Belfast Magistrates’ Court heard Fabrece Nguegoub was spotted masturbating as he walked through a housing estate on the outskirts of the city.

The 26-year-old Cameroonian national, of no fixed abode, pleaded guilty to a charge of indecent behaviour.

He was arrested after police were alerted on October 15 this year.

The court was told a member of the public reported seeing a man matching his description walking through Merville Garden Village in Newtownabbey.

He was said to be masturbating with his trousers around his ankles. A photograph was taken of the suspect and the authorities notified.

Nguegoub was detained on the Antrim Road in Newtownabbey later that day. Defence solicitor Stewart Ballentine stressed his client made an immediate admission.

“He accepts his behaviour was totally unacceptable and may have caused offence, but that wasn’t his intention ,” the lawyer said.

“He suffers from mental health problems, he said he had started to urinate and then followed on from that.”

Mr Ballentine disclosed that Nguegoub had travelled from his native Cameroon to stay with his sister in the Republic of Ireland.

“He then made his way north to Belfast on this particular day,” he added.

District Judge Fiona Bagnall imposed a £150 fine, with the defendant to serve three days in custody for any non-payment.

Source: News Letter

Cameroon has begun the campaign season for its December 6 regional council elections amid threats and attacks from separatists fighting to create an English-speaking state in the French-majority country. The separatists, who have vowed to disrupt the polls, attacked several military convoys dispatched to protect voters. The government is pleading with citizens to help recently deployed troops by denouncing suspects.

Councilor Emile Ngalla, 47, said he fled from Bui to Mezam, both administrative areas in Cameroon’s English-speaking Northwest region on Saturday. He said separatist fighters came to his home and threatened to kill him if he takes part in Cameroon’s December 6 regional council elections.

“I am not sure taking [I will take] part in the elections, but all I want to beg is that the government should enforce security for those who have the courage to do it [participate]. The issue of elections is bringing a lot of fear,” he said.

Ngalla said he will stay in the English-speaking northwestern town of Bamenda, which he said is safer, until the elections are held.

Government officials in the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions say councilors and traditional rulers who constitute the electoral college are increasingly receiving death threats from fighters.

A video shared on social media appears to show an armed man in his 30s threatening to kill candidates if they do not stop campaigning and resign.

“I am coming out today to make it clear to the international community that there will be no elections come December 6, 2020. I want to advise all our people. you must stay vigilant. There will be no elections,” he said.

Deben Tchoffo, governor of the Northwest region said besides the audios and videos shared on social media, separatists have been making anonymous phone calls threatening candidates and voters.

Speaking via telephone from Bamenda, Tchoffo said troops have been deployed to protect voters, candidates and election materials. He said separatist fighters who have intensified attacks and threats to disrupt the polls should know that they will be killed by the military if they do not surrender. He said the elections will offer special status to the English-speaking regions, as requested by residents.

Tchoffo said on Friday and Saturday there were several attacks on military convoys. He did not say if there were any deaths, but civilians said at least four troops were wounded and five military vehicles damaged in the northwestern town of Kumbo.

Friday, President Paul Biya dispatched his defense minister, police boss and defense chief of staff to the English-speaking regions to make sure the elections take place.

Defense Minister Joseph Beti Assomo said the population should cooperate with the military by denouncing separatist suspects in their community.

“I wish to highlight unequivocally that our presence here attests the government’s resolve to provide an effective and definite solution to this crisis which keeps tormenting our people. A people who are only asking for a peaceful life, that is to live in a safe stable and prosperous environment,” he said.

Assomo called on voters and candidates to brave the threats and asked those who had left the region to return.

The government says the December 6 regional election will put in place the special status for the English-speaking regions as decided during the grand national dialogue called by Biya last September 30 through October 4.

The dialogue was to propose solutions to the crisis in the country’s English-speaking regions. Separatist leaders invited to the national dialogue refused to take part and called the special status a nonevent, stating that they want nothing but total independence for the English-speaking regions.

Cameroon’s English-speaking regions descended into violence in 2016 when teachers and lawyers protested alleged discrimination at the hands of the French-speaking majority.

The government responded with a crackdown and separatists took up OK? Weapons, claiming that they were defending civilians. The fighting has killed at least 3,000 people and displaced over 500,000, according to the United Nations.

Source: VOA

Paul Biya’s regime is ignoring the battle against Boko Haram and the Islamic State and using foreign counterterrorism assistance to fund its brutal repression of citizens with legitimate grievances.

Cameroon was once thought to be an island of stability in a sea of instability, but that mirage started to crumble in 2016, as President Paul Biya mishandled what many in the outside world call the “Anglophone Crisis,” but what to many Cameroonians (English and French speakers alike) is just further evidence of the lack of political freedom, accountability, and competence that has plagued the country since 1961.

For the second year in a row, the Norwegian Refugee Council selected Cameroon as the most neglected displacement crisis in the world. More than 1 million Cameroonians have been displaced internally, tens of thousands have fled to Nigeria, and thousands more from other countries have escaped to Cameroon to flee Boko Haram, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), or violence in the Central African Republic.

Both the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide report that Cameroon is at risk for mass atrocities and urgent action is needed. Since the beginning of 2020, violence has surged both in the Anglophone Southwest and Northwest regions and in the Far North region, where Boko Haram and ISWAP are resurgent.

The Cameroonian government has conflated the Far North jihadist threat with the Anglophone crisis in an effort to maintain the flow of international support. The Cameroonian government has conflated the Far North jihadist threat with the Anglophone crisis in an effort to maintain the flow of international support. At the U.N. General Assembly in September, Cameroonian Foreign Minister Lejeune Mbella Mbella asked for increased international cooperation in support of the country’s ongoing struggle against “terrorism.” His belabored attention to “multilateralism,” however, belied Cameroon’s usual intemperate reaction to any international comment about its internal politics, economic policies, or conduct of its military operations.

Cameroon does all it can to reduce the international consequences of its failed militarization strategy against legitimate grievances in its Anglophone regions. Rather than seeking peace through political compromise and better governance, the regime confuses the international community by describing the crisis as a two-front war against “terrorists” and “criminals.”

After two years of painstaking research using GIS tools and open-source data analysis, we have drawn the conclusion that Cameroon’s military operations against Anglophones in the Southwest and Northwest regions have noticeably weakened Cameroon’s efforts against Boko Haram and ISWAP, leading to broader regional insecurity.

Since 2019, Boko Haram and ISWAP have conducted larger-scale operations again, attacking Nigerian, Cameroonian, Nigerien and Chadian military targets and inflicting heavy casualties on soldiers and civilians alike. In late September, Nigeria’s Bornu state governor’s convoy was attacked twice in two days not far from the Cameroon border. But the Cameroonian regime is willing to ignore Islamist resurgence around Lake Chad because it perceives the Anglophone crisis as a bigger threat to its tight grip on power. And, unfortunately, it is confident the international community will again ride to the rescue if the situation appears out of control. Call it the moral-hazard problem of the global war on terrorism.

Culled from Foreign Policy

Activists in Cameroon held events and marches for Thursday’s World Toilet Day, calling on authorities to provide more public bathrooms. Cameroonian authorities say 60% of its 25 million people lack toilets, fueling the spread of diseases such as cholera and dysentery.

School authorities at Yaoundé’s Government Primary School Efoulan say they have close to 2,000 children and teachers but only five toilets, which are often unusable as they run short of water and toilet paper.

The Cameroon Association to Improve Hygiene organized this and similar events in 30 schools in the capital to mark this year’s World Toilet Day. The group’s head, Edmond Kimbi, said hundreds of their members also marched in Yaoundé and coastal cities to demand more and better public toilets.

“It is actually too regrettable that schools and universities have very few toilets, which lack water and are always dirty,” he said. “It is worse when you visit markets, where thousands of people visit the markets each day. The consequences of this is that nearby bushes and dark corners are being transformed into toilets, thereby making our towns always dirty.”

Authorities say a September outbreak of cholera, a bacterial disease spread through dirty water, in the port cities of Douala and Kribi killed at least 90 people.

Dr. Sintieh Ngek, a medical officer with the Cameroon Baptist Convention, said the lack of toilets is spreading disease.

“Waterborne and water-based diseases like cholera, like diarrheal diseases, will be more present, and it is worth noting that these diarrheal diseases are among the leading causes of mortality for children under 5 years of age,” the doctor said. “Secondly, if persons do not have toilets, they turn to use bushes, they turn to use streams. When this happens, bacteria from these feces are easily collected into water.”

Yaoundé hygiene official Gabriel Minou said the city council is partnering with private companies to construct more public bathrooms. Meanwhile, he said, anyone caught defecating or urinating in the street or in rivers will pay fines of up to $20.

Minou said the inability of the Yaoundé City Council to efficiently manage toilets is due to the fact that many users do not want to pay before using the public bathrooms. He said the Yaoundé City Council has ordered its hygiene services to repair public toilets and make sure people pay before using them. Minou said the council has also ordered intercity bus agencies to make sure toilets are provided free of charge to all passengers.

The United Nations’ World Toilet Day seeks to raise awareness of more than half the world’s population living without access to safe sanitation and the deadly costs.

The U.N. says globally more than 800 children under 5 die every day from diarrheal diseases due to poor sanitation.

Source: VOA

Two people have been seriously injured in an explosion that happened overnight into Thursday in Cameroon’s commercial hub of Douala, according to the police.

Witnesses say that the explosive device seemed to have been thrown from a passing motorcycle.

“This is a very busy environment especially at night. Motorcycles were passing when suddenly I heard a very loud sound. It caused much panic and two people who were close to where the explosion occured were injured on the face and leg,” Cynthia Watat who witnessed the incident said.

“We have never experienced this kind of thing in Douala. We need security,” another witness Julius Malo said.

Authorities have ordered investigations into the incident and asked the inhabitants to stay calm and “go about normal activities.”

Police said the attackers “probably” used improvised explosive device that have been used in similar attacks in the capital Yaounde.

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

Source: Xinhuanet