A top German official gave a strong speech on the need for Germany to reckon with its abusive colonial past in Cameroon, a German colony between 1884 and 1919, and other former German colonies.

Katja Keul, minister of state at the German Federal Foreign Office, stated that “In Germany, we either played down or ignored the colonial period for far too long. As a society, as a government, and also as the Federal Foreign Office. … Let me put this quite bluntly: European colonialism was an unjust system.”

During her visit to Cameroon from October 30, 2022 to November 2, Keul paid tribute to Rudolf Douala Manga Bell, a Douala king and resistance leader against Germany’s colony in Cameroon. In 1914, the German colonial administration sentenced the king to death in a trial that violated due process, even at the time.

Keul said that “Colonialism led to unimaginable suffering. It destroyed the lives of many people in Africa. King Rudolf Manga Bell was one of them.”

Keul also discussed with Cameroon’s Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute the prospects of returning artifacts that were removed from Cameroon during the colonial era.

She committed the German government “to face up to this chapter of our history and to put an end to the shortcomings in coming to grips with it.”

Keul’s speech comes on the heels of Germany’s refusal in September to renegotiate a reparation deal related to the atrocities, now recognized by Germany as genocide, committed against the Herero and Nama peoples during Germany’s colonization of Namibia between 1885 and 1919. The “reconciliation agreement” was deemed a failure by, among others, colonial historians and representatives of the Herero and Nama, in part because the latter were not recognized as official partners during negotiations between the German and Namibian governments.

Studies have shown that Germany is grappling with structural racism within its institutions, such as the police, healthcare provision, and public employment services.

If the German government is serious about reckoning with its colonial past, it should reconsider its approach on reparations and examine how its colonial past affects racism in Germany today. The EU requires Germany to adopt a National Action Plan on Racism; adopting one addressing racism rooted in colonialism would be an important step.

Culled from Human Rights Watch

Cameroon’s ruling party supporters are celebrating their hero’s forty years in power although there is nothing positive to show for Mr. Biya’s long stay in power.

The celebrations are more explosive in the Northwest regional capital, Bamenda, where the ruling party, CPDM, was created.

But the irony in all the celebrations is that the man being feted, Paul Biya, is nowhere to be found.

Another irony of sorts is the fact that the celebration of incompetence has been taken to a different country, the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, which is so opposed to Mr. Biya’s dictatorial, incompetent and corrupt regime.

Mr. Biya, who came to power on a wave of popularity, has roundly disappointed Cameroonians with his dismal and appalling failure.

In 1982 when he took over, there was massive goodwill for Mr. Biya whom many thought was the right man to steer the country forward and in a different political direction, away from the brutality which characterized the first president’s rule.

But much to the dismay of those who had betted on Biya, he steered the country to even greater corruption, ferocious brutality and incompetence.

His regime has been characterized by arrogance and instead of listening to the people in order to understand the issues, he has always preferred the use of force, transforming the military into his personal toy which he unleashes on his political opponents even when uncalled for.

The 89-year-old Biya could not participate in his own celebrations because his demons have been at work since last week.

His enlarged prostate and heart seem to have connived to ensure that he does not go out to celebrate his own failure.

His right leg, which has made sure that he does not enjoy a good movement, went on a rebellion a few days ago and the desperate Biya has been crying like a baby.

Sources close to the presidential couple have informed the Cameroon Concord News that walking has become a chore to a man who loves walking around.

He now spends most of his time in his bedroom where he is reflecting on his fate after he transitions to the world beyond.

Mr. Biya will be remembered as a man who had a golden opportunity to change the unfortunate fate of his people but decided to squander the opportunity by adopting the wrong governance approaches. 

By Rita Akana

Nine health workers have been kidnapped from a government-run hospital in Cameroon’s restive northwest, one of two regions where armed separatists have been fighting government troops to create a breakaway state, the local mayor said on Friday.

Acha Kennedy Ngu, mayor of the town of Batibo where the kidnapping took place, said the health workers were abducted on Thursday and were still being held. Ngu did not give further details as he was not in town when it happened, he said.

The attackers’ identity and motives were unknown.

A spokesperson for the Ambazonia Governing Council, whose armed wing – Ambazonia Defense Forces – is the main armed separatist group operating in the area, denied responsibility for the abduction.

Medical workers have been frequently targeted since Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis turned violent in 2017. Thousands of people have been killed in the fighting, with atrocities committed on both sides.

The conflict stems from perceived marginalisation of Cameroon’s Anglophone community by the French-speaking majority in the central African state.

Source: Reuters

Ambazonia fighters attacked a gendarmerie post in Foumbot, Noun Division in the West region late on Thursday, injuring two officials and triggering a gun battle.

“As per initial reports, Anglophone separatists have attacked the Foumbot post. Two special officers are injured” the Gendarmerie Legion Commander said in a security correspondence to the National Gendarmerie Headquarters in Yaoundé.

The legion commander added that Southern Cameroons fighters were running short of logistics and are now targeting security posts in French Cameroun settlements to refuel in arms and ammunition.

The commander of the Western Gendarmerie Legion also revealed that the attack on the Foumbot post was carried out by a group led by Amba Commander She Joseph.

Cameroon government defense and security forces in the Noun Division have been placed on high alert, and vigilance has increased in the town.

It should be recalled that the West region borders the North West and that Amba fighters made an incursion into Noun Division last June and attacked the gendarmerie post at Njitapon, killing five gendarmes and taking their weapons and ammunition. In Bamboutos Division, Amba attacks are also common.

By Fon Lawrence

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has delivered an advanced cardiac and trauma life-support ambulance in Cross River State, Nigeria, to support refugees from Cameroon in the state.

It also donated one pick-up vehicle to the state government to enhance the security of the host community and refugees in the Ogoja local government area of the state. 200 vaccine carrier boxes were also donated to complement the initial 50 distributed directly to primary health care centres in the southern Nigerian state.

The Head of the UNHCR sub-office in Ogoja, Tesfaye Bekele, presented the vehicles to Governor Ben Ayade of Cross River in Calabar, the state capital. He explained that the donation was part of UNHCR’s way of showing gratitude to the state government for the hospitality granted to the Cameroonian refugees since they started entering the state for safety.

‘The UNHCR is implementing community projects through non-governmental organisation partners to strengthen basic services such as health, water, sanitation and education to benefit both refugees and host communities,’ Bekele said.

There are over 85,000 Cameroonian refugees in Nigeria at the moment, and Cross River is hosting over 50,000 refugees, majorly in eight local government areas in the state. Cameroon’s northwest and southwest regions have been rocked by violence after separatists declared the independence of ‘Ambazonia’.

The fighting between government security forces and armed groups, which has lingered since 2016, started when lawyers and teachers took to the streets of Buea and Bamenda to protest the domination of French in Anglophone courts and schools. The violence has caused about 6,000 deaths and a major humanitarian crisis, with almost 600,000 people internally displaced within the Anglophone and neighbouring regions, and over 77,000 forced to become refugees in Nigeria.

Source: UNHCR

Activists in Cameroon say there has been a 60% increase in people applying for the U.S. Diversity Visa Lottery, also known as the Green Card Lottery. Thousands of people have been lining up at internet cafes to apply for the program, citing a need to escape a poor economy and the country’s separatist conflict.

Twenty-nine-year-old teacher Getrude Tanlaka, who is among those entering the visa lottery at a cafe in Yaounde, says she is searching for better economic opportunities.

“I just want to get out. That is why I am playing the American lottery. My family has suffered a lot and this is the time for me to take care of them,” she said. “In Cameroon, I cannot do that. I work every day from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. and the remuneration is very discouraging, but in America it will be very easy. It is an opportunity to step out and change my life.”

Tanlaka says her mother also signed up for the lottery to increase the chances of them succeeding.

The Digital Rights Coalition, an alliance of civil society groups advocating for online rights and safety, says Cameroon’s estimated 200 cybercafes have seen a 60 percent increase in people applying for the visa lottery this year.

They say this follows a sharp dip in 2021 due to the high number of U.S. deaths from COVID-19. The State Department reports that entries to the American Visa Lottery program from Cameroon dropped to 151,000 last year — about half the number from the year before.

Now, says the coalition, many people are hoping to escape economic hardship caused by high inflation and a separatist conflict in western Cameroon, which has claimed at least 3,500 lives.

Akaba James, the coalition’s coordinator, says his organization is warning people to avoid scammers who charge money for unhelpful lottery advice.

“There are thousands of fake sites, fake people on YouTube providing advice about the DV lottery when they themselves have very little understanding of that process,” James said. “Ensure that wherever you play the lottery, you collect your receipt, and preserve it very well so that by the time the results are out, and you happen to win, then you can proceed with the filling of your visa application form, the DS 260, and then eventually getting your second notification letter and going for an interview and eventually paying your green card fee and traveling to the U.S.”

Police say some scammers have been arrested but are giving no details.

Meanwhile, some cybercafe owners have been charging illegal fees of between $2 and $7 for each electronic entry for the visa lottery.

Applications can be submitted for free at www.state.gov as recommended by the U.S. Department of State.

Jeffrey Presnell, vice consul at the U.S. embassy in Yaounde, said recently on local television channel STV that people enrolling for the Green Card Lottery must have at least a secondary education.

He also advised applicants to closely follow the rules spelled out on the document.

“Another common mistake that we see is that applicants do not include all of the members of their family. It is very sad because sometimes we see applicants that have won the lottery come and they are disqualified because they did not list all the members of their family. If you just have a fiancee, you should not list your partner on that application,” Presnell said.

He advises applicants to only list the names of legal spouses or children who live with them.

Source: VOA

A social worker at South Gloucestershire Council children’s services has been barred from the profession for posting an obscene video involving youngsters on Instagram.

Rodrigue Ekwelle-Nkwelle received a suspended jail term at Bristol Crown Court in April 2021 for distributing an indecent image of a child in the most serious abuse category and possessing extreme porn, which also involved animals.

Social Work England has now removed him from its register following a fitness-to-practise hearing, which bans him from working in the sector.

The regulatory body’s panel ruled he committed serious misconduct that created a risk to the public.

Ekwelle-Nkwelle, 43, also failed to disclose a previous allegation of sexual misconduct from 2013, from a woman with mental health problems, when he applied to employment agency HCL Workforce, the panel’s report said.

In June 2020, while working as a locum social worker for South Gloucestershire Council for nearly three years from October 2017, he uploaded the video involving children to Instagram, Social Work England’s report said.

He pleaded guilty in court to the pornography criminal charges, and a judge last year gave him a two-year jail term, suspended for two years, along with 150 hours’ unpaid work and 30 days’ rehabilitation.

Ekwelle-Nkwelle, whose address at the time of sentencing was given as Broad Street in Staple Hill, was also handed a sexual harm protection order and placed on the sex offenders’ register.

The Social Work England report following last month’s three-day regulatory hearing said: “The panel considered that these were convictions of a very serious nature.

“It was satisfied that children and animals are likely to have been harmed by their involvement in the images which Mr Ekwelle-Nkwelle had dealt with.

“It was alarmed at his suggestion that the fact that the images came from Cameroon affected his decision whether to disclose them.”

The report said the crown court judge had rejected his explanations – that he posted the video out of “naivety” – as “manifestly false and unbelievable”.

Ekwelle-Nkwelle, originally an asylum seeker from Cameroon, who did not attend the hearing and was not represented, said in February 2021 in response to the regulatory concerns that the videos were “sent to him randomly and not by his request”, the report said.

“He said that when he had distributed the video it had been to decry some of the ‘ill things’ that were occurring in Africa and Cameroon in particular,” it said.

“Mr Ekwelle-Nkwelle expressed his total shame of himself, the shame he had brought on his family and his profession.

“He said that he understood that he ought to have reported the matter to the police.

“He said it was poor judgement, not to have promptly reported the matter, because it was from Cameroon.

“He said that he accepted that his fitness to practise was impaired due to the concerns raised and added ‘but I would like to categorically stress that, I am not a person will hurt any individual, not to talk of a child’.

“Mr Ekwelle-Nkwelle stated that he had fled his country and claimed asylum in the UK due to numerous adversities he had faced in Cameroon…He said he knew becoming a social worker was the best way to repay the UK.

“As a result he felt very down about the situation he had put himself in.”

But the panel said that while he had offered some explanation around the distribution conviction, he “had not explained the facts relating to the other conviction for possession of extreme pornography”.

The report said: “The panel considered that it had no demonstration of any insight from Mr Ekwelle-Nkwelle regarding the effect that engaging in the distribution and possession of such images has on the subjects of the material.

“The panel concluded that, in the absence of demonstrated insight and remediation, there was a risk of repetition of past behaviour which involved a risk to the public.

“In addition, the panel was of the view that members of the public who were aware of Mr Ekwelle-Nkwelle’s convictions and the underlying facts would be extremely shocked if there was no finding of impaired fitness to practise.

“The panel was concerned that there was a potential pattern of rule-breaking by Mr Ekwelle-Nkwelle.”

It said the adjudicators ruled that his failure to disclose the previous sexual misconduct allegation “materially hindered the agency in conducting a risk assessment” on his application for employment.

The report said he was accused of making sexual advances towards a service user with mental health problems but police took no further action because she did not wish to support an investigation.

Ekwelle-Nkwelle was temporarily suspended from his social work degree course as a result but was then allowed to complete it in 2015 and got his first job in the profession with Wiltshire Council from March 2016 to October 2017, it said.

“The panel concluded that the conduct underlying the convictions together with the dishonest misconduct was fundamentally incompatible with being registered as a social worker,” it added.

Source: Bristol World

Cameroonian Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute on Monday discussed with visiting German Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Simen Katja Keul about the prospects of returning artifacts that were removed from the Central African country during the colonial era.

“There is a great interest by the German civil society to deal with this past and to work together on it, like for example the restitution of cultural goods,” Keul told reporters after the meeting in the capital, Yaounde. Keul added that the common procedure was being looked at to reinforce cooperation in this regard.

Major museums, auction houses, and private collectors in Germany have faced growing pressure in recent years to repatriate priceless works of art and other antiquities from African nations.

In May, Cameroonian authorities said during a cabinet meeting that they were working with reputed local and international experts and associations to ensure that the art objects abroad are returned “honorably, administratively and safely” to the country.

Source: Xinhuanet