communication include satellite navigation, Loran C and surface search radar with collision avoidance capabilities.

Armament aboard is one 25 mm chain gun and two 7.62 mm M60 light machine guns and/or two 12.7 mm machineguns.

The US Coast Guard is retiring its Island Class vessels and some of these are being delivered to foreign countries under the EDA programme, including Georgia, Pakistan, Costa Rica and Ukraine.

The acquisition of the Island Class vessels will add to several Defender class rigid hull boats which the United States provided to the Cameroonian military in the course of 2017 to enhance its maritime patrols. Maritime security is a major challenge in the Gulf of Guinea (where Cameroon belongs) with an alarming rate of piracy incidents registered in 2019.

The United States said it has made significant contributions to Cameroon’s maritime security. “In 2016, the United States funded the creation of six maritime operations centres in Limbe, Douala, and Kribi that enable naval operations at sea, and we will continue to provide maintenance and training for these centres this year,” the US Embassy said in January.

Cameroon has strengthened its navy in recent times with additional vessels. Over the last decade this includes two P-108 patrol craft delivered from China’s Poly Technologies in 2014, a second hand OPV-54 patrol craft from France in 2014, a 23 metre Aresa 2300 landing craft and two 24 metre Aresa 2400 CPV Defender patrol boats in 2013. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, two Aresa-3200 patrol craft were delivered in 2014. The second hand patrol boat CNS Dipikar (ex-Grebe) was delivered in March 2017 from France.

Reported by Cameroon Intelligence Report and Defeceweb

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government, Dabney Yerima has called on the African Union to censure the recent extrajudicial killings in Menchum and Lebialem Counties and the indiscriminate arrest of teenagers at Banya Quarters in Mamfe by soldiers loyal to the Biya French Cameroun regime in Yaoundé. He also demanded accountability for the occupying army over its shoot-to-kill policy in Southern Cameroons.

Speaking to members of his war cabinet after his televised address on Tuesday, Vice President Yerima hinted that the jailed leaders will be in the Yaounde Court of Appeal today Thursday 16 of July 2020 amid ongoing killings in the Menchum and Lebialem Counties. These happenings and the French Cameroun army’s recent activity in Mamfe must be understood by the African Union and the United Nations within the context of the French Cameroun regime’s widespread and systematic shoot-to-kill policy targeting Southern Cameroonians, Yerima observed.

The exiled Southern Cameroons leader added that under international law, the Ngarbuh killings amounts to an extrajudicial execution giving rise to individual and collective criminal responsibility as a war crime at the International Criminal Court.

Yerima revealed that French Cameroun regime forces were denying Southern Cameroonians access to medical care and preventing foreign aid from reaching Ambazonians in the rural areas and in the bushes.

Dabney Yerima also pointed out that the Biya regime is maintaining a kind of deliberate silence on the Amba 4 Points Agenda because Yaoundé is unable to account for the remains of many Southern Cameroonians killed ever since the beginning of the war. “And this is prolonging family’s sufferings and denying Southern Cameroons martyrs a dignified burial’ he noted.  

Vice President Yerima estimated that the Biya French Cameroun regime was withholding the bodies of 209 Southern Cameroonians in addition to at least 103 unidentified bodies languishing in morgues in Mbouda, Baffoussam, Douala, Yaoundé and Buea.

By Chi Prudence Asong

President Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe and his top aides shall be appearing before a panel of French Cameroun judges at the Court of Appeal in the Centre Region in Yaoundé today Thursday 16 July 2020.

Ambazonia Interim Government sources in French Cameroun say the leaders will attend the session which is for hearing of their appeal against the judgment of the Yaoundé Military Tribunal which sentenced them to life imprisonment in what the international community described as a sham trial.

President Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe, and nine of his senior advisers were convicted of charges including terrorism and secession and given a fine of $350m (£286m) after an all-night sitting by the French Cameroun court.

The severity of the sentence has failed to stop the bloody conflict playing out in Southern Cameroons between Ambazonia Restoration Forces and the Cameroon government military.

A ghost town operation is expected to greet the leaders hearing throughout Southern Cameroons this weekend.

In January 2018, President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe was arrested with 46 Southern Cameroonians in NERA hotel in the Nigerian capital, Abuja by Nigerian Special Forces. They were then handed over to the Biya Francophone regime in French Cameroun – a move that was ruled illegal by a Nigerian court in March this year.

The Southern Cameroons leaders have refused to recognize the right of the French Cameroun military tribunal in Yaoundé to try them. Their lawyers drafted an appeal, which was filed to the Appeal Court in the French Cameroun’s Central region.

By Isong Asu

The Covid19 pandemic has by now affected every country in the world. Lockdown regulations implemented in most countries to slow the spread of the virus have impacted particularly severely on the poor, depriving them of their livelihoods and plunging them even deeper into abject poverty. As of 9 July 2020, Cameroon had recorded almost 15,000 confirmed cases (www.covid19info.live). This appears to be a relatively low number. However, it can be safely assumed that the true numbers are under reported, due to a lack of testing equipment, and inadequate medical facilities.

On 1 July 2020, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2532, calling on all countries in a conflict situation to observe a 90 – day cease fire, to slow down the spread of the virus and to facilitate initiatives to combat the pandemic. The Resolution:

1.Demands a general and immediate cessation of hostilities in all situations on its agenda and supports the efforts undertaken by the Secretary-General and his Special Representatives and Special Envoys in that respect;

2. Calls upon all parties to armed conflicts to engage immediately in a durable humanitarian pause for at least 90 consecutive days, in order to enable the safe, unhindered and sustained delivery of humanitarian assistance, provisions of related services by impartial humanitarian actors, in accordance with the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence, and medical evacuations, in accordance with international law, including international humanitarian law and refugee law as applicable.

The adoption of Resolution 2532 has had little impact on the conflict in Cameroon. Since its adoption, there have been numerous attacks, including:

1.1 July 2020: Arson attacks by the military in Banbaki-Tungo, Mezam division in which some houses were burnt.

2.4 July 2020: Arson attacks in Ngusi, in K. Muan Division.

3.7 July 2020, Military invaded Bakut, in Eyumojck, and killed 2 men and arrested many youths.

4.8 July 2020: Clashes at Kikaikelaki, and invasion of Kikoo and Saakir villages.

As a Roman Catholic organization that promotes peace, justice and sustainable development in Africa, the Denis Hurley Peace Institute calls on the Cameroon government and the Anglophone Cameroon leaders to respect the call of the United Nations Security Council, to adhere to Resolution 2532, and to work out an agreement for a ceasefire that can lead to genuine negotiations.

We are pleased to note that on 2 July 2020, Cameroon government representatives started pretalks with representatives of Anglophone Cameroon, led by SisikuAyukTabe Julius. This will hopefully create an enabling environment for confidence building and a ceasefire agreement from both parties. We appeal to the Cameroon government and Anglophone Cameroonian leaders not to lose this momentum, but to adhere to Resolution 2532, and to use the ceasefire firstly to build the capacity to protect the health of all citizens of Cameroon in the wake of the Covid19 pandemic, and secondly to use the momentum to engage in peace negotiations that would result in a lasting peace agreement that expresses the will of the people of Anglophone Cameroon.

Archbishop Stephen Brislin

Liaison Bishop: Denis Hurley Peace Institute