Africa

4, August 2018

Eight Southern Cameroonian refugees die in Nigeria ⁰

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Nigeria, has expressed sadness over the death of eight Cameroonian refugees in Ikom, Cross River.

Elizabeth Mpimbiza, Senior External Relations Officer, UNHCR, Nigeria, made this known in a statement on Thursday in Abuja.

She said that the information communicated to UNCHR in Ikom showed that the refugees died of fumes from a generator in their room.

Ms Mpimbiza quoted Boubacar Bamba, UNHCR Assistant Representative, Operations in Nigeria, as describing the incidence as a “tragedy.”

Mr Bamba said that the UNHCR was saddened by the loss of lives.

“Any loss of life is a tragedy, and it is heart-breaking when it happens to those who are fleeing for safety,” Mr Bamba said.

Ms Mpimbiza said that UNHCR, through its office in Ikom, was working with the authorities to assist those who survived the incident.

The refugees were those fleeing Cameroon in the wake of violence in September 2017 and sought refuge in Nigeria’s Cross River, Taraba, Benue and Akwa-Ibom states.

Ms Mpimbiza said that 21,291 refugees had so far been registered in the four states, adding that women and children accounted for 80 per cent of the refugees.

(NAN)

1, August 2018

Nigeria: Buhari elected new chairman of ECOWAS ⁰

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has been elected the new chairperson of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Togo’s capital Lome.

He takes over the yearly rotational role from Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe who faced a tough task in his 12-month tenure. Togolese opposition parties protested his continued stay in power over the entire period.

Buhari’s election was announced at the end of the 53rd Ordinary Summit of ECOWAS Heads of State which ended on Monday evening.

Preceding the Heads of State summit was a joint summit between ECOWAS and the Central African bloc, the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS).

A communique issued at the close of the summit said its aim “was to create conditions for sustainable peace and a secured environment in the common area of the two regions.”

At the heart of deliberations were: security, peace and stability and the fight against terrorism and violent extremism. The African Union chief, Moussa Faki Mahamat was also in attendance.

Heads of State or representatives from ECOWAS

Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.

Heads of State or representatives from ECCAS

Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe and Chad.

Source: Africa News

30, July 2018

Battle for Southern Cameroons: Ndop prison overrun by armed men, 163 inmates escape ⁰

Over 160 prisoners have escaped from jail in Cameroon’s north-west region following an attack on the facility by armed men suspected to be separatists.

According to state media CRTV, the overnight attack on the Ndop prisons was two-pronged. The attackers are said to have lit a fire amid the use of gun fire.

“More than 160 prisoners from Ndop prison (North West) fled” after the attack on the penitentiary where they were burnt by an armed group, a source close to the regional authorities said.

The attackers who “fired from everywhere”, were able to “break the gates of the prison” before “setting fire to all the buildings,“he added, stressing that they had brought fuel to cause the fire.

He further disclosed that operations were underway to find the other escapees. This is the first time since the outbreak of the Anglophone crisis in late 2016 that such a large number of prisoners manage to escape following the attack on a prison.

Source: Africa News

29, July 2018

Relief workers in Nigeria are struggling to cope with a new wave of fleeing Southern Cameroons refugees ⁰

Ever since Acting President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe declared an independent ‘Ambazonia’ state in southern Cameroon, tens of thousands have fled violence into Nigeria and relief workers are struggling to keep up.

Relief workers in southern Nigeria are struggling to cope with a new wave of refugees fleeing Cameroon.

Fighting began in October when Southern Cameroonians declared an independent state they call “Ambazonia” which was formerly known as British Southern Cameroons.

Since the fighting started, an estimated 30,000 have been crossing the border into Nigeria and more arriving as the violence continues.

Culled from Aljazeera

26, July 2018

Southern Cameroons pregnant women among migrants stranded at sea off Tunisian coast ⁰

Two pregnant women are among a group of migrants left stranded at sea for almost a fortnight after Tunisia became the latest of four countries to refuse their ship entry.

The migrants, recovered by a Tunisian supply vessel after they were found adrift in a small wooden boat reportedly within Malta’s search and rescue zone, are anchored a dozen miles offshore as they enter the 13th day of their ordeal with supplies of food and medicine dwindling.

It is understood the 40-strong group initially set sail from Libya, on a route frequently used by those seeking to reach Europe.

Refused entry by Malta, France, Italy and now Tunisia, the passengers and crew of the ship, the Sarost 5, have become pawns in a much wider political game, as Europe seeks to increase pressure on north Africa to do more to control migrant routes that pass through its waters.

Conditions aboard the ship, which is ill-equipped for such unexpected circumstances, are understood to be deteriorating.

“The situation on the ship is very bad,” said Mongi Slim of the Tunisian Red Crescent, based in the coastal commune of Zarzis, on Tuesday. “It’s hot and [on Monday] we had high winds. The captain said that he was no longer allowing medical supplies or food on board, to put more pressure on the Tunisian government. However, we think he has changed his mind, meaning we can get doctors, gynaecologists and nurses to the ship either this afternoon or tomorrow.”

Contacted by one of the migrants through social media, the website InfoMigrants reported one as saying: “We are left to fend for ourselves. We hardly eat, because there is no food left.

“We eat a piece of bread and one egg a day. We sleep on the floor, we do not have soap or toothbrushes. The crew members do everything to help us but they are also exhausted.”

Nine of the migrants are said to have travelled from Bangladesh, while others began their journey in sub-Saharan Africa. According to Slim, the two pregnant women have travelled from southern Cameroon. One is five months into her pregnancy, the other two.

All the passengers initially insisted they would only get off at a European port because they had paid so much for the journey. However, after 12 days at sea Slim thinks their attitude has changed.

“We’ve asked for emergency permission for the two women to come ashore, but we’re ready to receive all of them,” Slim said. “We have the third floor of our centre in Zarzis clear and waiting. They just need permission to land.”

Hamza Meddeb, a research fellow specialising in Tunisian affairs at the European University Institute in Florence, said there was a wider context to the migrants’ plight. “This is really about the EU trying to put pressure on north African countries, specifically Tunisia and Morocco, to play a greater role in handling the migrant crisis. However, it’s clear that Tunisia doesn’t want to open the door to that. They’re saying that this isn’t a north African problem so much as it’s a European one, which takes us to where we are now. The decision not to let them land isn’t a humanitarian decision so much as a political one.”

Leading civil society groups in Tunisia have called on the government to allow the Sarost 5 to dock. “It’s a very difficult situation,” said Messaoud Romdhani of the Forum Tunisien pour les Droits Economiques et Sociaux, one of the organisations urging the government to allow the migrants to land. “We can understand the Tunisian government’s situation. Europe is putting a lot of pressure on the Maghreb countries to host migrants.

“However, in Tunisia we have our own poor economic situation, and no legal framework to protect migrants and refugees. Also, the Tunisian government is very wary about being forced to act as the guardians of the Mediterranean. But we don’t want the migrants to have to return to Libya, it’s anarchy there, and we don’t want them to be forced to return to their country of origin.”

Attitudes across Europe appear to be hardening. In June, Italy closed its portsto the rescue ships that patrol the Mediterranean offering assistance to migrant boats in distress. The same month, a leaked EU report mooted the idea of establishing migrant centres in north Africa to relieve pressure on countries in western Europe, a plan emphatically rejected by Tunisia.

“The rise of the rightwing parties across Europe has hardened attitudes towards migrants,” Romdhani said. “However, we need to understand that they’re not going to stop coming. As long as there’s war, ethnic strife or their own poor economic circumstances, they’re going to keep coming. The only winners in this are the smugglers.”

Culled from The Guardian

24, July 2018

Senegalese envoy dies in Yaounde ⁰

The outgoing Senegalese Ambassador to Cameroon, Mr Vincent Badji, is died, state broadcaster CRTV reported.

CRTV said that Mr Badji died of heart attack while watching television at his Yaoundé residence on Sunday.

The diplomat who had come to the end of his three-year diplomatic mission to Cameroon, was due to leave Yaoundé for the Vatican as his country’s ambassador to the Holy See.

Diplomatic practice

Mr Badji had been granted farewell audiences by Cameroon state authorities in conformity with diplomatic practice.

House Speaker Cavaye Yeguie Djibril on June 18 received the diplomat while the president of the Senate, Mr Marcel Niat Njifenji, also held talks with him on July 4.

Source: The East African

24, July 2018

Mothers of Casualties in Southern Cameroons War March for Peace ⁰

Hundreds of women whose children have been killed or are missing as a result of the separatist war in Cameroon marched in the capital Sunday. The women called for a cease-fire between the government and the armed groups demanding independence for Cameroon’s English-speaking regions.

These are women who have escaped to Yaounde from the English-speaking regions of Cameroon, where a war has raged between the military and separatists for the past year. The women are praying and singing for peace to return to the central African state.

Among them is Gladys Arrey. She says her 24-year-old son has been missing since March, after she says the military destroyed his motorcycle to get revenge for the killing of a policeman in the southwestern town of Mutengene.

She says she came out to add her voice to the protest.

“We could not miss this opportunity to come and say enough is enough,” she said.

Last November, President Paul Biya declared war on people he called secessionists after armed men attacked and killed two policemen in English-speaking southwestern Cameroon.

The government of Cameroon reports that about 200 civilians and more than a hundred soldiers and policemen have been killed since then.

Ernestine Mbah, who fled from the northwestern town of Batibo, says she has lost her husband and two children in the war. She says she is taking part in the march to let the government know that when the military burns houses and businesses, youths are radicalized and escape to the bushes where they join armed fighters.

“In old times that I was a child, we used to live in peace, we used to share together, we used to talk,” she said. “What is happening? Whatsoever thing, whatsoever devil that is coming into their hearts please let us stop and make peace. If we humble ourselves God is going to give us our heart desires. I plead for peace, I plead for love.”

In June, rights group Amnesty International accused Cameroon’s government of using unnecessary and excessive force that frequently placed civilians in the path of violence. The government said the report was biased and denied using excessive force.

The crisis in Cameroon’s two English speaking regions started out as a protest against marginalization by French speakers who constitute a majority in central African country.

Some French-speaking Cameroonians joined in on Sunday’s march.

Marie Menanga, a Yaounde resident who is housing three people displaced by the fighting, says she wants the government to declare a ceasefire and stop what she describes as a senseless war.

She says armed separatists should also drop their weapons.

She says no woman who is normal and who kept a pregnancy for nine months and went through labor pains will want to see her child or children killed in a senseless war. She says every one should drop their weapons and come out of the bushes because the best gift of live is love and peace.

The United Nations reports that about 200,000 people have been internally displaced and tens of thousands have fled across to Nigeria for safety since the fighting began.

Source: VOA

23, July 2018

Villagers murdered, kidnapped in suspected Boko Haram attack in Lake Chad region ⁰

Eighteen people have been killed in an attack by suspected Boko Haram jihadists in the Lake Chad region, a Chadian military source said Sunday.

“Boko Haram elements attacked a village south of Daboua,” not far from Chad’s border with Niger, at around 9:00 pm (2000 GMT) on Thursday, the military source said.

The assailants “cut the throats of 18 people, wounded two others and kidnapped 10 women”.

Boko Haram’s Islamist insurgency has devastated the region since it took up arms in 2009 in Nigeria, leaving at least 20,000 people dead, displacing more than two million others and triggering a humanitarian crisis.

Chad, Cameroon and Niger have all joined the military effort by Nigeria to crush Boko Haram.

Chad has seen a recent increase in attacks by the group.

In May, six people were killed, including four government officials and a soldier, in a Boko Haram attack on a Chadian army checkpoint on an island in Lake Chad.

Niger’s army said Saturday it killed “ten terrorists” after one of its military positions in the southwest of the country was attacked by Boko Haram.

(AFP)

22, July 2018

Cameroon military ‘torches villages’ as separatist conflict escalates ⁰

The military of Cameroon has committed a series of massacres across the country’s minority English-speaking regions, as part of a wider escalating conflict between separatists and the central government, according to reports.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) alleges that the military of the predominantly Francophone nation burned down at least 20 villages in the Southern Cameroons region of the country, where the majority language is English.

A number of unarmed civilians, including at least four elderly women, were reportedly burned alive during the massacre.

“The human rights situation in Cameroon has reached crisis level and could still get much worse,” said Mausi Segun, Africa director at HRW. “International action is needed to ensure that both sides protect civilians and ensure justice for crimes against them,” he added.

So exactly what is happening in Cameroon, and what does it mean for West Africa?

The ‘Anglophone Problem’

The conflict has its roots in the so-called Scramble for Africa in the late 1800s, when a number of competing European superpowers used force to claim as much territory on the continent as possible.

Originally a colony of the German Empire, the region was taken by British and French forces during the First World War. The new rulers split the region into Cameroun – the French-speaking part that makes up most of the region’s land mass – and two British protectorates, Southern Cameroons and Northern Cameroons.

Although the country officially gained independence from both empires in the early 1960s, tensions remain between French and English-speaking regions – historically referred to as the Anglophone Problem. According to Reuters, English speakers “feel that the best government jobs go to French speakers, and that education, roads and health in their western region are neglected”.

Around 20% of Cameroon’s 23 million population are Anglophones.

Why is there fighting now?

Tensions reached boiling point in 2016 following industrial strikes and protests against the imposition of the French language in courts and schools of traditionally Anglophone regions, says news site Quartz.

The protests were violently repressed by the French-speaking government, leaving dozens of protesters dead and more than 100 injured, according to the International Crisis Group, a conflict-prevention organisation.

The majority of English speakers in the country initially just “wanted their grievances addressed“, says Reuters, but the violent crackdown on protests “has convinced many that only severance from Cameroon will satisfy their yearning for a better life”.

As a result, a militant separatist movement has emerged that seeks to establish an English-speaking state entirely independent from Cameroon – known as Ambazonia – in the area known as Southern Cameroons.

Reuters reports that the breakaway region has already “printed passports, designed a currency and a flag, composed a national anthem and set up a satellite TV station”.

In response, the government has “used tear gas and live ammunition to disperse protesters, tortured and detained civilians, killing some, and burned villages”, says Sky News.

What is the solution?

Responding to HRW’s damning report, Cameroon’s government said the level of force it used remained “proportional to the extent of the threat”.

The report’s author, Jonathan Pedneault, has dismissed that claim, saying that the government needs to “recognise the fact that its soldiers have committed severe abuses. It needs to order a stop to the abuses and ensure accountability for crimes.”

Ambazonian separatists are also committing “grave abuses” in the country, allegedly “torching schools and threatening teachers and students”, according to Sky News.

Voice of America reports that “armed separatists” have “abducted at least seven traditional rulers they accuse of collaborating with the government”. Some of the leaders are accused of calling for the region to participation in Cameroon’s presidential election later this year, rather than adhering to Ambazonia’s vaguely defined boycott of the central government, the news site adds.

As the situation continues to deteriorate, the HWR is calling on international actors including the African Union and the United Nations to “press the government and armed separatists to accept a third-party mediation led by an independent and trustworthy international actor”.

Source: The Week.co.uk

21, July 2018

Revealed: 34,000 Southern Cameroonian refugees in Cross River State ⁰

The Cross River State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) on Friday said that over 34,000 Cameroonians, were currently taking refuge in six local government areas of the state.

Mr John Inaku, the Director General of SEMA in the state, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Calabar.

Inaku said that the inflow was as the result of the crisis in Cameroon over the demand for Ambazonia Republic by the Southern Cameroonians.

Inaku told NAN that the asylum seekers were currently taking refuge in Obudu, Boki, Ikom, Etung, Akamkpa and Obanliku Local Government Areas of the state.

“So far, we have 34,000 Cameroonian asylum seekers spread across six local government areas in Cross River.

“About 21,000 of them have been documented by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees and the National Commission for Refugees.

“As an agency, we go into the interior areas that have not been accessed by these organisations and holistically, we have 34,000 of them already on ground,’’ he said.

The director general told NAN that the state government was doing its best in providing succour to the refugees, adding that the increasing number was too heavy for the state government alone to handle.

He however, appealed to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), corporate organisations and other humanitarian agencies to offer their support to the refugees.

Source: Daily Trust