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6, June 2019

Rights monitors sound alarm over ‘neglected’ Southern Cameroons crisis ⁰

Rights groups have sounded a warning over the escalating crisis in western Cameroon, where separatists and government forces are locked in deadly combat.

“The international community is asleep at the wheel when it comes to the crisis in Cameroon,” the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), Jan Egeland, said in a report issued on Tuesday.

“Brutal killings, burned-down villages and massive displacement have been met with deafening silence.”

Two regions in Cameroon are in the grip of an armed campaign by English-speaking militants seeking independence from the francophone-majority country.

On October 1 2017, they declared the creation of the “Republic of Ambazonia,” covering the two English-speaking regions incorporated into post-independence Cameroon in 1961.

The declaration went largely unnoticed outside Cameroon, and “Ambazonia” — named after a bay at the mouth of the Douala River — has been recognised by no-one.

The government responded with a brutal crackdown, and the separatists in turn have mounted a campaign of attacks on state buildings, shooting and kidnappings.

According to the International Crisis Group think tank, 1,850 people have been killed, while more than 530,000 people have been forced from their homes, according to UN figures.

The NRC said the crisis in the Northwest and Southwest Regions topped its annual list of the world’s “most neglected displacement crises”.

There has been no major mediation effort, no large relief programme, minimal media interest and insufficient pressure to stop attacks on civilians, it said.

Second and third on the NRC list were long-running conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic.

Separately, a report by a Cameroon-based rights group in Africa, the CHRDA, and the Canada-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, accused the armed forces of conducting “a deliberate, violent campaign against civilian populations”.

It acknowledged that local armed groups also bore “much responsibility” for the violence.

“It is sometimes argued that the current crisis is just one more conflict in a series of reciprocal attacks and reprisals between government and secessionist forces,” the report, published on Monday, said.

“However, minimizing the seriousness of the attacks on civilians as part of the ‘normal’ conflict serves to shield serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity and may even enable their continuation.

“Minimizing the conflict also ignores evidence that the violence is spreading, engulfing Francophone regions of the country, becoming a threat to the entire sub-region.”

Around a fifth of Cameroon’s population of 24 million are English-speakers.

Resentment has long festered at perceived discrimination at the hands of the francophone majority in education, law and the economy.

In recent years, growing demands for autonomy or a return to Cameroon’s federal structure were rejected by President Paul Biya, prompting radicals to gain the ascendancy in the anglophone movement.

AFP

6, June 2019

French and Southern Cameroons Crisis: Full-blown war can still be averted ⁰

As Cameroon tops a list of the most neglected crises, the world must help those in need and demand an end to attacks on civilians

Mary hands me two tattered photos. In the first, family members stand proudly outside their modest home in Buea, South-West Cameroon. In the second, an empty plot remains, their wooden hut burned to the ground.

Mary and the 14 family members who lived in the house fled to the bush last December. They are still waiting for help to rebuild their home and their lives.

Conflict has uprooted half a million people in South-West and North-West Cameroon. Hundreds of villages like Mary’s have been razed. Hospitals have been attacked. Health workers fear being abducted or killed. Over 780,000 children are out of school, and their teachers are attacked and abused if they try to restart classes.

When brutal fighting displaces hundreds of thousands of civilians, it usually sets international alarm bells ringing. But Cameroon’s fast-deteriorating crisis has resulted in no mediation efforts, no large relief programme, little media interest and too little pressure on the parties to stop attacking civilians.

The silence is chilling.

This is why Cameroon tops this year’s global list of the most neglected displacement crises, according to NRC’s annual tracking system.

Cameroon’s crisis has roots in the country’s troubled colonial history. After World War One, the former German colony was split between a French and British mandate. When the French part became independent in 1960, people in the English speaking regions had to merge with either Nigeria- or French-speaking Cameroon. What was then known as Southern Cameroons ended up with the latter, creating a country with French and English as official languages. However, communities in the English-speaking part of the country have felt increasingly marginalized since.

In 2016, people took to the streets in peaceful demonstrations. A heavy crackdown by security forces ensued, leading to widespread violence and the formation of armed opposition groups.

A year later, non-state armed groups in the region officially declared a symbolic independence from Cameroon, followed by clashes between the national army and secessionist groups. Both sides have been accused of horrific human rights violations. The UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, described the situation as spiraling completely out of control, after visiting in May.

Unbiased information is scarce. Social media is swamped by photos of apparent atrocities. But independent journalists are absent or restricted, and the crisis rarely makes international headlines.

The lack of public attention to the crisis is followed closely by a lack of financial support. Despite being one of the smallest UN’s aid appeals, Cameroon is among the least funded. The consequences of this can been seen immediately.

When I visited Cameroon in April, only a splattering of poorly-resourced international relief organisations were visible on the ground. Too few reach beyond the provincial capitals, so many families receive no assistance, even though it is possible to negotiate access with the parties on the ground. Communities ration and share the little assistance they receive, often travelling long distances themselves to deliver aid to those still hiding in the bush.

The women I spoke with in Buea said they feel abandoned by the international community. They asked me, ‘where is the international solidarity? Where is Europe?’

Europe is dragging its heels. Cameroon’s colonial history should be an argument for positive engagement today, and not disengagement. Furthermore, Cameroon is seen as an important ally for many countries in the fight against Boko Haram in the country’s north. The attention to problems there is no excuse for political inaction.

Countries with influence in the region must demand conflict parties stop attacks on civilians and allow schools to reopen.

When I addressed an informal session of the United Nations Security Council in May, my message on Cameroon was clear. More aid is needed, but it is only a temporary solution. Coherent conflict resolution efforts towards a political solution are the only thing that will end the violence and the suffering. Regional and international bodies, like the African Union, the European Union and the UN Security Council can and should play a more important role.

There is still time to avert a full-blown war.

Source: Reuters

6, June 2019

Cameroon tops list of world’s most displacement crises ⁰

The world’s 10 most displacement crises—rendering millions of people homeless– have continued to worsen due either to political neglect, a shortage of funds or lack of media attention, according to a new report released by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

NRC Secretary-General Jan Egeland says humanitarian assistance should be given based on needs– and needs alone. However, every day millions of displaced people are neglected because they have been struck by the wrong crisis and the dollars have dried up.

The countries faced with displacement crises last year were largely in Africa, with Cameroon heading the list, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Central African Republic, Burundi, Mali, Libya and Ethiopia.

The remaining three, according to the NRC, were Ukraine, Venezuela and Palestine.

“This depressing list must serve as a wake-up call for all of us. Only by drawing attention to these crises, learning about them and placing them high on the international agenda, can we achieve much needed change,” said Egeland, a former UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator

Dr Martin Scott, from the University of East Anglia, UK, and lead author of a recent report into The State of Humanitarian Journalism, told IPS although reports like this are an important first step in raising the profile of these crises – but it is not enough to simply lament the lack of coverage.

“What’s needed is a clear-headed assessment of why these displacement crises receive so little coverage. Partly, it’s a reflection of the broken business models of most international journalism – which means news outlets often struggle to provide consistent coverage of real public value,” he argued.

But it is also a reflection of the political priorities of powerful countries – which news outlets often reflect, Dr Scott added.

These reports, he pointed out, also draw attention to what’s not working, in general, within international journalism.

“But there are news outlets which do, regularly, report on crises like these – such as Devex, News Deeply, The New Humanitarian and Inter Press Service (IPS),” he noted.

“It is important to highlight their work – so that audiences know there is coverage of these crises out there,” he declared.

Singling out Cameroon, Egeland said the international community is asleep at the wheel when it comes to the crisis in Cameroon. Brutal killings, burned-down villages and massive displacement have been met with deafening silence.

He said conflict has so far uprooted half a million people in South-West and North-West Cameroon. Hundreds of villages have been set ablaze. Hospitals have been attacked. Health workers fear being abducted or killed.

Over 780,000 children have seen their schools close and thousands of people, currently hiding in the bushes, have received no humanitarian relief. Still there has been no major mediation efforts, no large relief programmes, minimal media interest and too little pressure on parties to stop attacking civilians.

“This culture of paralysis by the international community has to end. Every day the conflict is allowed to continue, bitterness is building and the region edges closer towards full-blown war,” said Egeland, who recently visited the central African country.

The Norwegian Refugee Council is calling for increased attention to the crises on the list to prevent the suffering of millions of vulnerable people.

Asked if the United Nations and the international community were lagging behind in their support, NRC’s Tiril Skarstein told IPS: “We believe that the international community is not doing enough to solve these crises. The lack of political will to find solutions to these crises is often a result of lack of geopolitical interests in the area.”

However, he pointed out, there are also some countries on the list where several world powers have competing interests, leading to a deadlock and a lack of political solutions for people on the ground,–like for example in Palestine and Ukraine.

Asked if the shortfall in funding is due to neglect on the part of Western donors or domestic economic and financial constraints within donor nations, he said humanitarian assistance should be given based on needs alone.

Still, it is easier to attract humanitarian funding to some crises than others. Often, “ we see a close link between the amount of media attention a crisis receives and the amount of humanitarian funding. Some of the crises at the neglected crises list were less than 40 percent funded last year.”

But there is also a general funding shortfall, he conceded.

Last year, only about 60 percent of the total humanitarian appeals by UN and partner organizations were funded.

“This means that we need all donors to increase their humanitarian support so that we can meet the actual humanitarian needs, and we also need new donors, including several emerging economies, to step up.”

Asked why these crises were affecting mostly African nations, compared to Asian and Latin American nations, Skarstein told IPS “unfortunately, the crises on the African continent seldom make media headlines or reach foreign policy agendas before it is too late.”

The lack of funding and political attention has devastating consequences for the civilians who receive neither protection against attacks, nor the necessary relief when they have had to flee their homes in search of safety, he argued.

Most of those who flee head towards neighboring countries or are displaced within their own country. “However, the fact that most of these people do not turn up at our doorsteps here in Europe, for example, does not remove our responsibility to act,” he noted.

According to NRC, the crisis in Cameroon has its root in the country’s troubled colonial history. After World War One, the former German colony was split between a French and British mandate.

The country has now both English and French as official languages, but people in the English-speaking parts have been feeling increasingly marginalized, NRC said.

And in 2016, civilians took to the streets, and a heavy crackdown by security forces led to widespread violence and the formation of armed opposition groups.

Culled from Inter Press Service News

6, June 2019

Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Amabazonia Press Briefing ⁰

Item 1: Atrocities in Wum, Menchum County:
On Monday the 3rd of June 2019, we were stunt by a video on social media. It clearly showed the Cameroon military coordinating and inciting an armed gang of young men in Wum, Menchum County. These armed men purporting to represent the Bororo community, attacked their neighbours, the local Aghem people. They claimed these were revenge for previous attacks on their community in Naikom village by our Restoration Forces.
Eyewitnesses also report of soldiers from the Cameroon military base in Wum providing backup for the revenge attacks.

First of all, I want to extend our heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims of the Naikom village shooting and the Wum attacks. We must state that Cameroon soldiers who were on video fomenting thisattacks, and whom went on videotape the victims of the attack, were hailed by their Governor, Adolphe Lele Lafrique. We strongly condemn his actions!

This is clearly an attempt by the French neocolonial regime in Cameroun to kindle intercommunal violence in our communities. This is an effort to change the narrative of a war of extermination being waged against Ambazonians for matching on the streets with peace plants to demand their fundamental rights.

We saw this kind of escalation of provocation by the French neocolonial regime in Ivory Coast in 2011. In that country, French neocolonial pro-Ouattara forces went out of their way in Duekoue to make parents watch them chop off their children’s heads, in a desperate effort to trigger intercommunal violence. It worked in Ivory Coast but we must make sure it doesn’t work in Ambazonia.

Our mainly Muslim Borroro Brothers and Sisters have lived together in harmony with our predominantly Christian Aghem people for hundreds of years. These communities have intermarried and share several cultural values and practices.

As your Interim Government, we call for maximum restraint and vigilance from all in the affected communities.

We have reached out to Muslim and Christian leaders in Wum. This is their message for all of us especially our fellow compatriots in and around Wum – ‘Ambazonia is a country for all faiths living peacefully one with the other’.
We wish a blessed Eid to all Muslims and pray Allah accepts the Ramadan worship.

Item 2: Updates on SONARA Incident and Health Risk

We wish to express our gratitude to the Ambazonia Comrade in the ranks of the occupation regime who quickly publish on social media the preliminary measures from the smoke coming from the refinery after the fire, saving our people from the hazards of exposure.

We have confirmed the human and environmental risk, and restate the recommendations of the preliminary measures as advised:

• our children in and around Victoria should stop bathing under the rain. • we should stop harvesting and drinking rainwater in the near future. •we should avoid drinking any surface water like wells and streams for now. •those living really close to the refinery should try to use facemask

The crude oil that is burning now is said to contain Hydrogen Sulphide, Benzene, Phenols, Nitrates , Sulphates and Carbonates which burns to oxides (NOx, SOx and COx ). The oxides dissolves in rain to form Nitrous and Notric acid, Sulphurous and Sulphuric acid, and Carbonic acids.

The resulting acid rain as its known, is very caustic and corrosive. It will affect human bodies if bathed with it and can cause permanent lung damage if breath in. The probability of wounds is highly likely. If consumed it will reduce the pH of our body since it is acidic. Please advise and educate your neighbors.

As the situation develops, your Interim Government will do all it can to keep you and your family updated with critical information.

Item 3: Response Regarding UN Security Council Briefing

Much to our consternation, yesterday 4 June, 2019, at the UN Security Council Briefing, the former prime minister of the French neo-colonial regime of Lansana Conté in Guinea and current Special Representative and Head of the UN Regional Office for Central Africa (UNOCA) François Fall, continued in his shameful tradition of cover ups and championing of French neo-colonial policies in Central Africa, particularly the Cameroon regime.

An open letter from leading Human Rights Organizations called on “the Security Council to formally add Cameroon to its agenda as a regular stand-alone item,” following the ever growing ”…violence, especially abuse by [Cameroon]state forces…”, and for “[t]he Cameroon government [to] allow unhindered access to international and national human rights organizations”. We want to express our full support for the demands in this letter.

Human Rights and democracy are so unimportant to Mr. Falls he did not used both words in his speech to the council. Instead he droned ceaselessly about stability.

To the Potemkin institutions and total lack of commitment to solving the Ambazonia-Cameroon conflict described by the US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs to congress a few days ago, Mr. Falls said He “took note of efforts by the Cameroon government to find a lasting solution to the Crisis…” and asked the UN to fund the Potemkin institutions.

Mr. Falls claimed the situation has improved. His evidence being “a number of high profile visits and public statements .” Except this public statements are by Dion Ngute the new prime minister. In previous security council briefings Mr. Falls had indicated that similar pointless statements by the former prime minister Yang were signs of progress.

Fall goes on to repeat the pointless talking point of the Cameroon regime, that the world should allow the regime to find a solution by itself even as he ignored UNOCHA’s April 2019 report of more than 4.3 Million people affected by the conflict.
We want to add our voice to that of sixteen major human rights organisations and civil society organizations who signed the 7 February, 2019, petition, calling on the UN to Mandate an International Independent Fact Finding Mission to stop the killings, establish the facts on the ground and begin the process of ending the conflict.

Item 4: We Unequivocally Stand with our Political Prisoners in their fight against Isolation by the Cameroon Regime

I want to end this briefing with an emphasis on our firm stand with our Ambazonia political prisoners in their resistance to isolation efforts by the Cameroon regime via efforts to transfer individual prisoners to unknown destinations. Like the failed efforts to Transfer 62 years old Pa Ngwa Ngaling Joseph to Mbalmayo.

Sign:

Vice President

Dabney Yerima

5, June 2019

Yaounde: Opposition denounces mass arrests ⁰

Cameroon’s opposition on Sunday denounced the arrests of more than 350 supporters at demonstrations calling for the release of their jailed leader, and criticised the refusal to grant them access to lawyers.

Maurice Kamto, the country’s main opposition figure, who has been held in jail in Yaounde since January, issued a statement via his spokesman decrying “excessive and unjustified use of violence” at the demonstrations held on Saturday.

According to Kamto’s Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC) party more than 350 people were arrested, including 180 at Yaounde and 100 in the western city of Nkongsamba.

The party also said that those arrested were denied access to lawyers or any medical aid. Contacted by AFP Saturday, Cameroon’s communications ministry did not respond.

The MRC has been organising demonstrations since the October 2018 presidential election. According to official results, Kamto came second but the MRC says the vote was rigged in favour of President Paul Biya, who has been in power for 36 years.

As well as Kamto, more than 150 of the party’s activists were also imprisoned after one such march at the end of January.

In February, they appeared before a military tribunal in Yaounde accused of “insurrection, hostility to the homeland (and) rebellion”, offences which carry a possible death penalty.

Their lawyers have appealed to the UN working group on arbitrary detention over the arrests.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini criticised the arrests in March and what she called the military court’s “disproportionate” proceedings against them.

US assistant secretary of state for African affairs Tibor Nagy said in March that Cameroon would be “very wise” to release Kamto because his detention is widely perceived as politically motivated.

The government has rejected the international criticism.

On Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told his parliament’s foreign affairs committee that he was “very concerned” by the plight of Maurice Kamto and wanted to see him released.

As well as the political crisis, former French colony Cameroon is wracked by a conflict between separatists and government forces in its English-speaking west, combined with an influx of refugees from the Central African Republic and Nigeria.

Source: AFP

5, June 2019

Canada told to bolster international efforts to avert disaster in Cameroon ⁰

Cameroon is teetering on the brink of a human-rights catastrophe in a linguistic conflict that has already killed at least 1,850 people, and bilingual Canada must bolster international efforts to avert disaster, according to a report co-written by Canadian human-rights lawyers.

A government campaign in francophone-majority Cameroon against English-speaking minority rights has devolved into an armed conflict between security forces and 10 armed secessionist groups, according to the report published on Monday.

The government is on a repression campaign, burning hundreds of villages, murdering rebels, dissidents and civilians alike and raping and torturing women, according to the report, which was published by the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, based in Montreal, and the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, in Cameroon. Rebel groups have committed their own atrocities, the report says.

The report concludes “reasonable grounds” exist to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed and a concerted international effort is required to prevent the violence from spiralling.

“I don’t think it’s too late,” said Pearl Eliadis, a Montreal human-rights lawyer and senior fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre, who co-authored the report. “I’ve worked in Rwanda, East Timor and Sri Lanka before the civil war. In those cases, it was often too late. Cameroon is a rare case study where there is a moment to intervene. “But Cameroon is a historically stable country that’s on the way to being dismantled.”

Ms. Eliadis said diplomatic pressure, trade incentives, supporting local civil-society organizations and a strong push for investigating crimes could all still work on a conflict that has largely flown under the international radar.

Canada could play an effective role, she added, as a bilingual country with both civil- and common-law legal systems similar to Cameroon. Canada does not have the same colonial baggage as Britain and France, the two powers that created Cameroon along with its linguistic divisions in the 1960s. Cameroon is one of Canada’s oldest allies in Africa and has been among the biggest recipients of Canadian aid in Africa since the 1960s. “Canada, I think, has something unique to bring to the table,” Ms. Eliadis said.

According to the latest numbers from the International Crisis Group published in the report, close to 1,000 separatists, at least 650 civilians and 235 security forces personnel have died in the past two years. The report says 206 villages have been burned so far in 2019, compared with 106 in all of 2017.

Paul Biya has been President of Cameroon for 37 years. His country of 25 million includes about five million English speakers, mostly in the northwestern and southwestern parts of the country. Mr. Biya has also been waging war against Boko Haram in the north. Western countries see him as an ally against Islamist terrorism. In November, 2016, lawyers protested a government move to impose civil law on common-law regions and the lack of effort to implement basic bilingualism. Later that month, teachers joined the protest over plans to impose French in schools.

Security forces cracked down on the protests, shooting and beating dozens and jailing more than 100. Cameroonian barrister Felix Nkongho, who co-wrote the report and led research efforts on the ground, was among them. He was supposed to participate in unveiling the report Monday, but was hiding after receiving death threats.

About 25,000 people of Cameroonian origin live in Canada, about two-thirds of them in Montreal. Olivia Leke, a Southern Cameroonian who lives in Montreal, says many of her family members have fled their homes as violence has escalated.

When she saw the 2016 arrests, she says she “thought it was a joke.” Since then, an uncle’s home was burned and another uncle was kidnapped. Her grandmother died in their home village, and her mother buried her and then fled on a motorcycle to join her father, who saw the school where he served as principal burned to the ground.

“The people who have fled into the bushes have no voice,” Ms. Leke said, adding that the Cameroon government is sensitive about its international image. “Canada must act loudly and clearly to compel the Cameroon government to do what needs to be done.”

Source: The Globe and Mail

5, June 2019

French Cameroun: Fecafoot to sign partnership agreement with French manufacturer Le Coq Sportif ⁰

The Cameroonian football federation (Fecafoot) is signing next June 7 in Montpellier, France, its partnership agreement with French sportswear manufacturer Le cop sportif. The paper will be inked by Fecafoot’s president Seidou Mbombo Njoya, and Patrick Ouyi, sports marketing director at Le coq sportif.

The line of sportswear specially designed by the manufacturer for the Cameroonian national football team will be unveiled during the ceremony. Under this partnership, the Cameroonian national women’s football team will also wear le cop sportif next June 10 for the FIFA Women’s World Cup, and will thus be the first to wear the outfits designed for Cameroonian players.

“This decision to inaugurate the new sportswear line with the women’s team is a major first, and reflects the interest and importance that both partners have for women’s football,” commented Fecafoot.

Let’s note that the French manufacturer provided outfits for the Cameroon national team between 1982 and 1987.

Source: Business in Cameroon

5, June 2019

Cameroon’s budget deficit expected to widen, tax burden expected to increase ⁰

As announced earlier by Business in Cameroon, President Paul Biya issued a presidential order May 29, amending and supplementing certain provisions of the 2019 Finance Act.

The new Act provides for an increase by XAF361.5 billion in State Budget from XAF4,850.5 billion to XAF5,212 billion. Of the amount, XAF121.5 billion will come from domestic resources (including XAF56 billion in oil revenues and XAF24.5 billion in tax revenues) and XAF240 from loans (including XAF188 billion in external loans).

Since growth projections have not been revised upwards, the new 2019 budget is expected to slightly increase the tax burden and widen the budget deficit compared to previous budget forecasts. The challenge now is to be able to maintain deficit below 2% of GDP as foreseen by the ECF program with the IMF.

The adjusted 2019 Finance Act confirms that Cameroon is going into debt to repay its debt. Of an increase by XAF361.5 billion in budget, XAF240 billion are loans. Yet, XAF225.57 billion of the budget is expected to service the debt. This means the extra money borrowed will almost come out to pay off an existing debt.

Current spending forecasts drop XAF14.5 billion showing monies granted to certain ministries and other public institutions will be cut. But others will receive budget reallocations as well. Beneficiaries include the ministry of public works which receives additional XAF44.06 billion, the ministry of sports and civic education (XAF44.06 billion), and the ministry of water and energy (XAF23 billion).

Amount initially granted to the defense ministry is revised downwards, narrowed by XAF13 billion. But this does not necessarily mean that the total defense budget is cut. The joint expenditure forecasts (line 65) are up by more than XAF50 billion. This budget line has often been used to finance the war.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the budget adjustment intends to “take into account the increase in expected revenues” and “fully integrate the expenditure needs related to the upcoming elections and fuel subsidies, while maintaining the overall deficit at 2% of GDP.”

The revised budget also provides for the acceleration of the implementation of externally financed investment projects that are under way on the basis of a disbursement plan, according to an IMF statement that marks the fourth review of the three-year program Cameroon signed with the Bretton Woods Institution in June 2017.

Source: Business in Cameroon

5, June 2019

Cameroon: What the UN Regional Office for Central Africa Reported to the Security Council ⁰

In Cameroon, President Biya appointed a new Government on 4 January, which included 11 women. More than half of the country’s 60 ministers were replaced. As legislative and municipal elections remained postponed by presidential decree, supporters of the main opposition parties called for a revision of the electoral law. Meanwhile, on 5 April, Parliament enacted a law on decentralization to determine the number of regional councillors. On 26 January, protests erupted in major cities throughout the country, eliciting a violent response by internal security forces and triggering mass arrests. Those arrested included several Members of Parliament from the Social Democratic Front and the leader of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, Maurice Kamto, together with 200 of Mr. Kamto’s supporters, who are currently standing trial before a military tribunal on charges that include rebellion, insurrection and public disturbance. Some of those charges carried the death penalty. In an interview broadcast on 19 March, the spokesperson for President Biya announced that the President would reject dialogue with Mr. Kamto, who had requested a face-to-face discussion.

The security situation in the North-West and South-West Regions of Cameroon remained of serious concern, with a new wave of kidnappings and killings in early 2019. On 24 January, the leader of the separatist group, Southern Cameroons Defence Forces, was reportedly killed by the national armed forces. In February, nearly 70 people were killed during a separatist-imposed 10-day lockdown to disrupt National Youth Day activities in the two regions. On 11 February, an arson attack on the Kumba District Hospital in the South-West Region resulted in at least four patients killed and several others injured. On 19 March, the former Secretary of State in charge of secondary education was kidnapped from his residence in Bamenda by suspected secessionist fighters. On 20 March, 16 students were abducted from the University of Buea by unidentified gunmen. The Government accused the secessionists of the abductions. The authorities announced their intention to carry out investigations into alleged human rights violations by security forces in the affected regions, but no outcome was made public.

Culled from Reliefweb

4, June 2019

Boko Haram launches multiple attacks on military bases in Nigeria, steals arms ⁰

Members of the Takfiri Boko Haram terrorist group have carried out multiple attacks on military bases in northeast Nigeria, seizing three of them and stealing weapons.

Militants of the terror group have invaded four bases in the volatile Borno State from Friday through Sunday in the recent series of attacks targeting the army, military sources said on Monday.

There were no immediate reports about possible casualties.

In the latest assault on Sunday, the militants failed to seize a base in the town of Dikwa, located in Borno State, following a predawn attack.

“The terrorists attacked troops in Dikwa around 4:00 a.m. (0300 GMT) but the attack was repelled without casualty on our side,” said a military officer, who did not want to be identified.

The assailants were driving 13 trucks fitted with heavy machine guns, said a second officer.

PressTV-Boko Haram kills 10 people in eastern Niger

On Saturday, the militants stormed a base in the town of Marte, which lies 40 kilometers away from Dikwa, forcing soldiers to withdraw after a long gunfight, the two military sources said.

As the soldiers retreated to Dikwa, the militants invaded another base in Kirenowa village, located 30 kilometers from Marte.

Troops in a base in Dalwa village, 16 kilometers outside Borno State’s capital of Maiduguri, were pushed out after a six-hour battle with the militants which continued into Sunday, said the military sources.

The fighting forced Marte residents to flee into Maiduguri, arriving in trucks on Sunday, according to residents of the city.

However, troops returned to the town late Sunday with reinforcement from Maiduguri, the sources said.

The Boko Haram terror group has since July last year targeted dozens of military bases in attacks that have left scores of troopers dead.

Boko Haram’s nine-year militancy is estimated to have killed more than 27,000 people and forced 1.8 million others to flee their homes.

Boko Haram’s sphere of activities spreads as far as neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

These countries have created a joint military force to stop the terrorists from further spreading, but sustained efforts to eradicate the militants have failed and the military continues to suffer heavy losses.

Source: Presstv