Congressmember Karen Bass (D-CA), Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, along with 52 other Members of Congress, introduced a resolution urging for the halt of deportations to Cameroon.

“The United States must uphold its commitments under international treaties related to refugees and asylum-seekers and halt deportations of Cameroonian citizens,” said Congressmember Bass. “Many of the individuals who were deported last week were allegedly improperly coerced to sign voluntary deportation orders. Upon their arrival in Cameroon, many will be at imminent risk of death. To do this while we are transitioning between administrations is outrageous and unacceptable. I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.”

On November 10, Congressmember Karen Bass (D-CA), Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, along with Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Congresswoman Shelia Jackson-Lee (D-TX), Congresswoman Judy Chu (D-CA), Congressman Joaquin Castro (D-TX), and Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD) issued the following joint statement:

“Our offices have been alerted that African asylum-seekers from Cameroon and other African countries, many of whom were allegedly improperly coerced by ICE to sign voluntary deportation orders, will be deported as early as tomorrow morning. Upon their arrival to their designated countries, many will be at imminent risk of death. Their deportation should be put on hold until the new administration is sworn in and able to carefully review these claims. Anything otherwise is outrageous and unacceptable. We plan to introduce a measure this week to condemn this deportation should it take place. The United States should uphold its commitment under international treaties related to refugees and asylum-seekers and halt this unjust deportation.”

Source: The Street Journal

Security forces are stepping up security precautions in Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé following recurrent blasts in the city, a government official said on Monday.

“For some time now, we have been living with the phenomenon of explosive devices in the city of Yaoundé. We have not had this kind of thing before. We have taken more adequate measures to fight the phenomenon,” Naseri Paul Bea, governor of the Centre Region told reporters in Yaounde.

“All bags will be systematically checked in the city because we have realised that the explosive devices are carried in bags. All bags are banned in drinking spot. We have asked everyone to always have their ID cards on them,” he added.

He also directed community leaders to create community defense forces, or vigilante groups that can collaborate with security forces to fish out the criminals.

“The participation of the population in the security measures is very important. We cannot have a police officer behind every Cameroonian, so the population has to be vigilant and collaborate with security forces,” Bea said.

According to security reports, there have been over 10 attacks from improvised explosive devices in the capital since the start of the year. No deaths have been reported so far.

Source: Xinhuanet

Cameroon has launched a drive to help parents register their children’s births in conflict-stricken regions, so the government can better plan health, education and other public services, the country’s Minister of Decentralization and Local Development, Georges Elanga Obam said on Monday.

“We are trying to modernize the legislation and the reglementation governing the civil status. We want by the end of next year to register something like 500,000 kids without birth certificates,” Obam told reporters in the capital Yaounde during a plenary session of the National Assembly dedicated to deliberate on birth registrations in the country.

According to officials, only four out of 10 children possess a birth certificate in the Far North region where thousands have been displaced by Boko Haram attacks and in the Anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest ravaged by close four-year armed separatist conflict.

Members of parliament expressed concerns that the country has one of the lowest rates of birth registration in Central Africa with just about 66 per cent of children owning a birth certificate.

Most parents in rural areas of Cameroon do not register their children because of the long distances to registry offices, cumbersome process and high cost, officials said.

Child’s rights campaigners say ensuring every child’s birth is registered is key to safeguarding basic rights and access to healthcare, education and justice.

Source: Xinhuanet

On Monday, November 16, 2020, the French media announced the death of several public figures on its website before removing them, claiming that it was a bug.

French Radio RFI surprised its listeners on Monday, November 16, 2020, by publishing in advance on its website, the obituaries of several public personalities yet still alive. All in all, about a hundred people of established fame were treated to articles announcing and describing the circumstances of their death. They included Alain Delon, Sophia Loren, Clint Eastwood, Pele, Sir Alex Ferguson, Yoko Ono and the President of the Republic of Cameroon, Paul Biya.

 Alerted by the outcry caused by these articles, the public media quickly withdrew them and apologized on the social networks, indicating that a bug was at the origin of this situation.

“A technical problem led to the publication of numerous obituaries on our site. We are mobilized to rectify this major bug and apologize to those concerned as well as to you who follow us and trust us,” reads the RFI twitter account on Monday, November 16, 2020.

However, unless official information from the government of the Republic of Cameroon proves otherwise, it is important to remember that Paul Biya is alive and well! We saw him last November 12, at the funeral of his elder sister, Régine Ngonda, who died on October 31, 2020 in Yaoundé.

By Rita Akana with files

People living with disabilities in Cameroon’s Anglophone northwest and southwest regions have been badly affected by a deadly separatist crisis.  Some have been killed, wounded, or abandoned, while others have been forced out of their homes.

Nearly four years into the violence, this group faces heightened danger of attacks because most of them find it difficult to flee when their communities come under assault.

At the conference room of the coordinating unit of associations of persons living with disabilities in the Anglophone northwest, 45-year-old  Samuel Nyingcho, head of the unit. He has been living with vision loss for the past 33 years. He tells RFI that the challenges facing people living with disabilities in these regions are unbearable.

“A good number of persons with disabilities have lost their lives, a good number of them have lost property, their houses have been burnt…Almost all of them have lost economic activities and good number of them have lost access to education,” he says.

“Equally, the non-communicable diseases like hypertension and other diseases have affected persons with disabilities because of the trauma that has affected them throughout all of this crisis,” Nyingcho adds.

In a report published earlier this year by Human Rights Watch, the group said people living with disabilities and older people have been among those killed, violently assaulted, or kidnapped by government forces and armed separatists in the conflict torn northwest and southwest regions of Cameroon.

Peaceful protests that were carried out in late 2016 by Anglophone lawyers and teachers against perceived marginalisation by the French-speaking central government were met with a brutal crackdown by security forces.

The following year, some disgruntled English speakers took up arms against the state to create their own separate state from Cameroon which they will call ‘Ambazonia’ after what they say are decades of marginalisation.

As a consequence of the violence, several persons living with disabilities in the conflict areas have been traumatised. Many others took long journeys in search of safety   when their communities came under assault.

Sheron’s story

Wearing a violet blue t-shirt, slim fit black trousers, and violet tennis shoes, 29-year-old law graduate Sheron, (not her real name), sits in her electric wheelchair at the headquarters of an organisation here in Bamenda were she now volunteers. ‘Sheron’ has been living with mobility difficulties for more than 15 years as a result of childhood polio.

She told RFI that the government forces stormed her native Bafut town, about 23km northwest of Bamenda earlier this year. They were looking for separatist fighters, commonly known here as Amba boys. In the process, many people were brutalised, some shot dead and property destroyed.

“We only heard that there were many trucks at the junction with many soldiers. A few minutes later, we started hearing serious gunshots. I could not run but we saw many young people running into the bush,” she says.

“My sister then took me out of my wheelchair put me on her back and started running to the bush. We even fell twice and she was pregnant and had some complications during birth. We spent two days in the bush without my wheelchair, food nor water,” Sheron adds.

The story of Sheron is not unusal for residents of the northwest and southwest regions of Cameroon. Many, especially in the rural communities, have been through similar experiences since the crisis became an armed struggle in 2017.

“A good number of them have fled the villages into the safe areas in the urban towns and that has made life for them very difficult. There are some who stayed in the bush more than one month and there are some who have even been raped,” Nyingcho says.

“There are some who have been sexually harassed and there are a good number that have trekked long distances in the bush to be able to get to where they are,” he adds.

According to the United Nations, over four million people have been affected by the crisis in the Anglophone Northwest and Southwest regions and amongst them are people living with disabilities some of whom are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

Lack of assistance makes it harder

But Nyingcho says more than 95 percent of people living with disabilities do not have access to mainstream humanitarian provisions in the conflict zones, thus making life even more difficult.

Sisterspeak 237, an organization that projects the voices of women and minority groups in Cameroon, is appealing to the humanitarian agencies and other actors operating in the conflict zones, says coordinator comfort Mussa.

“Because of the ongoing crisis, we are witnessing an increase in the number of people with disabilities. There are many people who have lost an arm and leg..you know..They have lost one or more body parts. and there are people who have become blind,” Musa says.

She adds that “it is very disheartening to see that even when they have lost some of these senses, and body parts and now are living with one or more impairments,” she adds.

As Sheron and her siblings fled to Bamenda, their journey under normal circumstances would have taken less than an hour, but unfortunately for them, it took them about 48 hours, Sheron says.

“From Bafut to Bamenda, we took two days because the first day we left the house, we reached at a certain point where there were gunshots, so some inhabitants around had  to give us a place for us to spend the night and the roads were blocked in a way  that I could not use my wheel chair .My siblings had to carry me on their back and if this person is tired, the other person will take over,” she adds.

RFI asked the Cameroonian Ministry of Social Affairs to address the issues rais’ed by this report, but the ministry refused to comment.

Source: RFI