Amid the UN’s failure on the conflict in Cameroon, now a specific plea about political prisoners in Paul Biya’s jails has been sent to members of the UN Security Council, beyond Secretary General Antonio Guterres who after taking Biya’s golden statue and UN Budget Committee favors colluded in the jailing and killing.

Among the political prisons are those sent back to Yaounde from Nigeria while Guterres’ Deputy Amina J. Mohammed was there. Inner City Press has been submitted written questions about Cameroon and its prisons amid COVID-19 to Guterres, Mohammed and their spokespeople Stephane Dujarric and Melissa Fleming, with no answer at all. The Security Council members must act on this:

“Ambazonian prisoners of conscience face the gravest risks from COVID-19 due to the unprecedented levels of overcrowding, inability to implement social distancing, lack of hygiene, and poor healthcare. Not suprisingly, many of these prisoners have been sickened by a wild outbreak of the pandemic at the two main prisons in Kondengui, Yaounde, capital of La Republique du Cameroun.

“Recent WHO figures place Cameroun’s COVID-19 ratio per million as one of the highest in Africa with 3,500 confirmed cases. Nigeria, seven times more populated, has 6,400 confirmed cases. The now not-so-secret plan of the regime of Mr. Paul Biya in Cameroun is to weaponize COVID-19 as both a death sentence and an execution squad for these Ambazonians. ACT warns: should any harm befall these Ambazonian political prisoners, the following are to blame:

1. French President Emmanuel Macron, who instructs and Mr. Biya obeys. This is how Macron and the European Union secured the release of Prof. Maurice Kamto and his aides. The silence of France and the EU suggests they endorse Biya’s plan to kill Ambazonian prisoners of conscience.

2. The Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guteress, who has not called for their release into the protection of the U.N. refugee agency although many of them were registered as refugees in Nigeria before their abduction and rendition to Cameroun.

3. The leaders of Cameroun, Paul Biya, and of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, for their role in the rendition. In addition (in the case of Buhari), his failure to comply with the ruling of an Abuja High Court calling for the prisoners’ immediate release and transfer back to Nigeria. And (in the case of Biya), the abduction in Ambazonia and deportation to Cameroun of thousands of Ambazonians. These prisoners have been systematically denied medical attention. One of them who was admitted in a military hospital in Yaounde, suffered an attack by soldiers in mufti in the dead of night even as he is locked in a fight for his life agaomst COVID-19. The prison superintendant has prison gangs and other officials targeting and brutalizing Ambazonian prisoners.

Access to these prisons by the International Commission of the Red Cross (ICRC) remains restricted. ACT calls on the U.N. Security Council, President Macron, the United States government, the European Union and the African Union to request the immediate release of all Ambazonian political prisoners and vulnerable people within the prison population in Cameroun and Ambazonia, particularly Barrister Shufai Blaise Berinyuy currently hospitalized. This will not only be an act of goodwill, but it will help curb the spread of the pandemic Time is, indeed, of essence! 

Culled from Inner City Press

Separatist leader Blaise Sevidzem Berinyuy, also known as Shufai, was discharged from the hospital and sent back to a high security prison in Yaoundé on May 21, despite his critical health condition and apparently following pressure by the head of the detention facility on medical staff. Transferring Shufai, who is immunocompromised, to a crowded prison setting where transmission of Covid-19 is more likely seriously enhances the threats to his health and life.

On May 16, Shufai, one of the leaders of the separatist group “Ambazonia Interim Government,” was transferred from the prison to the hospital for non-Covid-19-related illness. His family and lawyers said he was unconscious, and his health had deteriorated significantly over the previous 10 days. They reported that on May 19, Shufai was handcuffed to his hospital bed for the night, despite being barely able to move.

Shufai’s family members and lawyers said that the head of the prison visited Shufai twice at the military hospital and pressed medical staff to discharge him, although his condition continues to be alarming. This is despite concerns over the spread of Covid-19 across Cameroon’s overcrowded prisons.

Shufai and nine other leaders of the “Ambazonia Interim Government” were arrested in January 2018 in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, and forcibly returned to Cameroon. Their extrajudicial transfer was denounced by the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, as violating the fundamental principle of non-refoulement. The forced return of the 10 leaders was also declared illegal by a Nigerian court in March 2019. The 10 leaders were later held incommunicado at Cameroon’s State Defense Secretariat prison for six months before being taken to the Yaoundé high security prison. They were charged with terrorism, rebellion, and secession, and sentenced to life before a military court on August 20, 2019, following a deeply flawed trial.

Cameroon has a fundamental obligation to treat all prisoners with humanity and respect, and as the authorities grapple with the Covid-19 pandemic, they should ensure that all prisoners can take measures such as regular handwashing and have proper access to medical care. They should also ensure sick prisoners receive the medical treatment they need and that their health or lives are not further jeopardized by increasing their risk of Covid-19 infection.

Source: Human Rights Watch

Following an Amnesty International report about coronavirus cases in Cameroon’s Kondengui prison, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has asked the UN special rapporteur on the right to health to urgently seek the release of Amadou Vamoulké, a journalist held in this prison who is very vulnerable because he is 70 and in poor health.

RSF’s appeal to the special rapporteur comes just days before Amadou Vamoulké is due to appear before Cameroon’s Special Criminal Tribunal on 26 May for the 30th hearing in his drawn-out trial on a charge of misusing public funds for the benefit of the state-owned radio and TV broadcaster he used to run.

According to an Amnesty International report published earlier this month, at least one detainee has tested positive to Covid-19 in Kondengui prison, located in the capital, Yaoundé, and several other suspected cases have been identified. The report also said that two prisoners died shortly after being released in circumstances suggesting they were infected, and one was buried in his family’s absence.

Amnesty International also reported that the number of detainees in Kondengui prison currently stands at 432% of the inmate population for which it is designed, despite releases ordered by President Paul Biya on 15 April to reduce overcrowding in the country’s prisons. Valmoulké was not one of the detainees to benefit from the presidential measure although he has been held for nearly four years for an alleged economic crime for which the state has yet to find the evidence on which to convict him.

“The Cameroonian authorities cannot continue to expose one of their leading journalists to the possible of dying in prison,” said Arnaud Froger, the head of RSF’s Africa desk. “During a visit to Yaoundé in November, we drew the justice ministry’s attention to the fact that Amadou Vamoulké is not getting appropriate medical care although two medical reports say he needs medevacking. Since then, he has spent his 70th birthday behind bars and at least one case of coronavirus has been identified in his prison, which makes him especially vulnerable. This case’s humanitarian dimension and his right to health should prevail over every other consideration.”

President Biya was one the ten African leaders to whom RSF and 80 other human rights and press freedom organizations wrote on 6 April asking them to immediately release the arbitrarily detained journalists in their prisons because they are routinely denied proper medical care and because medical isolation is not possible.

A week later, RSF addressed a formal written request to the UN special rapporteur on the right to health, the Lithuanian Dainius Pūras, and the UN special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, the American David Kaye, asking them to condemn governments that have violated the right to information in connection with the coronavirus epidemic.

Cameroon is ranked 134th out of 180 countries and territories in RSF’s 2020 World Press Freedom Index, three places lower than in 2019.

Culled from Reporters Without Borders

From the greatest high to the greatest low at the Cameroon Radio and Television (CRTV), the detention without trial for nearly four years of Amadou Vamoulké the former general manager of the Cameroon public broadcaster has again regenerated a massive under-the-table talk in the nation’s capital Yaoundé and the detained senior French Cameroun political elite has reiterated his claim of being a victim of a Beti Ewondo conspiracy.

The 70 year old Vamoulké was appointed General Manager of CRTV in January 2005 and was sacked in June 2016 after spending 11 years as head of the Cameroon Radio and Television Cooperation. A month later, in July 2016, he was placed under a provisional detention order at Yaoundé-Kondengui Central Prison.

Amadou Vamoulké like many others held in the same facility is suspected of embezzling several billion of CFA francs when he was head of CRTV. The Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime in Yaoundé has maintained a kind of deliberate silence despite receiving signals incessantly flashed out by renowned international media organizations including Reporters Without Borders for his release.

Vamoulké, who has been very discreet throughout this difficult time has made his first public outing on social media entitled “The Truth of Revenge“, which he painted himself as a Cameroonian more sinned against than sinning. He considers himself an innocent man whose human rights are being violated by men and women who wanted the job of GM at CRTV.

Cameroon Intelligence Report sources have revealed that Vamoulké may die in detention. He has been deprived of medical examination and treatment appropriate to his recently diagnosed severe neuropathy and he is running the risk of losing his lower limbs.

In his posting on social media he repeatedly observed that “I am well aware that openly exposing today the hostage-taking of my country’s justice system is not likely to move the incriminated actors who still believe themselves to be unshakeable”.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with intelligence files from Asu Isong and Rita Akana