Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday described the abuse of detainees at a detention center in Cameroon’s capital city of Yaoundé, identifying violations of domestic and international human rights law.

Torture and detention have been “endemic in Cameroon’s law enforcement and military system,” carried out by gendarmes and other security forces of the State Defense Secretariat. These tactics are employed against suspected members or supporters of separatist groups such as Boko Haram.

Interviewed detainees explained that they were subjected to interrogations that featured humiliation and punishment, which were followed by forced signings of statements “they were not allowed to read or could not read because [the statements] were in French.” Most of the detainees were charged with crimes related to terrorism despite the fact that the majority of those interviewed by HRW were civilians.

Within a one year period, 26 cases of incommunicado detention were documented, and at least 14 cases of torture were noted. HRW indicated that the “total numbers are likely much higher, because abuses are committed in secret and many former detainees are reluctant to speak because they fear reprisals.” There are indications that these human rights violations are still ongoing.

Thus far, there has been an absence of repercussions. HRW called on the UN Security Council to address the situation in Cameroon by condemning the abuses and “call[ing] for the government to end these practices.”

Source: Jurist

Hello to all of you in the Cameroon Concord News Group,

Just to express our profound gratitude for all you have done and are still doing for the struggle to save the good people of Ambazionia and restore the Federal Republic of Ambazonia. Your contributions in prayers, kind and cash are testimonial to our survivability and that of the struggle.

Be rest assured that we know you are committed. Let nothing distract you. We in detention formed committees for legal, social services, finance, diplomacy, future expectations, detainee code of conduct and health.

We developed a legal concept and principle which our lawyers imbibed for us to defend all Ambazonians. The Committee of Prison and Detention camps including inmate data has completed their job. Using these data, we created legal groups to defend Ambazonians in all tribunals’ and courts.

Stipends are allocated from that money that you and families and friends offer us. We also created a functional trouble bank and have always used from these sources, funds to provide primary health care for detainees and emergency needs.

We have registered delivered diplomatic correspondences to over 15 diplomatic missions and USA has been overwhelmingly impressed and of course some fallout like the UN Rights Chief visit recently.

Fundraising drive to provide food and medication to Ground Zero is on top gear and firing on all cylinders.  Two Ambazonians died in New Belll prison and we are still awaiting details as lawyers investigation are on.

Prison guide lines for peaceful stay in prison were conceived and documented. These were circulated to all coordinating teams that man the prisons and channel concerns to us in streamline manner

With these and others dear, we beg you to continue to assist us work for Ambazonia

Sisiku Ayuk Tabe

Interim President

Federal Republic of Ambazonia

Martin Belinga Eboutou, former director of the civil cabinet at the presidency of the Republic died Wednesday in Geneva, Switzerland after several months of illness.

Born in 1940, Martin Belinga Eboutou was a career diplomat who was always presented by the Cameroonian press as a centerpiece of the Biya crime syndicate.

The ex-powerful director of the civil cabinet at the presidency of the Republic was fired in March 2018 and replaced by Samuel Mvondo Ayolo.

Since then, Belinga Eboutou was never seen in any ruling CPDM official ceremonies. On several occasions, Cameroon Intelligence Report hinted that he was ill and had been evacuated abroad for treatment.

By Rita Akana

Cameroon’s National Committee on Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (NCDDR) said Tuesday that in the past five months 165 fighters in the Far-North region and two English-speaking regions of the country have “voluntarily” laid down their weapons “to embrace normal life”.

“We have 35 of them in Bamenda in the Northwest region, 21 in Buea in the Southwest region, mostly men and a few young women, and we have 109 in Mora in the Far North. The numbers may seem small but I think we are doing a lot because in addition to these numbers, we have hundreds of them who have laid down their arms but have not come to us yet,” Francis Fai Yengo, national coordinator of NCDDR, told reporters after briefing the prime minister and other senior government officials of the new development.

NCDDR will provide professional training and host the ex-combatants in rehabilitation centers across the country, Yengo said.

“We are going gradually but surely. We will demobolize them. They are going to move to the centers when the security situation is better,” he said.

Cameroon is facing serious security challenges in the two Anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest where separatists want to create an independent nation. In the Far North, where terror group Boko Haram is intensifying attacks on civilians and government forces.

NCDDR was created by President Paul Biya last year “to avoid the use of extreme measures” and supervise and manage the disarmament and reintegration of ex-combatants of Boko Haram and armed separatists in the Anglophone regions.

Xinhuanet

The human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) denounced in a report published on Monday “a regular use of torture and illegal detention” by the Cameroonian authorities against English-speaking separatists.

HRW claims to have “documented 26 cases of illegal detention and enforced disappearance at the detention centre of the Secretariat of State for Defence between January 2018 and January 2019, including 14 cases of torture”.

The 26 cases concern English-speaking separatists or persons suspected of being so, HRW added. Gendarmes and other security forces at the State Secretariat of Defense (SED) used severe beatings and near-drownings to obtain confessions.

Among them, “ten were leaders of the self-proclaimed Ambazonia interim government,” the NGO detailed.

The English-speaking separatists of Cameroon, a country with a French-speaking majority, are campaigning for the creation of an independent state in the North-West and South-West regions on behalf of Ambazonia.

At the end of 2017, after a year of protest, separatists took up arms against Yaoundé. Since then, these regions have been the scene of an armed conflict that has continued to grow.

“Gendarmes and other security forces at the State Secretariat of Defense (SED) used severe beatings and near-drownings to obtain confessions,” the NGO said in its publication. In this report, HRW also cites cases of torture inflicted by separatists on civilians.

On Wednesday, the Ministry of Defense denounced on Facebook the “guilty silence and complicity of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the international media” in the face of abuses committed by separatists against civilians.

In mid-April, a HRW researcher working on the conflict in the English-speaking area was denied entry to Cameroon at Douala airport.

In twenty months, the conflict in the English-speaking area has killed 1,850 people, according to the International Crisis Group, a centre for geopolitical analysis. It has already forced more than 530,000 people to flee their homes, according to the UN.

At the initiative of the United States, the UN Security Council will hold its first meeting on the crisis in English-speaking Cameroon on May 13, which will focus on the humanitarian situation.

“The UN Security Council should send a clear message that ending torture in detention is crucial to responding to the crisis in English-speaking regions,” HRW commented in its report on Monday.

On Thursday, Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, arrived in Cameroon for a four-day visit, where she met with President Paul Biya on Friday.

Source: AFP

Two Southern Cameroons civilians were recently killed by French Cameroun soldiers in Wowo village, Ndu sub constituency in the Northern Zone of Ambazonia.

The French Cameroun Divisional Officer for Ndu, Adamu Shuaibu who confirmed the killings said the Southern Cameroons civilians were “accidentally killed” by the soldiers as they raided the area in attempt to flush out Ambazonian Restoration Forces.

The French Cameroun colonial officer further revealed that the soldiers had left Ndu for Wowo on Friday on a mission to clear off the village of any suspected armed separatist fighter and to repair a bridge reportedly destroyed by the Southern Cameroons Self Defense forces

“In pursuing the separatists, the soldiers mistakenly shot and killed two civilians- a young man and an elderly person- who were hiding in the bush” the D.O

By Sama Ernest with files from Journal du Cameroun

In the run up to the so-called National Day on May 20 – in New York, before having Inner City Press roughed up and banned, Guterres’ chief of staff Maria Luiza Viotti and his Deputy SG Amina J. Mohammed partied with Tommo Monthe in a Manhattan townhouse singing “Buvez du champagne,” Video here, from 4:30 — this: “The insecurity in the North West and South West regions of Cameroon keeps paralysing activities in that part of the country despite the failure of administrative officials to admit the fact.

The Divisional Officer of Alou, Lebialem Division of the South West region has convened a meeting in Dschang to prepare for the National Day celebrations.  Due to the insecurity in Alou, the meeting cannot hold in the locality but in neighbouring Dschang in the West region of Cameroon.” We’ll have more in the approach to this ghoulish Cameroun National Day, including in New York. In the village of Ikata in SW Cameroon on April 26 Paul Biya’s soldiers shot unarmed civilians including a woman named as Glory, and burned houses down. 

While Guterres’ UN does nothing about the outrage of Nigeria sending back to military custody refugees and asylum seekers, the Southern Cameroons leader Julius Ayuk Tabe and nine others were expected in court on Monday April 29 where their hearing continues but they have now released a statement through their defense team saying they will not be appearing.  Their lawyers say given the fact that they have taken the matter to Appeal court all proceedings at a lower jurisdiction (military tribunal) must be halted as per the law on criminal proceedings. 

 The lawyers have since appealed a decision by the Military tribunal to judge the detained leaders in Cameroon despite the fact that they are refugees and asylum seekers. One would have thought that former UNHCR chief Guterres would not collude in this, but that was before the golden statue and UN Budget Committee deals with Biya’s ambassador Tommo Monthe.

 Guterres is killing what’s left of the UN’s credibility with his corruption and no due process censorship. Of course, Guterres and Dujarric won’t answer questions from Inner City Press not only about Cameroon but even about how 27 new Resident Coordinators are being recruited. Their UN is increasingly corrupt.

Inner Press

For the past three years, practicing journalism has become a daunting task for journalists in Cameroon’s conflict hit regions as the war tearing the English-Speaking community apart from the rest of the country deepens.

The humanitarian impact of the crisis which is now in its third year is only partially being told as the majority of media workers who have constantly reported about the crisis are labeled as terrorists or criminals.

Kiven Brenda, a renowned female journalist in Bamenda has not been in possession of her laptop for two years now, after it was confiscated by Security Officials in the North West Region.

She tells me that, government’s pressure and constant threats almost forced her to abandon her pen and give up on journalism in order to stay safe. 

My laptop is still at the Judicial Police, seized February 2017. That is my work instrument where I stored all my data. I lost them all as I am not sure the laptop will ever be returned to me again…

Brenda revealed that her home was visited by security forces in her absence but despite these threats and harassment, she refuses to give up.  

There came a time when I felt like giving up when they locked up the radio station, Radio Hot Cocoa, because they said we became unprofessional. Police came and searched my home] No matter how fair and balanced you are, you need courage to carry on.

According to Atia Tilarious in Buea, Acting Editor-in-Chief at The Sun Newspaper, the two belligerent parties in the armed conflict are making the practice of journalism hideous.

Atia spent over eight months in Yaoundé prison for doing his job as a journalist. He told me how every journalist is a potential terrorist in this time of crisis as the government uses the anti-terrorism law to silence the press. 

Things have been further compounded by the obnoxious laws that we have, like the law of December 23, 2014 on the suppression of acts of terrorism that defines terrorism so broadly as to make the work of journalists difficult such as insulting state security, personalities, revolution, and insurrection.

This, according to Atia, explains why the story of the suffering masses in the North West and South West regions are yet to be told.

Journalists have tried their best but we have not done enough because, the humanitarian side of the crisis is not being told.

We focus more on what the armed groups and soldiers have done, but we fail to present the picture of the suffering masses. Those whose houses have been burned, destroyed, families killed, what has become of them, it’s a difficult thing for journalists to cover at this age and I think there is much more we must be doing.

We have to live to tell the story and if we risk our lives to get this kind of information, who else will be left to tell the story?

The independence of the media in Cameroon has been a timeless debate, with the government assuring the national and international communities of its liberty.

But the escalation of the anglophone crisis has gone a long way to contradict this perception of the government, as media workers are not provided with guaranteed security instruments.

Editor-in-Chief at My Prime Media, Kum Leonard describes the media climate as more complex.

The worsening sociopolitical situation in the Northwest and Southwest Regions has made the job of media persons more complex. Our independence is being threatened more as days go by, because both factions in the ongoing crisis seek favorable attention from the Press. One becomes a direct target by either of the sides, once your reporting is judged out of favour for a party. Journalism is caught between two extremes, with each wanting the media to pick up a propaganda role in its favour.And, out of fear, many have given in to undertaking a role that puts them squarely out of their professional role of objective, accurate and fair reporting…

The president of SNJC South West President noted that the battle is now between the media, government forces and non-state armed groups.

On the one hand, the government has all it takes to arrest and lock up journalists for what they consider as offensive to public, on the other hand, pro-independence activists could target journalists considered too pro-government. Reporting therefore becomes a risky venture.

Derick Jato, Marcel Fonkwen and Rose Obah have constantly received threats, harassment and intimidation from government and non-government actors.

However, they  said that security is not the only barrier to press freedom in the conflict hit North West and South West Regions. Rose Obah, North West President of The Cameroon Community Media Network, lamented:

The curfews, ghost towns and lockdowns have prevented me from meeting deadlines and the quality and frequency of my peace and community development programmes are wanting because of the insecurity and threats regarding the content of my programme and news angles. As a journalist, I believe the situation is getting worse because violence is on the rise.

Meanwhile, Marcel Fokwen of The Post Newspaper, is worried about credible sources of information which have become scarce.

Cameroon’s political challenges have dealt a severe blow to the practice of journalism. The hostile environment has reduced the trust between credible news sources and the reporter.

In the days before the conflict, it was easy to get information from certain sources, but the current hostile atmosphere has shrunken the news source base for me as a journalist. Most of my news sources are no longer willing to speak openly. The crisis has reduced the authoritative tone of certain reports I could do before now.

During this instability, media workers want to be able to talk and exercise their duties freely without reprisals.

But how will that be possible without  genuine political action?

Derick Jato who has been covering the anglophone conflict since 2016 says it could still be years away from ending if nothing is done. The award-winning journalist said:

Three years gone, the only achievement, if that is the right word, is the continuous loss of lives. We have not seen a positive change. It is much more of a talking than an action situation. There is need for action and broad-based dialogue.

As we celebrate World Press Freedom Day, at least four journalists are still behind bars because they covered the anglophone crisis.

Source: English Pen

At least 1,850 Southern Cameroonians have been killed and 530,000 internally displaced and tens of thousands of refugees registered in the past 20 months as a result of the war in Southern Cameroons, Brussels-based International Crisis Group has revealed.

In its latest report published on Thursday May 2, the International Crisis Group pointed out that there is no dialogue between the government of Cameroon and the separatists, who are both refusing to give ground: the government is counting on a military victory and refuses to discuss the form of the state; the separatists demand independence.

The intransigence of the belligerents threatens to generate further violence and prolong the conflict, which neither can win in the short term, the Crisis Group added.

The group has thus called on Cameroonians and other international actors to encourage both sides in the conflict to make concessions and sanction those who will stand in the way of dialogue.

Source: Journal du Cameroun

On this World Press Freedom Day, the Committee to Protect Journalists is highlighting four cases of reporters who remain in prison in Cameroon, a destabilized and increasingly repressive nation led for nearly four decades by President Paul Biya.

What began in October 2016 as peaceful protests led by professionals seeking equal treatment in the West African nation’s English-speaking regions has, for many, become a full-blown Anglophone separatist crisis. That’s come with a crackdown on opposition political leaders, journalists and civil society actors.

Among them is Mancho Bibixy, a former radio broadcaster in Bamenda who was sentenced in military courts to 15 years in prison in May 2018.

Bibixy was arrested after making a public speech from inside a coffin in November 2016 to call attention to the Biya administration’s violent response to Anglophone protesters, and the mass detentions in which he too was swept up. He was harassed for weeks over his radio show content and Facebook posts before he was permanently held in prison in June 2017.

He was found guilty of terrorism, secession, insurrection and other serious charges, along with journalists Tsi Conrad, Thomas Awah Jr. and other defendants.

Bibixy also worked as a teacher in Bamenda, and was among the earliest figures associated with the outlawed Anglophone Civil Society Consortium to be silenced. His concern for his fellow detainees led Bibixy to launch a hunger strike in 2017, and his cause united Cameroonian Anglophones against a Biya regime that refused meaningful dialogue and negotiation to end the crisis.

The fourth journalist, Amadou Vamoulké, worked for state-owned CRTV and was arrested in July 2016.

“The official reason for his arrest is a pretext for trying to silence journalists in Cameroon,” said his lawyer. “Amadou never accepted as black what he knew was white.”

Source: Africa Times