News

17, April 2023

Insecurity grows in Cameroon as reintegration efforts stall ⁰

Former Boko Haram fighters and members who return to communities in Cameroon pose a significant security threat to civilians. The lack of effective reintegration increases the chances of former combatants returning to violence, encouraged by the rise in lucrative organised crime, the circulation of illicit weapons and inter-communal conflicts.

The first step in successful reintegration is the screening of defectors. But this process is lacking in Cameroon, where the roles of Boko Haram associates who surrender are not clear. By distinguishing between fighters, hostages, couriers, slaves or logisticians, those who remain radicalised and dangerous, are identified. For example, in Amchidé near the Nigerian border, community sources told ISS Today that former combatants sometimes threatened civilians.

A National Committee for Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (CNDDR) was created in 2018, but the law establishing it doesn’t mention those kidnapped by Boko Haram. Hostages who escape and return home are often mistaken for ex-combatants. Managers at the Méri disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration centre in northern Cameroon say the facility houses both former hostages and fighters. So, in addition to the legal gaps, the lack of screening makes it difficult to resolve the problem.

Deficiencies in the reintegration process are detrimental to those who leave violent extremist groups. Former associates can face reprisals from Boko Haram’s victims because no prosecutions or reconciliation have taken place to prove their innocence or guilt. For example, many cases were reported of innocent former members being stigmatised in Mayo Moskota.

There is also a lack of clarity around prosecuting Boko Haram fighters, even though the Lake Chad Basin Regional Stabilisation Strategy and international standards cover this. Prosecution is important for reintegration, as it helps counter impunity and allay the fears of Boko Haram’s victims. But since the Méri centre was opened in 2020, no residents have been pardoned, exonerated or convicted of a terrorist act before being reintegrated into the community.

This highlights another problem – the lack of legal harmonisation in Cameroon. The 2014 law that imposes the death penalty on anyone found guilty of, or complicit in, acts of terrorism doesn’t promote reintegration. And the CNDDR decree is silent concerning amnesty or legal proceedings against former fighters.

Infrastructure such as cantonment centres – where returnees stay before being reintegrated – is also lacking. Méri’s secondary prison was transformed into a deradicalisation centre, but despite having space for only 150 residents, it houses over 2 500, according to the CNDDR. It also lacks training materials to facilitate former combatants’ economic integration. A regional cantonment centre should be built in Mémé in the commune of Mora, which has been declared the regional CNDDR headquarters for the Far North.

The lack of infrastructure means that many who leave Boko Haram prefer to integrate directly into communities. In 2021, the communes of Mora, Mayo Moskota, Kolofata, Mokolo, Makari, Waza, Logone-Birni and Fotokol alone were home to 584 former fighters and members. That number has since increased.

Many former combatants and members also live among internally displaced persons in Zamaï. They could become targets for reprisals from Boko Haram victims, or be attacked by insurgents who consider them traitors.

National guidance on reintegrating former members is essential. In 2017, the Far North Region governor encouraged Boko Haram fighters to defect, offering an outreach programme and a three-part protocol involving screening, deradicalisation and reintegration. On returning home, they pledged to abandon all interaction with Boko Haram, swearing on the Koran in the presence of community members and traditional and religious authorities. This initiative fell away when the CNDDR was created, but its achievements and lessons should inform ongoing reintegration processes.

Community sources say over 100 former fighters and members – disillusioned by their treatment at the Méri centre or left unmonitored in communities – have returned to Boko Haram since leader Abubakar Shekau died in 2021. The poor conditions in the Méri centre would also deter many fighters from surrendering.

National guidance on the organised reintegration of former members is essential

In the absence of successful reintegration, terrorism continues in the region. At the same time, armed robbery, hostage-taking and road ambushes are rising. Weapons are circulating, increasing insecurity and fuelling community conflicts. Reintegration is vital to reduce the threat of violent extremism and mitigate the upswing of organised crime linked to the presence of former Boko Haram associates in communities.

A clear process must be defined, including steps, objectives, outcomes and indicators. An inclusive, transitional justice approach should involve local communities, traditional leaders, community-based organisations, the media, researchers and the private sector.

Counter-terrorism legislation must also be harmonised at the national and regional levels. The principles for disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration in the Lake Chad Basin Regional Stabilisation Strategy must guide this process.

Source: Defense Web

17, April 2023

Intense fighting continues in Sudan for third day as civilian death toll nears 100 ⁰

For a third consecutive day, people in Sudan woke up to the ear-splitting sounds of heavy artillery and bombardment by warplanes on Monday as the death toll neared 100 following violent unrest.

According to reports, explosions rocked the Sudanese capital Khartoum Monday amid fierce fighting between the country’s military and the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

“The death toll among civilians… has reached 97,” the doctors’ union said, adding later that “dozens” of fighters had been killed and injured.

According to media reports, the figure does not include all casualties as many could not reach hospitals due to difficulties in movement amid the fighting.

The Central Committee of Sudan Doctors, a pro-democracy organization, also reported dozens of deaths among security forces, and some 942 wounded.

The intense conflict, which has seen air strikes, tanks on the streets, artillery fire and heavy gunfire in crowded neighborhoods both in Khartoum and other cities across Sudan, has triggered international demands for an immediate ceasefire.

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned that “several” of Khartoum’s nine hospitals receiving injured civilians “have run out of blood, transfusion equipment, intravenous fluids and other vital supplies”.

Katharina von Schroeder, a charity worker with Save The Children, who has been sheltering at a school with her son, told BBC they had hoped things would calm down when they arrived in search of shelter, but decided to stay put after clashes in the city escalated and spread to outside the capital.

She noted that several hundred children at least are trapped in similarly dangerous circumstances around Khartoum.

Meanwhile, the UN representative in Sudan on Monday slammed the failure by both the army and rival paramilitary forces to stop fighting during an agreed humanitarian pause to evacuate the wounded.

Volker Perthes said he was “extremely disappointed that humanitarian cessation of hostilities, that both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces had committed to, was only partially honored yesterday”.

Violence erupted in Sudan on Saturday between Sudanese armed forces loyal to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF, a paramilitary force led by Sudan’s deputy leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

Hemedti, belonging to a family of camel herders, rose from lowly beginnings to head a widely feared Arab militia that crushed a revolt in Darfur, winning him influence and eventually a role as the country’s second most powerful man, and one of its richest.

He has played a prominent role in his country’s turbulent politics for 10 years, helping topple his one-time benefactor President Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and later quashing protests by Sudanese seeking democracy.

As deputy head of state, Hemedti, with little formal education, has taken on some of Sudan’s most important portfolios in the post-Bashir era, including the crumbling economy and peace negotiations with rebel groups.

Source: Presstv

17, April 2023

“French Cameroonians living in unprecedented fear in Yaoundé” ⁰

The Chairman and Editor-In-Chief of the Cameroon Concord News Group has said that an uneasy calm now prevails in Southern Cameroons but French speaking Cameroonians are living in an unprecedented fear as Biya regime approaches its end.

The Right Hon. Soter Agbaw-Ebai, a Cameroonian Journalist told Cameroon Concord News London Bureau that for the time being, things are quiet in Southern Cameroons.

This calm, according to Agbaw-Ebai, comes as a result of the fact that there is a disconnect between the diaspora and Southern Cameroonians in Ground Zero.

“There is so much fear among French speaking Cameroonians today! The Biya regime is now a thing of the past,” Agbaw-Ebai told Cameroon Concord News London Bureau.

Agbaw-Ebai said that Southern Cameroonians are still steadfast in face of Yaounde’s aggression with ghost town operations.

He added that with the killing of some 3000 Cameroon government army soldiers, the Francophone dominated army seems to have retreated in its violence against the people of Southern Cameroons.

According to Soter Agbaw-Ebai, Cameroon as a nation is living a different reality today.

By Chi Prudence Asong

14, April 2023

Russian strike kills six, including toddler, in eastern Ukraine ⁰

Russia shelled a block of flats in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk on Friday, killing six people including a toddler who was pulled out of the rubble but died in an ambulance on the way to hospital, police said.

Sloviansk lies in a part of the Donetsk region that is under Ukrainian control. It is close to territory controlled by Russia.

AFP journalists saw rescue workers digging for survivors on the top floor of a residential building and black smoke billowing from homes on fire across the street.

Authorities earlier said five people were killed but that there was possibly a child under the rubble of the building, a typical Soviet-era housing estate.

“The death toll in Sloviansk has risen to six,” Ukrainian police said on Twitter.

“A child died in an ambulance after being pulled out from the rubble.”

Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska said the child was a two-year-old boy and sent her condolences to the family during this “indescribable grief.”

The street below — including a playground — was covered in a layer of concrete dust and debris, including torn pages from school books and children’s drawings.

Shocked residents

“I live on the opposite side of the street and I was sleeping a little when I heard this huge boom and I ran out from my flat,” 59-year-old resident Larisa told AFP.

“I was really scared and in a state of shock,” she said, adding the impact of the shelling had broken her windows and sent shards of glass flying throughout her home.

“I heard a woman screaming, ‘there’s a child here, there’s a child here.’ She was screaming so much.”

At another impact site in a residential neighbourhood, an elderly woman in a purple cardigan — dazed from the blasts — was gathering blown-off shards of metal from the ground outside a shop.

A resident nearby, who declined to give her name, told AFP journalists the strikes had blown out her windows and dislodged her front door from its frame.

“Usually when this happens we immediately take cover in the bathroom,” she said.

“No one from our side of the building was injured but maybe someone here was,” she added, pointing to a pool of blood next to another entrance of her building.

Sloviansk is 45 kilometres (27 miles) north-west of Bakhmut — the current epicentre of fighting.

Source: AFP

14, April 2023

African journalists are dying. They need the world’s help to hold power to account ⁰

On Friday 14 April, a team of west Africa-based journalists will arrive in Cameroon, one of the most oppressive countries on the continent. Our three colleagues will be there to conduct an “Arizona Project”, named after the events in 1976 when journalists in the US state came together to finish the story that a murdered colleague had been working on. Their motto – “You can kill a journalist, but you cannot kill the story” – applies now more than ever, especially in Cameroon.

What was the story that killed Martinez Zogo, the 50-year-old radio journalist, whose mutilated body was found on 22 January in a suburb of the capital Yaoundé, days after he had been abducted by masked men outside a police station in the city?

What little is known is that Zogo’s story concerned an alleged embezzlement case involving the regime-friendly media tycoon Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga. Belinga was arrested in connection with the murder on 6 February, and on 4 March was officially charged with complicity in torture. Belinga has denied guilt.

This already points to a big difference between events in the US in 1976 and Cameroon in 2023. First, the Arizona journalists would have been able to conduct their investigation with some protection from law enforcement.

The organised crime figures who murdered journalist Don Bolles might have killed once, but police came out in full force to prevent any repeat. In Cameroon, Zogo touched on state corruption, which might imply state-connected forces in his torture and murder. Also, unlike in Arizona, journalists have been murdered in Cameroon before; each had been investigating – or denouncing – embezzlement of state funds enriching a kleptocratic elite.

Crucially, and in contrast to Arizona, a blanket of silence has now descended on Cameroon, terrifying and muzzling citizens and journalists. “We are all afraid to report and our sources are all afraid to talk,” said one Cameroonian member of Naire, the Network of African Investigative Reporters and Editors, which is running this Arizona Project in partnership with Zam magazine. This is why an international team will now pick up the threads of the story Zogo left unfinished.

Sadly, Cameroon is not the only African country experiencing increasing oppression of media and civil society. In the same week that Zogo’s body was found, another journalist was killed in Rwanda, and a human rights lawyer was gunned down in Eswatini. In 2022, close to 60 journalists in Africa were assaulted, imprisoned, abducted or forced into exile.

In practically all these cases, even when arrests are made – which are often temporary – impunity reigns.

No one was ever arrested for the murder of my colleague, Ahmed Hussein-Suale. He was shot dead in my country, Ghana, in 2019, during an investigation of – among others – a politician, Kennedy Agyapong, for corruption. Just before Ahmed was killed, Agyapong exposed him and called for violent action against him on television. He later said he will “never regret showing the pictures” of the undercover journalist.

Agyapong is also behind several actions against me and my media house, Tiger Eye PI, for which Ahmed worked. Having already called for me to be hanged, Agyapong went on national radio and to call me a murderer, a blackmailer and a thief (among other things). His behaviour attracted international condemnation but, more worryingly for me, in the defamation case I brought against Agyapong in the high court, the judge, Justice Baah, was sympathetic to Agyapong in his verdict, finding none of the politician’s insults defamatory and even repeating allegations of criminal conduct against me, as if I were the one on trial.

Agyapong is now a presidential candidate in Ghana. It is in this culture of impunity that I have recently set up the Whistleblowers and Journalist Safety International Centre (WAJSIC) as a shelter organisation. It is already oversubscribed.

The persistent action against me and my colleagues in many African countries is illustrative of the climate we work in. In Senegal, Pape Alé Niang has recently been arrested, detained and harassed for corruption reporting. Theophilus Abbah in Nigeria has been the target of a frivolous lawsuit – a so-called Slapp suit of the type increasingly used against journalists by the rich and powerful. The list goes on.

We as Naire, in partnership with Zam, are conducting the Cameroon Arizona Project in the hope that the world will take note of what individuals such as Agyapong and kleptocratic and oppressive politicians are doing in our countries. They should be investigated, held to account and subject to sanctions. Just limiting their travel, shopping trips to London and New York and their use of stolen money to buy Mediterranean villas will help hearten us as journalists and citizens who yearn for democracy, transparency and good governance in our countries.

We hope that this article, along with the Arizona Project, will focus the attention of international media and civil society on our need for action and support. We hope to publish the results of the Arizona investigation on the Zam website and in partner media worldwide and that members of the media, civil society organisations, NGOs, academic institutions and researchers who want to follow up on the team’s findings, will help to alert global players to our plight and our requests for support.

Culled from The Guardian

14, April 2023

French Cameroun: Journalists Call for Protection After Mayor Issues Death Threats ⁰

Two journalists in northern Cameroon are calling for government protection after witnesses say a mayor publicly threatened to kill them for investigating corruption in road construction contracts. The Cameroon Journalists Trade Union has condemned the threat, which came after the killings in January of two reporters who were outspoken on corruption.

The journalists say Sali Babani, the mayor of Maroua, a city near the northern border with Chad and Nigeria publicly threatened several times this month to kill reporters there.

The Cameroon Journalists Trade Union in a statement April 8 said the mayor threatened freelance reporter Ousman Alh Boubakari for asking about accountability on development projects.

Boubakari had accused the mayor on Facebook of abandoning some road construction projects in Maroua.

Mahamat Hamidou said that during a public ceremony at Kakatare last week, he heard Babani threatened to punish or kill journalists for reporting that some public projects have been abandoned. Hamidou said Cameroon’s government should investigate why the mayor threatened to kill journalists instead of explaining why the road projects have not been completed as the Maroua Council promised.

The journalists’ union said the mayor also threatened to kill Douala-based Channel 2 International’s correspondent, Aminou Alioum.

Alioum and Boubakari said they received several anonymous calls threatening violence if they do not stop critical reports against the mayor.

Alioum told VOA that Boubakari received death threats from Babani for reporting that some roads in Maroua and construction work on the Kakatare junction in the same city have been abandoned. Alioum also said the mayor threatened him for taking pictures of the abandoned projects. He said the death threats from Babani add to other threats and intimidation reporters along Cameroon’s northern border with Chad and Nigeria regularly get from Boko Haram militants.

Babani refused to respond to VOA’s questions on the threats, which journalists also took to the police.

The spokesperson for Cameroon’s police would not comment on the threats, but told VOA it was their duty to protect all citizens.

Alioum and Boubakari said the threats will not stop them from carrying out their work as reporters but joined the journalists’ union in calling for the government to ensure their safety.

Cameroon’s government has not yet commented on the journalists’ plea for protection.

Babani’s threats of violence against the media come less than two months after two journalists were killed in Cameroon.

The mutilated remains of Martinez Zogo, a popular radio announcer and journalist, were found January 22 in Yaoundé.

Police arrested 20 people in connection with the killing, including senior police intelligence officers and a well-known media mogul, Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga.

On his radio program, Zogo had accused Belinga and several government ministers of planning to kill him for his reporting on their alleged corrupt deals.

Radio presenter Jean-Jacques Ola Bebe was also found shot dead on February 2 outside his home in the capital.

Like Zogo, Bebe was an outspoken critic of government corruption.

Source: VOA

13, April 2023

French Cameroun: Villagers Say Elephants Devastate Farmlands, Plead for Help ⁰

Villagers in southern Cameroon are complaining about the destruction of farmland by wild elephants in areas bordering Gabon and Equatorial Guinea and are calling on authorities to help.

Villagers say elephants have chased people away and made it impossible for farmers on both sides of the border to plant this season’s crops. Officials blame farmers for occupying the elephants’ habitat, provoking human-wildlife conflict.

Officials on Cameroon’s southern border with Gabon and Equatorial Guinea say scores of villagers came out in market squares at Vema and Nkol-Efoulan on Thursday, protesting the destruction of several hundred hectares of their farmland by elephants.

The villagers say the stray elephants chase civilians and make it impossible for farmers to plant on either side of the border with Gabon and Equatorial Guinea since the planting season started six weeks ago.

Speaking to VOA via a messaging app, Justin Enam Ntem, the traditional ruler of Nkol-Efoulan village, said locals are angry and hungry because they can no longer go to their farms since the elephants positioned themselves about 500 meters south of the village from the border with Gabon this week. He said seven of the several hundred hectares of plantain, banana and cassava plantations belonging to his family have been destroyed by the stray elephants.

Ntem said it was difficult for villagers, who are scared and escaping from their homes and farms, to know the number of elephants that are destroying their crops.

The villagers say no civilian has died in an elephant attack but warn that hunger will loom if the government does not step in to force the animals back to their natural habitats.

The Cameroonian government says there are more than 220 forest elephants in the nearly 700,000-hectare Campo Ma’an National Park located near the border area with the other two countries.

The New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society and the National Parks of Gabon report that Gabon harbors about 95,000 forest elephants. Equatorial Guinea says it has about 900 elephants.

The three countries say elephants have been destroying plantations on both sides of their common border within the past six months. Cameroon says at least eight of its border villages and several hundred plantations, especially in Vema and Nkol-Efoulan villages, have reported regular attacks.

The elephants are leaving their habitat because of a lack of food and water due to climate change and the occupation of their living environment by civilians, according to Cameroon’s Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife.

Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea say many plantations opened by the governments and civilians reduce the elephant habitat.

Kenneth Angu Angu, a forest program coordinator with the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said central African nations should work together to stop conflicts between humans and elephants.

“We need the governments of the countries to sit together and reinforce cross-border projects so that they can contain these elephants not to encroach in communities and in agricultural land,” said Angu, who spoke to VOA by phone from Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. “But if it is the communities that are encroaching, we start asking the questions: why are they doing so? Is it that their lands are no more fertile? Is it because there is poverty? So, this is where you would have livelihood activities to enable the communities to remain in their respective lands,” he added.

He said human-wildlife conflict remains a major conservation concern in elephant range countries.

Despite the attacks, Cameroonian wildlife groups have been urging civilians not to kill the animals, which are classified as endangered.

Source: VOA

12, April 2023

Crushing punishment from Amba fighters awaits Francophone army soldiers, Yerima warns ⁰

Southern Cameroons exiled leader Dabney Yerima has said that very harsh and crushing punishment from all Ambazonia self defense groups awaits troops still loyal to the occupying regime in Yaoundé over its barbaric violence in Southern Cameroons.

Dabney Yerima made the remark during a conversation with Cameroon Concord News on Monday.

Yerima observed that in the last six years, the French Cameroun regime has turned into an unrestrained and increasingly criminal killing machine by violating all international laws.

The Vice President of the Ambazonia Interim Government called on all Southern Cameroonians across the world to stay united in support of their valiant and resistant brothers and sisters in Ground Zero.

“The regime in La Republique du Cameroun knows that, based on the strength of the Ambazonia Revolutionary Guards, a harsh and crushing punishment awaits them in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia” Yerima concluded.

By Isong Asu in London

12, April 2023

“Southern Cameroonians will soon witness collapse of Biya regime” ⁰

The Vice President of the Ambazonia Interim Government has vehemently condemned crimes committed by Francophone army soldiers against the people of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, saying Southern Cameroonians will soon witness the collapse of the consortium of CPDM crime syndicate in French Cameroun.

Dabney Yerima, the exiled Southern Cameroons leader made the remarks in a Tuesday statement issued to condemn the Yaoundé regime’s recent acts of provocation and attacks in Fako and Mezam.

“By trying to counter our Kontry Sunday policy, the corrupt regime in French Cameroun is now showing signs of fear and frustration that result from the increasing power of our resistance,” the Dabney Yerima statement said.

It added, “These acts of sabotage in Mile 16 Buea recently represents Yaounde’s calculated plan aimed at deceiving and diverting French Cameroun public opinion … and covering up inefficiency and corruption of the criminal politicians and officials of this regime who sponsored the killing of one theirs Martinez Zogo.”

“Southern Cameroonians will soon witness the collapse of the flimsy power of this shaky regime” noted the statement.

The statement also called on Southern Cameroonian thinkers, elites and all influential people in the diaspora to continue to support the liberation struggle.

By Chi Prudence Asong with files from Nelly Epupa

10, April 2023

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Gunmen storm Mile 16 Buea, seven cars burnt ⁰

Armed Amba fighters have stormed Mile 16 in Buea today Monday, according to the Francophone dominated police force and local residents, the latest violence to hit Southern Cameroons.

Many Southern Cameroons Self Defense Forces raided Mile 16 district, Cameroon Concord News cited the sources as saying on Monday.

The Amba fighters fired guns in the air, attacked the Mile 16 Motor Park and pursued others who fled to escape the assaults.

Cameroon Concord News correspondent said seven cars were burnt and added that policemen were deployed in the area following the attacks.

Local residents said Amba fighters attacked the occupants of the cars because they did not respect the ghost town order.

The Mile 16 district has been repeatedly raided by Ambazonia fighters.

The Southern Cameroons conflict has killed thousands and forced at least two million to flee their homes, creating one of the worst humanitarian crises in Cameroon.

Most of the burnt cars were used for public transport between Buea and Limbe or Buea and Douala, in the Littoral Region.

According to our information the Amba fighters disappeared into thin air after the attack, which left at least three people seriously injured among those in the burnt-out cars.

Since the outbreak of the crisis in Southern Cameroons, separatist fighters have so far imposed ghost town known as “Kontry Sunday” every Monday. This order has been scrupulously respected in some towns in the South West and North West Regions, notwithstanding the fact that, to encourage the population to go about their business, the authorities have deployed defense and security forces in sensitive areas.

By Rita Akana