Seven Cameroonian soldiers accused of killing two women and their children in an alleged summary execution that was caught on video pleaded not guilty at a military tribunal on Monday.

The six soldiers and a captain have been charged with joint participation in murder, breach of regulations and conspiracy, according to the indictment.

The video that went viral on social networks in early July 2018 showed men in military uniform summarily executing two women, blindfolded and on their knees, along with a little girl and a baby one of the mothers was carrying on her back.

The video was initially dismissed as “fake news” by the Cameroonian authorities. But Amnesty International revealed credible evidence that Cameroon’s military was responsible, and the authorities later announced that the seven soldiers depicted in the video had been arrested and would be prosecuted.

For the first time, the military tribunal in Yaounde trying the soldiers allowed them to enter their pleas, all of which were not guilty, an AFP journalist reported.

The killings took place in 2015 in Zeleved, in Cameroon’s Far North region where troops have been deployed to fight Boko Haram jihadists who have crossed over from Nigeria to wage attacks in the neighbouring country.

During the investigation, the six soldiers claimed they acted on orders from the captain, their superior officer, according to a lawyer involved in the case.

The captain has contested this version of events, claiming he told the soldiers to hand over the two children and their mothers, accused of ties to Boko Haram, to the police, the same lawyer added.

The tribunal has set the next hearing in the case for November 4.

Source: AFP

There is outrage in Cameroon after a separatist fighter who chased several traditional rulers from the English-speaking Lebialem district enthroned himself as king. Raids by the military to capture the fighter and ensuing battles led to the deaths of 11 suspected fighters and the beheading of a police officer.

Heavily guarded by his fighters and accompanied by several women he said are his wives, Lekeahka Oliver, dressed in local traditional regalia, announces that he is the only king of Lebialem.

Recently, Oliver’s fighters attacked and chased away many local traditional rulers and notables.  He said they supported the central government in the war to make the North-and Southwest regions independent from the rest of Cameroon and its French-speaking majority.  At least two of the traditional rulers were killed.

Andreas Lekunze Nembo, traditional ruler of Bamumbu village and president of the Lebialem chiefs conference, said the escaped chiefs are outraged by the desecration of their palaces.

“There is fire in the house. Fire because our customs, tradition and cultural heritage continue to be abused. The desecration of a palace by separatists. Secondly there is general insecurity, intimidation and barbaric actions to our greatest surprise,” said Nembo.

In an attempt to capture Oliver, the military said it mounted raids on separatist camps in Lebialem, killing at least six fighters within the past three days.

Other battles were reported in the northwestern towns of Bamenda and Ndop, killing another five separatist fighters.

The fighters also beheaded a policeman.  

Colonel Sone Joseph Ajang, director of administrative and regulatory affairs in Cameroon’s Ministry of Defense, said the separatists have beheaded seven people over the past month.

“We ask ourselves, why do you chop off the head of someone they have already killed? This is to send some warning waves to the mind of soldiers, but we stay resolute as far as our duties are concerned irrespective of all the atrocities we have,” he said.

Deben Tchoffo, governor of the English-speaking Northwest region, said security services are attempting to stop the barbarism.

“It is unbearable and on behalf of the government of the republic, we condemn it strongly and investigations are ongoing to uncover those that have done [are responsible for] that devilish act,” said Tchoffo.

Early this month, Cameroon’s President Paul Biya organized what he called a national dialogue to solve the separatist crisis that has killed close to 3,000 people since 2016. Separatist groups on social media called the dialogue a non-event and refused to participate.

Source: VOA

More than 24 hours after a catholic priest went missing in the diocese of Mamfe in the South West Region, nothing has been heard of him.

Armed groups are very active in the area but non has claimed responsibility for his disappearance.

According to some Ambazonia leaders, a search is now on for what they claim is a proxy group that kidnapped Rev. Father Felix Ezeaka Sunday of Nigerian nationality, Sunday morning at Mbakang.

His whereabout has since remained unknown. Amba leaders allege that the said proxy group that took him has been operating in the area for about two months.

News of the abduction is still spreading through the area with populations anxious to get him freed.
No group has claimed responsibility for the abduction.

But this latest kidnap comes in a long line of abductions, torture and degrading treatments inflicted on priests, including bishops and humanitarian workers by armed groups.

Yet, prior to his abduction, there had been rumours that Amba Boys were after him having said “something” against their favour.

The priest who has been described by concerned parishioners reportedly loved by his community and especially the IDPs he served.

He returned from holidays in neighbouring Nigeria only to go missing the next day.

Father Felix Ezeaka has been Parish Priest of Afab, a Parish in Central Ejagham, Manyu Division.

“Let the world know what we suffer from the hands of the Military and the Amba fighters for speaking the Truth and standing by it!!!” a trusted source in the Mamfe Dioceses told The Voice newspaper.

Rev. Fr. Felix Ezeaka Sunday belongs to the diocese of Awka – Nigeria. He was ordained on June 26 2014, and has been working in Cameroon for over 2 years.

Source: The Voice

The Ambazonia Vice President Dabney Yerima says the successful launch of the Amba Bonds Project will stifle French Cameroun’s plan of francophonising the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

The exiled leader made the comments in Holland late on Sunday observing that the “plans to give Ambazonian the so-called special status will fail, and Southern Cameroonians will never allow French Cameroun occupation forces to implement Biya’s plots and change the character of British Southern Cameroons.”

The top Ambazanian official also emphasized the necessity for every Southern Cameroonian to stick to the wise and courageous Amba Bonds Project to confront French Cameroun atrocities in Ambazonia which he described as the core of the Southern Cameroons conflict.

Comrade Dabney Yerima further pointed out that despite all the challenges within the Ambazonia Interim Government, Southern Cameroonians were heading toward victory. He saluted all Southern Cameroons Restoration forces for standing in the face of French Cameroun occupation.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai in Holland

Cameroon’s ruling party, Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM), said on Friday the country needs over 5 billion U.S. dollars to reconstruct and develop troubled English-speaking regions of Northwest and Southwest.

Party spokesperson, Jacques Fame Ndongo, who is also Cameroon’s Minister of Higher Education, told reporters the money will be used to rehabilitate infrastructure destroyed by separatists.

“The state means is not extendable to reconstruct all the infrastructures that have been destroyed, but the head of state has taken the commitment to rehabilitate (the regions) and he will respect his commitment,” Ndongo told reporters.

On Thursday, the Party said in a press statement, President Paul Biya was resolute to find “lasting solutions to the security crisis” in the regions, stressing that a national dialogue held in early October to end the conflict was a “historic moment of national fraternisation” for the country.

“The recommendations (of the national dialogue) will not be thrown in the gutter. Not at all.” Ndongo added.

According to the United Nations, more than 530,000 people have been displaced internally in the regions since armed separatists started clashing with government forces in 2017. One point three million people in the regions are in need of humanitarian assistance.

Armed separatists want to secede from the largely French-speaking Cameroon and create an independent nation in the English-speaking regions.

Source: Xinhuanet

The Ambazonia Interim Government says the French Cameroun military has killed an unprecedented number of civilians and injured dozens more since the failed Major National Dialogue. A statement from the Southern Cameroons leadership in Den Hague, Holland called the massacre in various Southern Cameroons constituencies as totally unacceptable. 

In the statement released by the Vice President Dabney Yerima, the Ambazonia Interim Government said all Southern Cameroons fighters who were deceived into dropping their weapons by the French Cameroun regime have been killed by elements of the French Cameroun secret service.

This month alone has witnessed more Ambazonia casualties than in any other month on record since the meeting between French President Emmanuel Macron and the French Cameroun dictator, Paul Biya.

The Ambazonia Interim Government has recorded more than 4000 civilian casualties in total in the first three years of the Biya-led war in Southern Cameroons with some 61 percent of them being women and children. The Vice President Yerima statement laid the blame for the spike at the feet of the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR) deployed to Southern Cameroons by the 86 year old French Cameroun thug.

Civilian casualties at record-high levels clearly show the need for members of the Southern Cameroons diaspora to invest in the Amba Bonds Project that has been designed to pay much more attention to protecting the Ambazonia civilian population.

The figures also show the need for a United Nations fact finding mission and the urgent need for a permanent political settlement of the Southern Cameroons crisis as there can be no military solution to the Ambazonia conflict.

The United States and the EU have continued their advocacy work with the Biya Francophone regime in Yaounde and have previously blamed both the French Cameroun military and the Ambazonia Restoration Forces for a spike in civilian deaths in Southern Cameroons.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

A key separatist commander named Polycarp Ekeom who laid down his weapons “to give peace a chance” in Cameroon’s English-speaking region has been killed “most probably by separatists”, the military source said on Thursday.

“He was killed Wednesday night at his residence in Wum. His body was mutilated. We were still preparing to take him to a secure location when the tragedy happened,” a military officer who asked not to be named told Xinhua.

Local authorities confirmed his death and said he was murdered.

On Wednesday, Ekeom who was controlling operations in Wum, a locality in the Anglophone region of Northwest, received a standing ovation after announcing at a public event his decision to drop his weapons and embrace normal life.

It is the first time since the creation of Cameroon’s National Committee on Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (NCDDR) in 2018, that an ex-fighter was killed after dropping his weapons in the country.

More than 100 separatist fighters have already dropped their weapons in the two Anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest, according officials of NCDDR.

President Paul Biya has promised not to harm the separatists who will lay down their weapons, but warned that those who continue the armed struggle will “face the full force” of the Cameroon army.

Since 2017, armed separatists have been clashing with government forces in the regions in a bid to create an independent nation they call “Ambazonia”.

A national dialogue to end the separatist conflict held in the country early October recommended that greater autonomy should be given to the English-speaking regions.

Source: Xinhuanet

Exiled Southern Cameroons leader, Dabney Yerima pledged on Wednesday to push for a new resistance strategy with the Ambazonia Self-Defense Force on secession after the fallout from the failed so-called Major National Dialogue which recently opted to grant a kind of “Special Status” to the people of Ambazonia.

The Ambazonia Vice President told our chief correspondent in London, Asu Isong that the sentencing of President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides will not go unanswered. “The life sentence given to our leaders abducted in Nigeria for standing for self-determination is a wakeup call to every Southern Cameroonian that we must change the tactics by investing in the struggle.”

Comrade Dabney Yerima was referring to the Amba Bonds Project launched this week by the treasury department of the Ambazonia Interim Government which involves Southern Cameroonians investing their money in the resistance.

Announced late on Sunday, the Amba Bonds is a more flexible and transparent scheme by the Interim Government which has pushed increasingly skeptic Southern Cameroonians to once again engage in the Ambazonian revolution.

Dabney Yerima said “the fact that the idea of a special status for Southern Cameroonians came from former finance minister Akame Mfoumou who is a cousin to French Cameroun head of state Paul Biya was indeed an insult to the Ambazonian nation.  I will advocate for Southern Cameroonians to exercise the right to self-determination throughout my term as Vice President.”

“Southern Cameroonians in the diaspora are very much aware of the difficulties our people in Ground Zero are facing through repression and fear. But I want to assure Ambazonians that we of the Interim Government are pushing forward to get supplies to Ground Zero!  I am therefore calling on all our self-defense forces not to allow themselves to be intimidated by threats and deceits,” noted the Ambazonia Vice President.

Dabney Yerima reiterated his condemnation of the violence that he blamed on Minister Paul Atanga Nji militias and misguided Amba Boys whom he said should be isolated and kept away from the ongoing well organized Southern Cameroons struggle.

By Chi Prudence Asong and Asu Isong

Cameroon’s three-year separatist conflict has left close to 3,000 people dead and growing numbers in need of psychological care.  An influx of people impacted by the conflict are flooding into trauma centers across the English-speaking regions of the central African state.  Medical officials say they are running short of supplies and trauma workers are struggling to provide care.

A middle-aged woman cries for help at the Integrated Mental Health Care Center in Babungo, a village in Cameroon’s English-speaking Northwest.

She tells a reporter her husband was shot dead in a crossfire between the military and separatist fighters in September.  Then on Saturday, her only son’s body was found in an abandoned school building in the town of Mbengwi.

In the same trauma center, 19-year-old Yvonne Ikah says that last month three armed men in the English-speaking town of Bamenda stopped her on the way to school and raped her.

“They told me to climb on a bike [motorcycle] and I tried resisting.  But, when I saw the gun, I had no option.  They took me to a bush.  I insisted that I was an orphan.  They beat me and I had no option.  What I went through, I am not sure I will ever want to go back there again,” she said.

As Cameroon’s separatist conflict heads into a fourth year, the number of trauma victims is only growing.

At the Babungo Mental Health Care Center alone, the number of patients has tripled in the past two months to nearly 600.

Trauma care specialist Evangeline Nchang says patient numbers jump when fighting stops, as it becomes safer to travel to the center.

“The trauma is just too much,” she said.  “Youths are dying, elderly people are dying, even old mothers that cannot even run away when the guns are being shot.  They are just shot like that.  There are more mental patients every day because of the trauma of this crisis.”

There are not enough beds, so the patients sleep on the floor in crowded hallways.

Medical supplies are running short, despite donations from Germany and the United States.

And director of the trauma center John Tumenta says most staff have fled because of nearby fighting between Cameroon’s military and the separatists.

Earlier this month, Cameroon’s government hosted a week-long “national dialogue” with the aim of ending the conflict.

While some welcomed the effort by President Paul Biya for reconciliation, critics dismissed the dialogue as a sham debate.

Separatist leaders refused to take part, noting thousands of people are still locked up in connection with the conflict, and vowed to continue fighting.

Meanwhile, the United Nations says the humanitarian situation in the troubled western regions is getting worse with half a million internally displaced, and over a million in need of assistance.

Fighting broke out in 2016 after Cameroon’s military cracked down on anglophones calling for an independent state within the mainly French-speaking country.  Cameroon’s English speakers say they are treated as second-class citizens and given fewer jobs and support from the state.

Source: VOA