9, November 2018
Southern Cameroons Crisis: Students Kidnapped Are Freed, But Questions Remain 0
Nearly 80 children who were kidnapped by armed assailants from a school in northwestern Cameroon have been released by their abductors and are being reunited with their parents.
But it remains unclear who the kidnappers were and why the children were taken. The government has blamed the abductions on separatists, who in turn say the government is responsible.
The students, kidnapped Sunday night from a Presbyterian school in the northwestern city of Bamenda, were released at another school 12 miles away, The Guardian reports, noting that it’s also unclear how they were transported given a curfew that was in effect at night.
A principal and a teacher who were abducted along with the children are still being held, Reuters reported.
“They look tired and psychologically tortured,” Fonki Samuel Forba, moderator of Cameroon’s Presbyterian Church, told The Associated Press.
Forba asked the parents of children at the boarding school to take them home, as their safety could not be guaranteed.
“It is unfortunate we have to close the school and send home 700 children,” he told the AP. “Their security is not assured by the state and armed groups constantly attack and kidnap them.”
The school suffered a separate kidnapping incident on Oct. 31 in which 11 students were taken and later released, according to the Guardian.
Cameroon has a majority of French speakers, with a significant minority of English speakers in the country’s western portion. Originally colonized by Germany, the country was split into English and French portions following World War I, and both French and English are official languages of Cameroon.
Tensions have been growing in the country since late 2016, as initially peaceful protests by the Anglophone minority over perceived marginalization turned into a secessionist movement in northwestern and southwestern Cameroon, in opposition to the Francophone-dominated government.
Hundreds of people have been killed in the country as the separatist movement has taken hold, and the government has put down any efforts to secede.
The country’s 85-year-old, French-speaking president, Paul Biya, was inaugurated into his seventh term on Tuesday. In an address, he promised to increase decentralization: “Measures will be taken as soon as possible to broaden the powers of local authorities in order to provide them with the means for greater autonomy. Bilingualism and multiculturalism will continue to be promoted by the commission set up to that end.”
Biya asked people in the Anglophone regions to “lend all possible support to the action of the authorities aimed at restoring peace. They know, better than anyone, what their life would be like under the yoke of extremists who have been spreading terror and desolation in their regions for some months now.”
On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department condemned the kidnapping and expressed concern over what it deemed the “burgeoning Anglophone Crisis.”
“We urge an immediate halt to the indiscriminate targeting of civilians and burning of houses by Cameroonian government forces and to attacks perpetrated by both Anglophone separatists against security forces and civilians,” the department said in a statement from spokesperson Heather Nauert. “The systematic intimidation based on ethnic and religious affiliation, including in Yaoundé and Douala, must stop.”
An American missionary was killed inside his car in Bamenda last week when he apparently was caught in crossfire.
Source: National Public Radio
Now that you are here
The Cameroon Concord News Group Board wishes to inform its faithful readers that for more than a decade, it has been providing world-class reports of the situation in Southern Cameroons. The Board has been priding itself on its reports which have helped the world to gain a greater understanding of the crisis playing out in Southern Cameroons. It hails its reporters who have also helped the readers to have a broader perspective of the political situation in Cameroon.
The Board wishes to thank its readers who have continued to trust Southern Cameroon’s leading news platform. It is therefore using this opportunity to state that its reporters are willing to provide more quality information to the readers. However, due to the changing global financial context, the Board is urging its readers to play a significant role in the financing of the news organization. It is therefore calling on its faithful readers to make whatever financial contribution they can to ensure they get the latest developments in their native Southern Cameroons, in particular, and Cameroon in general.
Bank transaction: Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai
Banking IBAN: GB51 BARC 2049 1103 9130 15
Swift BIC BARC GB22XX
SORT CODE 20-49-11, ACCOUNT NUMBER – 03913015 Barclay PLC, UK
The Board looks forward to hearing from the readers.
Signed by the Group Chairman on behalf of the Board of Directors
Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai
Email: soteragbawebai@gmail.com
11, November 2018
The rise and rise of Mimi Mefo, the killing of Charles Wesco and the Tchiroma disgrace 0
The Cameroon government defended the arrest of a journalist who accused military forces of responsibility for the recent killing of American missionary Charles Wesco last month, reasserting that it was separatist ammunition found in his head and body.
Cameroon Minister of Communications Issa Tchiroma Bakary issued a lengthy statement Thursday, providing more details about the death late last month of the Indiana Baptist missionary, who the United States government believes was caught in “crossfire” in ongoing conflict between the Cameroon army and English-speaking separatist forces in the northwest Anglophone region.
The statement was issued in response to international advocates who have criticized the government for arresting journalist Mimi Mefo Takombo, the English desk editor and journalist for Equinoxe Television, this week for reporting that the Cameroon army killed Wesco.
The journalist is being held at New-Bell Central Prison in Douala and has been charged with “dissemination of fake news,” and “news lies likely to harm public authorities or national cohesion” — crimes punishable under Cameroon criminal code section 113 that bars the “propagation of false information.”
She was also charged with “incitement to revolt against the Government and Institutions of the Republic.” Bakary repeated the government’s previous claims that “terrorists” were on the move to attack a university in Bamenda and a military brigade at around 10 a.m. on Oct. 30 when Wesco, a fellow missionary, his wife and child were driving to go shopping in a rural area just outside of Bamenda.
Previous reports had indicated that bullets struck the car and killed Wesco, while others in the vehicle survived. According to Bakary’s statement, Wesco “received a 12-gauge oblique bird-shot fired by a sneaky terrorist.”
“Several pellets reached the victim at the parietal level of his skull, one below the lower right jaw and the last one at the level of his shoulder,” the statement explains. “He eventually succumbed to his wounds.”
The government said that Wesco’s body was subject to investigation by police forces and his remains were then transferred to a hospital, where an autopsy was performed in the presence of Cameroonian and American forensic doctors, a U.S. Embassy representative and the commissioner to the Yaoundé Military Court.
“During the autopsy, the pellets extracted from the remains confirmed that the shots that killed Reverend Charles Truman Wesco did indeed come from a 12-gauge weapon which is, as we know, used by the secessionist terrorists operating in the North-West and South-West regions,” Bakary asserted. “The impacts left by the shots were effectively located in the right parietal part of the skull, the right face and the right shoulder of the victim; all things that confirm the position of the shooter stationed on the right side of the vehicle, a position occupied by the terrorists at the time of the incident.”
Bakary accused the journalist of “altering the reality of the facts” and “spreading manifest untruths.” Bakary said Takombo’s claims were “highly detrimental to the morale of the troops” in their “loyal and legal fight against criminal hordes with a secessionist agenda.”
Takombo’s arrest has drawn the ire of international advocates, such as the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. “Cameroon cannot be allowed to suppress coverage of unrest in its western, Anglophone regions by detaining journalists like Mimi Mefo. She must be released immediately,” CPJ Deputy Executive Director Robert Mahoney said in a statement. “The charge of publishing information that infringes on territorial integrity is a laughable smokescreen for censorship, plain and simple.”
Libom Li Likeng, Cameroon’s telecommunications minister, told Voice of America that propagation of false information on social media is punishable by six months to two years in prison and a fine that could range from $8,000 to $16,000.
Takombo’s arrest comes as other journalists have been detained for several weeks. Wesco is survived by his wife, Stephanie, and eight children. The Wescos sold most of their possessions in the United States and moved to Cameroon last month to serve as missionaries sent by the Believers Baptist Church in Warsaw, Indiana. An online fundraising page benefiting the family has raised over $100,000 in nine days.
Stephanie Wesco and her children arrived safely back in the United States this week, according to an update from the GoFundMe page’s organizer, Matthew Barnes. “It was my high honor and privilege to assist in picking up the Charles-Stephanie Wesco family at the airport this evening,” he wrote in the update. “The Wesco family are modern day heroes of the faith.”
The family will hold a funeral for Wesco next Monday at Community Baptist Church in South Bend, Indiana.
Source: The Christian Post
Now that you are here
The Cameroon Concord News Group Board wishes to inform its faithful readers that for more than a decade, it has been providing world-class reports of the situation in Southern Cameroons. The Board has been priding itself on its reports which have helped the world to gain a greater understanding of the crisis playing out in Southern Cameroons. It hails its reporters who have also helped the readers to have a broader perspective of the political situation in Cameroon.
The Board wishes to thank its readers who have continued to trust Southern Cameroon’s leading news platform. It is therefore using this opportunity to state that its reporters are willing to provide more quality information to the readers. However, due to the changing global financial context, the Board is urging its readers to play a significant role in the financing of the news organization. It is therefore calling on its faithful readers to make whatever financial contribution they can to ensure they get the latest developments in their native Southern Cameroons, in particular, and Cameroon in general.
Bank transaction: Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai
Banking IBAN: GB51 BARC 2049 1103 9130 15
Swift BIC BARC GB22XX
SORT CODE 20-49-11, ACCOUNT NUMBER – 03913015 Barclay PLC, UK
The Board looks forward to hearing from the readers.
Signed by the Group Chairman on behalf of the Board of Directors
Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai
Email: soteragbawebai@gmail.com