Headline News

11, June 2020

Nigeria: Armed gangs kill dozens in string of attacks ⁰

Armed gangs killed 57 people in a string of attacks on villages in northwest Nigeria, residents said on Wednesday, as security forces struggle to curb violence in the region.

Roughly 150 gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on residents before looting shops and stealing cattle in a series of assaults on Tuesday in six remote communities in Katsina state, the sources said.

“We lost a total of 57 people in the attacks across the six villages,” a local leader told AFP on condition of anonymity as he feared for his safety.

In the worst-hit village of Kadisau the assailants – dubbed “bandits” by locals – shot and killed 33 people, local resident Mohammed Salisu said.

Salisu said he escaped by abandoning his motorcycle and hiding in a ditch before crawling into a nearby house where he hid among dirty laundry for the five hours the attack and looting lasted.

“They looted every shop in the village and took away over 200 cattle,” said Salisu, who lost seven cows to the attackers.

The attackers opened fire on a football pitch where young men were watching a local match, said Sada Audi, a resident of nearby village said.

Residents said 24 more people were later killed across the villages of Hayin Kabalawa, Garke, Makera, Kwakwere and Maiganguna.

The assailants left two dozen people with bullet wounds, inhabitants said.

Nigeria’s northwest has been wracked by years of violence, involving clashes between rival communities over land, attacks by heavily armed criminal gangs and retaliation strikes from vigilante groups.

The unrest, which experts say has been spurred by overpopulation and climate change, has seen an estimated 8,000 people killed since 2011 and 200,000 flee their homes.

Nigeria’s military last month said it had launched air raids to halt a spike of attacks in President Muhammadu Buhari’s home state of Katsina.

Authorities have carried out several security operations and local peace negotiations in the region but have failed to end the bloodshed.

Source: AFP

11, June 2020

Nobel laureate Mukwege quits DR Congo Covid-19 team, blasts govt response ⁰

Nobel winner Denis Mukwege on Wednesday said he had resigned as head of a coronavirus taskforce in an eastern province of DR Congo, blaming organisational problems, outpaced strategy and slow testing.

Mukwege, a DR Congo gynaecologist who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for his work against sexual violence in war, was appointed on March 30 to lead a committee in South Kivu province.

Panzi Hospital, where Mukwege treats abused women, is also located in the province.

In a statement, he said there had been “weaknesses in organisation and clarity between the various teams in charge of the response to the pandemic in South Kivu.”

“We are at the start of an exponential… curve (in infections) and we can no longer apply a strategy that would be purely preventive,” Mukwege said.

“I have decided to resign… in order to devote myself entirely to my medical duties and to treat the influx of patients at Panzi hospital.”

He said he regretted that it took “more than two weeks” to get coronavirus test results from the national reference lab in Kinshasa — “a major handicap for our strategy based on ‘testing, identifying, isolating and treating’.”

Mukwege also criticised developments that he said had “reduced the effectiveness” of the anti-virus campaign.

They included a relaxation in vigilance by the public, hurdles in enforcing distancing and the return of thousands of people from neighbouring countries without quarantine.

Mukwege had pleaded in mid-April for partial confinement of people over the age of 60 and compulsory mask-wearing for everyone to help break the chain of virus transmission.

On May 9, he called for “emergency supplies” of tests “before the exponential curve (of infections) gets underway.”

The Democratic Republic of Congo has declared 4,390 infections, including 3,980 in Kinshasa and 89 in South Kivu and a total of 96 deaths.

Source: AFP

11, June 2020

Journalist Wazizi’s death in custody shines light on Cameroon’s war on media ⁰

In August 2019, Journalist Samuel Wazizi was arrested by the Cameroonian government and held without charge. More than 10 months after the arrest, the military confirmed Wazizi had died in their custody. Amid attacks, arrests and kidnappings of journalists, lawyers for the late Wazizi applied for the government to release his body. On 9 June, the High Court dismissed the application as colleagues and allies protested across the country.

When broadcast journalist Samuel Ajiekah Abuwe was arrested in August 2020, the circumstances surrounding his captivity remained a mystery to his family and colleagues. The Pidgin reporter, popularly known as Samuel Wazizi, had been reporting on the conflict in the country’s Northwest and Southwestern regions. While at the time of his arrest Wazizi was held without charge, Cameroon Association of English-Speaking Journalists (CAMASEJ) recently learned that, along with announcing Wazizi’s death, the government decided on a terrorism charge. This was 10 months after the initial arrest.

For many months after the arrest of Wazizi, president of the journalists’ association, Jude Viban, tried to acquire information on his colleague’s arrest and place of detention, to no avail.

“The government has not been transparent in the way the government has handled the issue about the arrest, detention, and death of our colleague,” Viban told Daily Maverick.

“All offices I went to remained mute – they kept sealed lips. Nobody told me exactly where and why our colleague was arrested.”

According to Viban, the lawyers for Wazizi presented in court on numerous occasions since August 2019 asking for the government to produce Wazizi to them – “alive or dead”.

After mounting pressure from local journalists, unions and international allies, the country’s Defence Ministry, on 5 June, finally revealed that Wazizi had died in their custody. While the announcement of the broadcast reporter’s death came just two months shy of a year after his arrest, reports reveal that he died just two weeks after the government took him into custody.

The Cameroon Journalists Trade Union (SNJC) has echoed the sentiment that the government has been evasive since the arrest of Wazizi and, to date, has kept details of his detention and death sparse.

Denis Nkwebo, president of the trade union, said the government was at no point transparent on the matter.

“No information ever filtered on the place and condition of detention. It has been opacity over 10 months just to be told Wazizi had died. When, where and how? Nobody knows.”

“[Samuel Wazizi] died as a result of severe sepsis,” said Ministry of Defence Colonel Cyrille Atonfack in a statement issued on 5 June. Atonfack also claimed that Wazizi’s family had been in constant communication with the reporter while he was held in military detention. This claim has been refuted by Wazizi’s lawyers and in a joint statement by the SNJC and the journalists’ association.

“I have been in contact with four of the family members and what they told me is that the government never contacted them,” said the journalists’ association’s Viban.

The news of Wazizi’s death comes amid a growing war against journalists in the West African nation.

Recently, BBC Pidgin reported that the seven Cameroonian journalists were held in governmental custody 2019 – a notable increase from just one journalist in 2015.

“The war in the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon has been a very difficult moment for journalists – and it is, as I speak to you,” said Vidan.

“Journalists are habitually arrested and detained incommunicado. But we also have cases of journalists who have been beaten up, journalists who have been threatened [and] journalists who have had their work tools taken away,” he added.

As the Cameroon Association of English-Speaking Journalists keeps up with its members in the country, Vidan said he knew of at least four journalists who are currently in detention for reporting on the conflict in Anglophone Cameroon.

In a subsequent article, BBC Pidgin reported on the arrest of freelance journalist, Njoka Kinglsey. Twenty-three days after his mysterious disappearance, Njoka’s family and colleagues finally came to know of his whereabouts.

According to BBC Pidgin, Njoka’s lawyers said he appeared frail and seemed traumatised when they saw him at the Defence Forces Headquarters where he is being held in the Capital, Yaounde.

A number of civil organisations have come out against the Cameroonian’s government’s war on journalism after the announcement of Wazizi’s death.

In South Africa, the South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF) issued a statement condemning the death in detention of Wazizi. “SANEF calls on the President of Cameroon, Paul Biya, as well as the African Union to launch an independent investigation into the death of Wazizi and the subsequent cover-up by the army,” the statement reads.

Wazizi’s lawyers said they will be contesting the High Court’s decision to dismiss their appeal to independently confirm Wazizi’s death.

“On the totality of the foregoing, we have instituted an appeal against the decision. And giving the contradictory facts surrounding the death of Samuel Wazizi, we shall be taking steps to request for an inquiry into the cause of death,” wrote Nkea Emmanuel and Edward Lying Ewule in a media statement on 9 June.

Wazizi’s death has joined a list of growing social media calls for justice as his colleagues raise awareness using the hashtag #JusticeForWazizi. DM

Source: Daily Maverick

11, June 2020

Beaten and hosed, Kah Walla is fighting to unseat the world’s most vicious dictator ⁰

Edith Kahbang Walla’s presidential ambitions began with a confrontation. It was 2010, and the opposition Social Democratic Front (SDF) was planning to field its longtime chairperson for the third time in the following year’s election against President Paul Biya. Walla challenged her party leader to a primary. When he refused, she quit.

A decade later, the 55-year-old management consultant — better known as Kah Walla — is a leading face of the Cameroonian opposition. The rare woman in the country’s top political echelons, the president of the Cameroon People’s Party (CPP) has faced arrests, death threats and beatings. But that has only strengthened her resolve to end Biya’s four-decade dictatorship. Only Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Mbasogo has been president longer.

As the coronavirus outbreak hit Cameroon, Walla wrote an open letter to Biya, who rarely addresses the country, asking him to publicly reassure citizens. When the octogenarian finally appeared in public in mid-April, it was only for a meeting with the French ambassador.

Walla is trying to fill that leadership void. Ahead of Ramadan, which started on April 23, she visited mosques to spread awareness on social distancing and to distribute masks. Her campaign is distributing masks to women in different parts of Douala too.

At the same time, Walla is playing the long game. To defeat Biya, she knows that Cameroon’s institutions need to change first.

After polling sixth out of 23 candidates in 2011, when she contested for the CPP, Walla was expected to build on that momentum in the 2018 elections. Instead, her party boycotted the vote, accusing the electoral commission of partisanship. Walla wasn’t going to legitimize what she says was a staged exercise. The CPP also boycotted the 2020 parliamentary elections, insisting on reforms of the political institutions and electoral process, rather than holding local elections.

“There has not been anything that even vaguely resembles a free and fair election in Cameroon in all of our history,” Walla says. “The ruling party has made the admin [electoral commission] a branch of the party.”

Indeed, when Biya won a seventh term by a landslide amid allegations of widespread fraud in 2018, it was not news. President since 1982, he had been prime minister for seven years prior. Biya’s former justice minister, Maurice Kamto, who contested as the opposition coalition candidate in 2018, was detained for nine months at the Kondengui maximum-security prison in Yaoundé, the Cameroonian capital.

Still, it appears that Walla worries Biya.

The house where she lives in the commercial capital of Douala with her partner and their seven adopted children was surrounded by police trucks on the eve of the 2018 election results to prevent her from attending a peaceful protest.

All of that has failed to deter Walla, whose life so far has been a lesson in commitment to Pan-Africanism and civil liberties. As a nurse training at the University College Hospital in Ibadan, Nigeria — West Africa’s first medical college — Walla’s mother had promised her colleagues she would return there to give birth to her first child. In February 1965, she flew there to keep her commitment. As a child in a newly independent Cameroon, Walla would often accompany her mother to radio stations and listen to her speak about women’s rights on-air.

Walla’s civil servant parents were averse to partisan politics, and at home, Walla’s education focused on loyalty to nationhood and the rule of law rather than to government. “I grew up in an environment where it was very important to stand up for your rights and contribute to your community,” she says.

Those lessons in bridge building are central to Walla’s efforts to challenge Biya by uniting a divided nation. The next presidential elections are five years away, but she’s already preparing. The CPP organizes what it calls Black Friday campaigns during which attendees all wear black headgear, showing solidarity with political prisoners and the country’s Anglophone region, which has been fighting discrimination for decades. The key message, Walla says, is that the CPP is fighting an enemy common to all Cameroonians: Biya’s regime.

Challenging the dictatorship has costs. Walla has been kidnapped by the presidential guard, hosed during a protest, brutalized by security officials and arrested multiple times. It’s all far removed from the path she was charting when, after studying in Cameroon and the Ivory Coast, she went to the United States to earn two degrees, including an MBA from Howard University School of Business.

But after years of campaigning for political change from the sidelines, Walla took the plunge, joining the SDF in 2007 and winning elections to the Douala City Council that year. “She did what leaders must do: She raised her voice to be heard,” says Anne Doyle, a councilwoman in Auburn Hills, Michigan, who met Walla at a global women’s leadership conference in 2008.

Walla did that again, when she challenged the SDF leader. “He was shocked,” she says, laughing. But Walla was confident, says Ateki Caxton, the Yaoundé-based executive director of pro-democracy network NewSETA. She was seen as someone “not afraid to confront some of the very patriarchal orientations of the party,” Caxton says.

Patriarchy remains a challenge for Walla. “A lot of young people admire her party, but people still feel it’s not yet time to have a female president,” says Caxton.

And despite her support for greater Anglophone rights, Walla has received death threats from groups fighting for a breakaway republic of Ambazonia, comprising the country’s two Anglophone regions.

It is “unconscionable to opt for a fight that inflicts further violence” on people, Walla says. “I am very much for the cause, but I do not believe in secession, because as an African, I don’t believe that my identity begins with who colonized me, so I cannot see myself defining my future on the basis of being Anglophone or Francophone.”

So far, there’s little evidence that Biya’s grip over Cameroon is loosening. Still, Caxton believes Walla could be a “key actor in the post-Biya era,” whenever that may be. “She’s one of those people trying to break the glass ceiling, and in Cameroon, that glass ceiling is made of marble.” Walla has shown the patience and persistence to chip away until it’s her time.

Culled from Ozy.com

10, June 2020

For many African Americans, nothing has changed since civil rights movement ⁰

For three generations, black Americans have learned the same cautionary tale about the police. And many, speaking on the fringes of George Floyd’s memorial ceremonies, say that nothing has changed in the US since the mid-20th century struggle for civil rights.

“Some things have changed, but not enough has changed,” Norman Mitchell told AFP during a memorial service for Floyd at his former school, Jack Yates High, in Houston’s predominantly black Third Ward neighborhood.

He acknowledged political advances made for the African American community, such as the election of Barack Obama as the first black president in the history of the US, but at the same time recounted the discrimination he and his children continue to face because of the color of their skin.

“It took an individual kneeling on someone’s neck for eight minutes, 46 seconds for the world to see the issue that we’ve been fighting for the last 100 years,” said the 55-year-old.

“When I was a young man, my father used to tell me to be very careful when I went out because there was a possibility that I could be stopped by the police,” Mitchell added.

He said he “had this exact same conversation with” his sons, whose ages range from 17 to 32.

Floyd’s agony as a white police officer knelt on his neck in a Minneapolis street hit Mitchell’s youngest son particularly hard. He “did not think it was real until May 25, and he knew the stories we had been sharing for years,” Mitchell said, whose own brother was killed by a Houston police officer in 1991.

At 63 years old, Laura Allen was a child when marches and protests against police brutality started in the Texan city’s streets.

“I was three or four years old with my family down (in) the streets, and we’re having to march for the same civil rights that we did years ago,” she said.

“Not much has changed at all.”

The former Yates student — class of 1975 — slammed the inequality and “double standard” of police policies in Houston, where “almost every black male I know have been profiled.”

– Scared of cops –

Like many others, Allen has countless stories of arbitrary arrests and intimidation. In 1980, she was detained by park police “for carrying a glass.”

This year, she was pulled over during a trip to Alabama with her husband and daughter.

“As soon as we crossed the Alabama border, we were instantly stopped. They ask, ‘Is this your car?'” recalled the small, gray-haired woman.

Just as her father brought her to protests, so Allen accompanied her daughter, Leah, last week to a massive rally in Houston, where 70,000 people demanded justice for Floyd.

At 28, Leah Allen has the same distrust of police officers as her mother, since “you never know what could happen.”

“I’m very scared of cops,” she said, recounting how police officers have followed her or leered sexually at her.

Tragedy can strike at any moment. Syreeta Polley, 38, points to the death in 2016 of black motorist Philando Castile, who was shot by a police officer during a traffic stop near Saint Paul, Minnesota.

As with Floyd, his shocking final moments were caught on video.

Polley has taught her teenage daughter, Nia Madison, to “respect authority figures” and be “cautious.”

The 17-year-old has started driving, and the lesson is clear: “Make sure you’re prepared if you’re being pulled over,” said Polley.

“It’s 2020 and it’s a big step back, it pushes us back to the 50s and 60s and the stories my 92-year-old grandmother would tell,” Polley added.

Even the Houston police chief, Art Acevedo, admitted that “there is a lot of work to do” to change the police force’s mindset.

Houston-based rapper William James Dennis — or “Willie D” — hopes that Floyd’s death will serve as a catalyst.

The black community “can use (the death of George Floyd) as a short window of opportunity to move America forward,” the artist and activist told AFP on Tuesday, during Floyd’s funeral.

Source: AFP

10, June 2020

US: New York lawmakers vote to scrap police discipline secrecy law ⁰

New York lawmakers voted on Tuesday to repeal a decades-old law that shields police officers’ disciplinary records from the public. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has said he will sign the bill into law amid nationwide protests against police brutality.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo tweeted that he will sign the bill into law this week amid nationwide protests against police brutality.

The bill is part of a package of police reform measures advanced by the Democratic-controlled Assembly and Senate in Albany this week as protests gripped the nation following the death of George Floyd, a black man, as a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck.

On Monday, the legislature voted to ban the use by police of chokeholds. The practice had come under intense condemnation when an African-American man, Eric Garner, died after a white New York City police officer used a chokehold on him during a 2014 arrest.

Advocates for police accountability have long been pushing for the repeal of the contentious section of New York’s Civil Rights Law, 50-a, that prevented disclosure to the public of disciplinary records of police officers.

“The legislation that will be passed over the coming days will help stop bad actors and send a clear message that brutality, racism, and unjustified killings will not be tolerated,” New York Senate majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said in a statement.

New York police unions have called the legislation an attack on police.

“The message has been sent very clearly to police officers by our elected officials: We don’t like you,” Richard Wells, president of the statewide union the Police Conference of New York, told reporters. “We don’t respect you. We will not support you. We want you to go away.”

He said the repeal of 50-a would enable criminal defense attorneys to cite old complaints against an officer in court to undermine the officer’s testimony.

The New York City Council was also considering a bill to criminalize the use of chokeholds, which has widespread support among lawmakers but is opposed in its current form by the mayor.

Source: REUTERS

10, June 2020

Transparency, Accountability Needed for journalist ‘Wazizi’ Case ⁰

Cameroon’s government should ensure that the investigation into a journalist’s enforced disappearance and death in military custody is independent, effective, thorough, and impartial, four Cameroonian and six international organizations said today. United Nations (UN) Security Council members should urge accountability for the death of the journalist, Samuel Ajiekah Abuwe, known as Wazizi, when they are briefed on the situation in Cameroon during their June 12, 2020 meeting with the UN Office of Central Africa (UNOCA).

The police arrested Wazizi, 36, an English-speaking journalist at the privately owned broadcaster, Chillen Muzik and TV (CMTV), on August 2, 2019 in in Buea, South-West region, and transferred him to a military-run facility in the same city on August 7. On June 2, 3, and 4 Cameroonian and international media, as well as Reporters Without Borders and the Cameroon Trade Union of Journalists reported that they had learned Wazizi died in custody following torture, on an undetermined date.

“We are still shocked that authorities disappeared Wazizi and then covered up his death for 10 months, but we welcome the opening of an investigation and call on Cameroon’s government to make its findings public and ensure that all those responsible are brought to justice,” said Felix Agbor Nkongho, also known as Agbor-Balla, President of the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (CHRDA).

Wazizi’s transfer to the military facility on August 7 was the last time any of his family, friends, colleagues, or lawyers saw him, or learned anything of his fate from the authorities, making his continued detention an enforced disappearance. He was accused of “collaborating with separatists,” but his lawyers say he had not been charged with any offense before his disappearance.

The French Ambassador to Cameroon told the media on June 5 that President Paul Biya had assured him that an investigation will be opened into the Wazizi’s death. The declaration was made the same day that the military spokesman, Colonel Serge Cyrille Atonfack, announced that Wazizi had died of severe sepsis on August 17, 2019 at the military hospital in Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital. No autopsy was performed, and it is not clear on what basis Atonfack made the statement.

Cameroonian authorities had not made any official statement about the death of Wazizi, nor had they responded to multiple request for information filed by his lawyers, international media groups such as Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and other journalists from Radio France International until June 5.

“It took the government 10 months after Wazizi was forcibly disappeared to acknowledge he died in custody, and authorities did so only following significant national and international pressure,” said Cyrille Bechon of the Cameroonian rights organization Nouveaux Droits de l’Homme. “Cameroonian authorities were responsible for his life and safety while in detention and must provide a full accounting as to the circumstances of his detention and death.”

Atonfack said that Wazizi’s family had been informed about his death, but family members refute that, saying they were never told and had been seeking information on his whereabouts since his arrest. On August 13, 2019 Wazizi’s lawyers filed a habeas corpus application before the president of the high court of the Fako division, Buea, South-West region. The application was dismissed on technical grounds. Another habeas corpus was filed on November 13, but even then, the government did not disclose that he was dead.

When he announced the death, Atonfack also alleged that Wazizi was active in one of the several separatist groups operating in the South-West region. His lawyers said that no evidence has ever been produced to support the accusations.

“If a person is arrested under the anti-terror law, due process should be followed, and evidence brought to court,” said Emmanuel Nkea, a defense lawyer. “But this has never been the case and the government is trying to cover up the facts.”

The circumstances of Wazizi’s death underscore the dangers faced by Cameroonian journalists, particularly those who report on and investigate the crisis in the Anglophone regions of the country. The organizations have repeatedly documented the vulnerability of reporters in Cameroon to harassment, intimidation, threats, torture, arbitrary arrest, and detention by Cameroonian security forces and authorities.

Under national and international human rights law, Cameroon’s authorities have an obligation to account for every death in custody and should conduct an effective, thorough, and independent investigation into Wazizi’s enforced disappearance and death. The investigation should be capable of establishing the facts surrounding Wazizi’s disappearance and death, including whether he died following torture or other ill-treatment in custody, and identifying all those responsible with a view to bringing them to justice. Failure to investigate and prosecute those responsible would violate Cameroon’s obligations to protect people from arbitrary detention and deprivation of life and to provide an effective remedy, the groups said.

The situation in Cameroon is expected to come up at the June 12 UN Security Council meeting with UNOCA. Cameroon’s international partners and UN Security Council members should publicly raise concerns about the grave human rights abuses in Cameroon, including against journalists, political opponents, and human rights defenders. The Security Council should also take the long-overdue step of formally adding Cameroon to its agenda so that it can more closely monitor the situation there.

“When it comes to the respect for human rights, the UN and Cameroon’s international partners should take a stand and speak out,” said Maximilienne Ngo Mbe, executive director of the Central African Network of Human Rights Defenders (Réseau des Défenseurs des Droits de l’Homme de l’Afrique Centrale – REDHAC). “They should demand accountability for Wazizi’s death. Ensuring a thorough, impartial and transparent investigation into Wazizi’s death is the very least the Cameroonian government can do to show its commitment to protecting the country’s fragile media freedom is not hollow.”

Action des chrétiens pour l’abolition de la torture (ACAT)

Amnesty International

Cameroon Journalists’ Trade Union

Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (CHRDA)

Central African Network of Human Rights Defenders

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

Human Rights Watch

International Federation for Human Rights, in the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders

World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), in the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders

Nouveaux Droits de l’Homme

Culled from Human Rights Watch

10, June 2020

Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea Agree to Demarcate Border after Skirmishes ⁰

Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea have agreed to jointly map out a disputed border area after skirmishes between their troops left several wounded and property destroyed. Officials from the two countries are asking hundreds of traders and farmers who relocated because of the clashes to return to the disputed area but, some are reluctant.

Officials from Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea agreed to work on defining their disputed border after a crisis meeting Monday night.

Cameroon’s South Region Governor Felix Nguele Nguele said in the past two weeks there have been several skirmishes along the border with Equatorial Guinea’s military.

Nguele said while nobody was killed, several troops were wounded, and goods were destroyed on both sides of the border.

After the meeting Monday, he said Cameroon instructed local officials and traditional rulers to meet with their Equatorial Guinean peers to map out a proposed border.

Nguele said after local officials agree on a proposed new border, the central governments in Malabo and Yaoundé will be able to decide if there will be a new demarcation or not. But for the time being, he said, people should go about their daily activities peacefully.

Farmers and traders last week fled the border town of Kye-Ossi after tensions with troops on both sides.

Justo Javier Ndong Engon is governor of Equatorial Guinea’s Kie Ntem Province on the border with Cameroon.

He said at the meeting the two sides agreed to return troops to their barracks while waiting for the governments to find a lasting solution to the border dispute.

Engon said the crisis meeting resolved that border authorities ask community leaders and chiefs to urge farmers to return to their farms and traders to their shops. He said both sides ordered an end to the destruction of goods and asked that farm produce like maize, cassava, tomatoes and vegetables – which were stuck at the border – be given access into Equatorial Guinea.

Engon did not say how many Equatorial Guineans were affected by the conflict.

Cameroon said on its side about 350 farmers and traders had fled the border in the last few weeks but that many were returning.

Cameroonian vegetable seller Derric Sama said despite the assurances that troops have pulled back, he will not return to Kye-Ossi.

He spoke via a messaging application from the town of Ebolowa, where he relocated.

“It is not the first time the military from Equatorial Guinea cross over to destroy our goods or seize vegetables and fruits from us. Cameroon government tell us every time that they will solve the problem, but no solution seems to be coming,” said Sama.

It’s not the first time tensions have erupted along the two countries’ border.

In August, Equatorial Guinea began to erect a wall along the 183-kilometer border, sparking condemnation from Cameroon.

Cameroon said Equatorial Guinea constructed markers on its territory and instructed the military not to tolerate any unlawful intrusion.

Equatorial Guinea has also often sealed its border with Cameroon, complaining of security threats posed by illegal immigration.

In December 2017, Equatorial Guinea said it had arrested 30 foreign armed men from Chad, the Central African Republic and Sudan on the border who planned to destabilize the government.

Cameroon said at the time it also arrested 40 additional heavily armed men but gave no details.

Source: VOA

10, June 2020

Cameroon tops list of world’s most neglected displacement crises ⁰

Africa is home to nine of ten of the world’s most neglected crises and for a second year running Cameroon topped the list as the most neglected on the planet in 2019. Three separate emergencies faced the corrupt African nation: an exacerbation of Boko Haram attacks in the north, a violent conflict in the English-speaking west, and a Central African refugee crisis.

Ineffective conflict resolution, global news silence and a massive aid funding shortfall all contributed to Cameroon topping this year’s list according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Cameroon was followed by DR Congo, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Venezuela, Mali, South Sudan, Nigeria, Central African Republic and Niger.

Humanitarian crises in these countries are expected to worsen throughout 2020, compounded by the global coronavirus pandemic that is adding further hardship to millions according to Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

“Covid-19 is spreading across Africa, and many of the most neglected communities are already devastated by the economic shocks of the pandemic. We need solidarity with these conflict-stricken communities now more than ever, so the virus does not add more unbearable disaster to the myriad of crises they already face,” said Egeland.

The Sahel region of Africa was prominent in this year’s list, with Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria and Niger all embroiled in the extreme violence that engulfed the region, yet with massively underfunded aid appeals. Niger and Burkina Faso appeared on the list for the first time.

The neglected crisis list is based on review of over 40 displacement crises based on three criteria: lack of funding, lack of media attention, and political and diplomatic neglect. Cameroon scored high on all three, followed closely by DR Congo and Burkina Faso, two other crises where a lack of public attention contributed to a lack of funding to run aid operations.

The ten most neglected displacement crises

Cameroon

The Democratic Republic of the Congo

Burkina Faso

Burundi

Venezuela

Mali

South Sudan

Nigeria

Central African Republic

Niger

Every year, NRC presents a list of displacement crises the world has neglected.

Culled from Reliefweb.int with additional editing from Camcordnews

9, June 2020

At George Floyd’s funeral: Joe Biden calls for racial justice ⁰

George Floyd’s funeral took place on Tuesday in Houston, two weeks after his death while being held by police in a Minneapolis street, as more anti-racism rallies inspired by his treatment were set to take place in the United States and Europe.

George Floyd, whose death has sparked a global protest movement, is to be buried beside his mother in a cemetery in Houston.

“When there is justice for George Floyd, we will truly be on our way to racial justice in America,” said Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in a video address at George Floyd’s funeral in Houston.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a global fight against racism and discrimination.

The mayor of Houston announced a ban on chokeholds by police.

Houston police will increase their audit of taser and body camera usage.

Pastor Steve Wells told mourners at George Floyd’s funeral that they have “awakened the conscience of a nation”.

Delivering the eulogy, the Reverend Al Sharpton reserved his sharpest criticism for President Donald Trump. “You take rubber bullets and tear gas to clear out peaceful protesters, and then take a Bible and walk in front of a church, and use a church as a prop. Wickedness in high places,” Sharpton said.

Source: France 24