Cameroon’s military has released health workers detained for several days who were working for the aid group Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF. The military says the workers were helping a wounded rebel leader, who also was detained, and they are still being investigated. MSF has condemned the detentions, the latest incident between the group and Cameroon’s military.

Cameroon’s military alleged that MSF this week deliberately engaged in a clandestine operation to exfiltrate armed rebels.

In a statement, the military says Mbu Princely Tabe and Bessong Eugene, two self-proclaimed separatists generals contacted MSF Sunday to help fighters wounded in a battle with Cameroon government troops in Tinto, a southwestern farming village.

The statement by military spokesperson, Army Captain Cyrille Serge Atonfack Guemo, says after a tipoff, an ambulance belonging to MSF was intercepted by the military in Nguti with Mbu Princely receiving treatment inside the ambulance. Nguti is a commercial town in Cameroon’s English speaking Southwest region.

The military said one of the rebel generals, Bessong Eugene, died and was buried in the bush before MSF arrived to save the lives of wounded fighters.

Bernard Okalia Bilai, the governor of Cameroon’s Southwest region, says he is surprised that MSF decided to help a dreaded self-proclaimed separatist general who was wounded in an armed battle with government troops. He says the dangerous fighter has killed many civilians and destroyed a great deal of property, including public edifices. Bilai says MSF was helping the criminal known by the Cameroon government troops as a terrorist to escape from the military.

Bilai said two MSF staff held by the military for questioning were released after two days but gave no further details.

MSF has denied it was helping any rebels to escape from the military. In a statement, MSF said Sunday the aid group contacted Cameroon military authorities and informed government troops of plans to transfer a wounded patient for medical assistance at Mutengene, another English-speaking southwestern town.

MSF says its ambulance was intercepted by government forces and taken to a different location. In the statement, MSF says it treats people based on medical need, regardless of their background or affiliations.

Felix Agbor Balla, a human rights lawyer and founder of the Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, says MSF is working in accordance with the Geneva conventions, which require people wounded in conflicts to be treated humanely without any adverse distinction based on sex, race, nationality, religion, political opinions, or any other similar criteria.

Balla says MSF cannot give the identities of all the people it is treating to the military as requested by the government.

“If Doctors Without Borders starts informing the government in detail of each and every patient, then the independence, the confidentiality is no longer there. Government is trying to put Doctors Without Borders in harm’s way,” said Balla. “I would recommend that Doctors Without Borders and the government should sit down and have a discussion. Government can criticize Doctors Without Borders, but we should not forget the wonderful work that Doctors Without Borders has been doing in this country.”

MSF has been in Cameroon since 1984. The aid group gives medical assistance to people suffering Boko Haram atrocities in Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria. MSF provides surgical care, malaria treatment and treatment for COVID-19 patients in Cameroons restive English-speaking southwest region. The group says it treated more than a million patients in Cameroon in 2020.

In 2020, Cameroon suspended MSF from carrying out activities in the English-speaking northwest region. The government accused MSF of having close relations with separatists who are fighting to create an independent English-speaking state. The aid organization strongly denies the accusations and says its only goal is to save lives.

The U.N. says the separatist crisis that began in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions in 2017 has killed more than 3,300 people and displaced 750,000, both internally and to neighboring Nigeria.

Source: VOA

On Saturday, 25 December, the emergency call centre of the humanitarian medical organisation Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) received a call related to a wounded person in need of urgent assistance in the Tinto health area. One of our ambulances managed to pick the patient up the next morning at Ashum area. Given his severe condition, he had to be transferred to Mutengene via Kumba for surgical attention.

As agreed and regularly done, MSF had contacted the local military authorities beforehand, informed them about the transfer of a wounded patient to Mutengene and shared the patient’s age and gender as requested. The ambulance was however stopped by Cameroonian security forces at the Nguti check point and forced to return to Mamfe, where the patient had to be treated and stabilised.

Since then, to avoid further incidents with our ambulances, we have been in touch with the authorities to understand the reason for the miscommunication with this reference.

Regarding this incident and the allegations published in some media, MSF reminds all relevant parties that:

1. In our work in Cameroon, and elsewhere in the world, MSF treats people based on medical need, regardless of their background or affiliations. This impartial and neutral medical humanitarian work is notably protected by the Geneva Conventions, which specify that persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

2. Hindering and obstructing our work puts patients’ lives at risk.

3. Allegations of complicity with any actor in a conflict puts patients and MSF staff in grave and immediate danger.

4. We appeal to everyone to be responsible in their statements and publications relating to our humanitarian action in the country. In an already very sensitive context, the spread of information that damages our reputation as a neutral, impartial and independent humanitarian organisation puts the lives of our teams and patients in danger.

A military tribunal in Cameroon has jailed dozens of opposition supporters for terms of up to seven years for “rebellion”, their party’s deputy secretary-general said Monday.

The 47 defendants were arrested in September 2020 as Maurice Kamto’s Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon and several other parties planned protests against the government of Paul Biya, in power for nearly 40 years in the central African country.

Police dispersed hundreds of protesters in the economic capital Douala and made more than 500 arrests across the country. Of those, 124 remain in detention, according to the MRC.

The military tribunal in the capital Yaounde sentenced 47 activists, with Kamto’s spokesman Olivier Bibou Nissack and the party’s treasurer Alain Fogue getting seven-year terms, Roger Noah told AFP.

The rest were given terms of between one and five years, he said.

The charges included “rebellion” and “attempted insurrection”, according to MRC vice president Emmanuel Simh.

In September, a group of around 50 lawyers said they would not mount a defence for around 100 detained opposition members, denouncing what they described as the arbitrary and illegal nature of their detention.

Kamto — runner-up to Biya in a 2018 presidential election — was imprisoned in January 2019 following a march protesting the vote during which he presented himself as “president-elect”.

Following international pressure, Biya ordered him freed nine months.

The government has said that those held since September 2020 face charges of “attempted insurrection” or “revolution”.nSome have already been convicted.

Two months after their arrest, Amnesty International accused the Biya government of “relentless repression of opposition” members characterised by “arbitrary arrests and detentions”.

Source: AFP

The Southern Cameroons Secretary of the Economy Hon. Tabeyang Brado has advised all Southern Cameroonians in the diaspora to commit to the confidence measures implemented by Vice President Dabney Yerima and start investing in the Amba bonds and Big Rubbergun Projects.

Secretary Brado made the appeal to Southern Cameroonians in Europe and the US late on Monday saying La Republique du Cameroun is yet to test the might of the Ambazonia Revolutionary Guards. Tabeyang Brado also revealed that after 5 years into the war, Yaoundé is now not able to bear the costs.

The prominent member of the Ambazonia Interim Government hinted of a well-calculated response at the right time and place should the French Cameroun regime in Yaoundé make the slightest mistake of hosting the Africa Cup of Nations anywhere in the Ambazonia homeland.

Secretary Tabeyang Brado also called on all Southern Cameroons fighters in Ground Zero to listen and follow the directives from Vice President Dabney Yerima and not waste precious time watching restoration social media comedies being made public by the disgraced so-called Maryland front liners and AGovC/ADF.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Secretary Tabeyang Brado observed that the French Cameroun enemy would not seek to test the will and strength of the Ambazonia nation during the period of the Africa Cup of Nations.

Hon. Tabeyang’s comments follow a series of empty social media postings from the AGovC/ADF militia group and increasing tensions among the Maryland gang.

By Chi Prudence Asong