Cameroon’s government on Sunday blamed separatist fighters for the massacre of children in their classrooms in the English-speaking southwest of the country.

It said there were six victims of the attack, aged between nine and 12, while the United Nations had reported a death toll of eight.

The government said 13 children had also been wounded during the raid on the bilingual school in the town of Kumba — seven of them seriously.

Communications Minister Rene Emmanuel Sadi described the attack as “a terrorist act of unbearable cruelty and barbarity”.

It was carried out by “groups of armed secessionist terrorists”, he added. Around 10 people on three motorbikes burst into the compound of the private Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy, he said.

They “coldly opened fire on the pupils who were in the classrooms”, he added.  A statement Saturday from the local UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the assailants had also used machetes.

African Union Commission chief Moussa Faki Mahamat condemned the “brutal attack” in a statement on Twitter.

Sadi said the aim of the attackers had been to stop the return to schools that had been taking place in the Northwest and Southwest provinces, where English-speaking separatists are fighting for independence.

The two English-speaking regions in this mainly francophone country have become the centre of the conflict, with separatists targeting the army and demanding local government offices and schools close.

Rights groups have accused both the separatists and government troops of having killed civilians during the conflict since 2017.

The fighting has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people and forced over 700,000 people to flee their homes.

Last year, two students were killed by separatists in Buea, the capital of Southwest region in what an official described as “reprisal” for opposing the forced school closures.

In 2018, insurgents killed a principal, mutilated a teacher and attacked several high schools.

Separatists have also increasingly resorted to kidnappings and extortion, along with attacks on troops and police, and arson assaults on public buildings and schools.

The government has responded with a crackdown, deploying thousands of soldiers.

Source: AFP

On 24 October, a group of armed men attacked Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy in Kumba, in Cameroon’s restive South-West region. According to local reports, the victims were aged between 12 and 14.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on Cameroonian authorities to conduct a thorough investigation to ensure that those responsible are held accountable, his spokesperson said in a statement.

“The attack is another disturbing reminder of the exacting heavy toll on civilians, including children, many of whom have been deprived of their right to education,” said the statement.

“Attacks on education facilities are a grave violation of children’s rights,” it added.

Mr. Guterres also called on all armed actors to refrain from attacks against civilians and to respect international humanitarian and international human rights law.

He also urged the parties to answer his call for a global ceasefire, reiterating the availability of the United Nations to support an inclusive dialogue process leading to a resolution of the crisis in the North-West and South-West regions of Cameroon

‘Schools must be places of safety, not death traps’

In a separate statement, Henrietta Fore, Executive Director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) also condemned the attack “in the strongest possible terms.”

“This has been a deadly weekend for schoolchildren in Afghanistan and Cameroon,” she said, also referring to the attack on an education centre in Kabul.

“I am shocked and outraged at these abominable attacks and condemn them in the strongest possible terms. Attacks on education are a grave violation of children’s rights,” Ms. Fore added, reiterating that schools must be places of safety and learning, “not death traps.”

‘Worst atrocity’ since schools resumed

According to the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Cameroon, Matthias Z. Naab, the attack is the worst atrocity since the resumption of the school year on 5 October, in which more students enrolled in the North-West and South-West regions than in recent years. Unrest in parts of Cameroon had affected school enrolment and access to education.

“Children have a right to education. Violence against schools and innocent school children is not acceptable under any circumstances and can constitute a crime against humanity if proven in a court of law,” said Mr. Naab.

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) has provided medical supplies to the local hospital and the NGO, Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) is assisting with medical supplies and personnel. 

The UN will continue to support Government and NGO efforts to provide necessary medical assistance to the wounded, added Mr. Naab.

Source: UN News

Hundreds of Southern Cameroonians held a peaceful procession through the streets of Kumba town and ended at the site of a school attacked on Saturday that the Ambazonia Interim Government has blamed on Cameroon government forces.

The Southern Cameroonians in the Meme County carried placards denouncing the attack, while calling for an end to war declared by French Cameroun President Paul Biya against the people of British Southern Cameroons in 2017.

The French Cameroun civil administrator of the Meme constituency told news reporters that “Instead of 6 we have now seven corpses in the mortuary,” Mr  Ntou’ou Ndong Chamberlin, the Senior Divisional Officer has been responsible for all Cameroon government military operations in Meme and he is currently benefitting from the proceeds of war.

“We have to make it stop, they [children] are our future, we need our education, they are our future leaders, violence must stop,” said a man at the procession.

The UN headed by the corrupt Antonio Gutteres called the shooting ‘the worst atrocity’ since schools reopened in Cameroon two weeks ago.

Fighting between Cameroonian troops and Ambazonia Restoration Forces in Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia has killed thousands. Human Rights Watch recently accused both sides of committing atrocities.

No Southern Cameroons Restoration group has claimed responsibility for the attack but French Cameroun authorities have put the blame on separatist militia fighters.

By Fon Lawrence and Kingsley Betek

The world is once more playing spectator to the gruesome acts committed by some unidentified armed men in Cameroon.

Yesterday, armed men stormed the premises of a prestigious bilingual school in Kumba, the southwest region’s biggest city, and left a trail of death and destruction.

Some five students were killed in cold blood, some of whom were simply beheaded. The world is still very shocked, especially as all the factions in the Southern Cameroons crisis had agreed that students should be allowed to go back to school after close to four years.

Schools in the country’s English-speaking regions had been shut down due to a protest by the country’s English-speaking minority following strikes by teachers, lawyers and students against the government’s systemic and institutionalized marginalization against the minority anglophone population.

As the government sought to roll back any opposition to its policies, it resorted to force, with the military being granted the carte blanche to kill those it suspected of being involved in an insurgency that has lasted over three years.

As a result, some 5,000 civilians have been mowed down by the military, sometimes in broad day light. All young men in the country’s two English-speaking regions are considered as fair targets even when they are not armed or when they are just going about their business.

The military’s brutality had to push the population to seek ways of defending itself and given the urgency, many young men and girls had to make the most of their parent’s hunting rifles and machetes, and with such rudimentary weapons, they sent more than 2,000 army soldiers to an early grave.

This has infuriated the corrupt and incompetent regime in Yaoundé that has failed to pay heed to calls by the international community for a peaceful resolution of a conflict that has put the country in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

In the government’s view, unleashing a reign of terror on the local population would force the innocent population to turn against the Southern Cameroonian fighters who, for most part, were simply trying to defend a population that was being unfairly targeted by a brutal and an unprofessional army.

The government had not properly analyzed the situation before jumping into such a misguided decision.

The young men and women who were wielding the hunting rifles were simply the faces of the anger that has been simmering in the two English-speaking regions of the country for decades.

Though their rifles were not a match to the sophisticated weapons sent by the French to its puppet regime in Yaoundé, the government was oblivious of many things.

The hunting rifle-tooting Southern Cameroonians had lots of wind at their backs. Their lack of sophisticated weaponry was made up with courage and determination.

But the greatest asset they had was the unwavering support from the global Southern Cameroonian Diaspora which was hellbent on demonstrating to the dictatorial regime in Yaounde that its old tactics that had given it a quick victory over the Bassa-Bamileke insurgency in the 1960s would not work.

And truly, those tactics have failed the country’s crime syndicate that passes off as a government. The Diaspora has invested a lot in this government demystification program that has left Yaounde with a bloodshot eye.

The Southern Cameroonian Diaspora has the wherewithal and determination. It has proven this over the last four years. It has successfully retired the hunting rifles that once made the Southern Cameroonian insurgency look like a running joke.

Today, the “boys” as the fighters are fondly referred to  by the population, are in possession of very sophisticated weapons and their assault rifles are a long nightmare to many government soldiers who have had the luck of facing those boys.

The government has employed all the tricks in its book, but none seems to be the silver bullet it has been hoping for.

The government has tried to split Southern Cameroonians by choosing some hungry and desperate Southern Cameroonians to speak for the 8-million strong minority, but this strategy has fallen flat on its face.

Even the chaotic capturing of Southern Cameroonian leaders in Nigeria and their illegal extradition to Yaounde has not done anything to douse the fire and anger in many Southern Cameroonian minds.

The country’s territorial administration minister, Paul Atanga Nji, a notorious ex-convict, seems to be running the same playbook. He has been sending out death squads to murder civilians just to give the insurgency a very bad name and the Kumba incident clearly bears his hallmarks.

Similarly, he has also been creating armed militia and dressing them up as Southern Cameroonian fighters, but his demonic plans have not panned out. The people are a lot wiser and they will not fall for such shoddy schemes which have outlived their usefulness.

Despite assistance from the country’s intelligence community, Atanga Nji has not made any significant progress except when he orders that all able-bodied adults in a particular village or town be brought down with bullets obtained with the taxpayer’s money just like they did in Ngarbuh, Kwakwa, Muyenge, Ikata, Muyuka, Mamfe and even in the far north where a woman and her child were killed by bloodthirsty Yaounde soldiers.

The Southern Cameroons crisis will not be going away anytime soon. The people are still angry and for as long as the government is pack full of bitter old men and women who cannot stand any dissent, the country will continue to tither on the brink of an implosion.

While the killings in Kumba have triggered international outrage just as Ngarbuh did, the world must understand that outrage alone will not address the root cause of the conflict in Cameroon that has ruined the country’s economy.

The Yaounde government is shame-proof and it will in the days ahead order another investigation that will not address any real issue.

Many people have already begun accusing the separatists for the heinous crime, but common sense should dictate that it is too early to lay blame to non-state agents, except the world is suffering from collective amnesia.

Ngarbuh is still there for us to remind ourselves that the government we have is more of a criminal enterprise than a group of determined people who really want to bring peace and prosperity to their people.

The Yaounde government is desperate to prove a point. It wants to give the insurgency a very bad name and it will stop at nothing to prove its point.

This is a government comprising the most vindictive people God has put on the face of the earth. Their notion of government and governance is clearly at variance with what prevails in other parts of the world.

If the truth about what has happened in Kumba will be known, then an international team of investigators must be brought in.

The shell casings that have been found at the crime scene make it easy to slam the government with a guilty verdict, but since some of the fighters also bear sophisticated weapons, it will be unfair to consider the usual suspect – the government- as the guilty party.

But if one has to cast his mind to the past or look into the mirror of history, it will be very easy to figure out that Atanga Nji and his boys are simply rehashing some of their previous plans or they are simply restaging one of their old movies that did get good reviews and did not have a huge audience.

It will be preposterous or immature to exclude the government. Sources in Kumba have reliably informed the Cameroon Concord News Group that the usual suspect is once more up to its old antics.

A source in Kumba close to the military has told the Cameroon Concord News Group that the gruesome movie was staged in his neighborhood, adding that he was a witness to this unpalatable scheme designed to spread fear within the civilian population.

The source, who elected anonymity, intimated that a Toyota Carina E which is usually used by the military when it is operating under cover drove into his neighborhood and stopped somewhere, where it let off four armed military men.

The four military officers who were dressed in mufti came out and walked to the school. Shortly after their arrival at the school, their well rehearsed plan was executed with mathematical precision and with the speed of lightning.

He added that the said Toyota Carina E is not painted in military camouflage, adding that when he saw them, he took cover, suspecting that they were out for some dangerous mission.

He regretted that he was not in possession of a good phone which would have enabled him to capture the incident on video.

He stressed that almost everybody in that neighborhood was aware that the military had a hand in the  Kumba massacre  which has clearly underscored that the Southern Cameroons crisis is not yet over and that if the government thought the lull was the solution, then it was mistaken.

The Southern Cameroons crisis will continue to conduct itself as Mount Etna. It will sometimes give the inhabitants some respite but it will also, from time to time, throw up some unpleasant surprises if the government does not sign in for a long term solution that will require the mediation of international bodies and conflict resolution experts.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai in Germany and Irene Nanyango in Canada

Gunmen stormed a school in Cameroon on Saturday and opened fire indiscriminately, killing at least six children and wounding about eight more in a region where separatist insurgents operate, officials and parents said.

Arriving on motorbikes and in civilian clothes, the attackers hit the school around midday in the city of Kumba in South West Region, according to the accounts, including from one parent outside the school at the time.

Some children were injured jumping from second storey windows.

It was unclear if the attack was linked to an ongoing struggle between the army and groups seeking to form a breakaway state called Ambazonia in the English-speaking west.

But it was a grim new low in a region that since 2017 has seen hundreds die and thousands displaced because of the conflict, with many children unable to attend school.

“They found the children in class and they opened fire on them,” city sub-prefect Ali Anougou told Reuters.

Isabel Dione ran into the school to search for her 12-year-old daughter when she heard about the shooting. She found her on the floor of a classroom, bleeding from the stomach.

“She was helpless and she was shouting ‘mum please help me’, and I told her ‘only your God can save you now’,” Dione told Reuters. The girl was rushed to hospital where she is undergoing treatment for a gunshot wound.

SEPARATISTS EXPRESS ‘DISGUST’

The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said eight children had died, some by machete, and that 12 were wounded.

Videos circulating on social media filmed by local journalists showed adults rushing from the school with children in their arms, surrounded by wailing onlookers.

One photo verified by Reuters showed the inside of a classroom, where a pile of dried blood had pooled on the floor near some scattered flip-flops.

Local education official Ahhim Abanaw Obase confirmed six deaths of children aged between 12 and 14, and added that another eight had been taken to hospital.

Anougou and another official blamed the attack on the secessionists, but did not offer evidence.

A prominent separatist leader, who asked not to be named, said his group was working on a statement that will “express our disgust” at the attack, without providing further detail.

Anglophone secessionists have imposed curfews and closed schools as part of their protest against President Paul Biya’s French-speaking government and its perceived marginalisation of the English-speaking minority. Rights groups have documented abuses on civilians from both sides.

Last year, officials blamed separatists for kidnapping dozens of schoolchildren, which the separatists denied.

Source: Reuters

If you thought ICE detention centers couldn’t get any worse, think again. In Mississippi, US immigration staff allegedly tortured Cameroonian asylum seekers until they signed their deportation documents. Cameroonians are seeking refuge outside of their country due to Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis, which has been occurring since October of 2016.

According to the Central Africa branch of the International Crisis Group, 20% of the population feel marginalized.

Four years ago, strikes and riots resulted from years of frustration in the country’s Anglophone minority and led to political demands from the population. The government’s approach was deemed not effective and was forced to negotiate trade unions with Anglophones. However, the population was subject to three months without internet, six months of strikes, and one entire school year lost. Today, there is a demand for federalism or secession at a boiling point.

The Instagram account, Justice For Cameroon, details the history of migrant Cameroonians, and why some are fleeing the country and seeking refuge in the United States as a result of the crisis.

On February 5, 2019, The Washington Post also published an investigative video on the crisis in Cameroon.

For the first time since 1996, Cameroon will hold its first regional polls in December. Current President Paul Biya has been in power since 1982.

English-speaking provinces will also take part in the election process, which comes after years of separatists fighting with the government that has cost more than 3,000 lives and uncertain living conditions for many more.

The people who have fled from Cameroon have come in fear of government forces that have enacted countless civilian killings, and are  are awaiting asylum hearings in ICE detention centers.

There is where the problems begin for the already threatened people.

Multiple refugees have alleged detainees were threatened with violence, choked, beaten, and pepper-sprayed as a way of forcing them to to request the complete opposite of asylum.

It is reported ICE agents put several of their detainees in handcuffs, and forcibly took their fingerprints to replace their signature for the stipulation order of removal. This meant the asylum seekers were forced to waive their rights for immigration hearings and accept deportation.

Advocates for human rights alongside attorneys reported an acceleration in deportations recently. With the election around the corner, the link between the Trump administration’s immigration policy and quicker rates of deportation is clear.

Freedom for Immigrants Executive Director, Christina Fialho said reports of the abuse began in late September and early October of 2020.

“We began to receive calls on our hotline from Cameroonian and Congolese immigrants detained in ICE prisons across the country. And they were being subjected to threats of deportation, often accompanied by physical abuse,” she said.

Fialho added that ICE thrives in secrecy, and “operates in the shadows.”

On Oct. 13, a plane flew 60 Cameroonians and 28 Congolese asylum seekers out of the country from Fort Worth Alliance Airport in Texas.

Quietly, ICE used a charter plane with no flight plan. Luckily, it was found and tracked by the immigration rights group Witness at the Border, and they reported a stopover over in Senegal, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo before landing in Kenya, and then arriving back in Texas.

In 2019, the Trump admin cut trade privileges with Cameroon due to the ongoing uprisings in the country.

The deported individuals on the flight testified about the abuse they suffered in detention centers under the Cameroonian military, with some having family murdered.

Under the U.S. immigration court system, run by the Justice Department, Cameroonians are also regularly denied asylum or parole.

A complaint filed in conjunction with FFI and the Southern Poverty Law Center recounts eight different stories with claims of abuse and torture.

One person, who was taken off the Oct.13 flight, codenamed CA, still faces deportation, but was one of the people that shared their accounts.

They claim to have been pepper-sprayed before being dragged on the ground.

“The officers told me to open my eyes. I couldn’t. My legs and hands were handcuffed. They forcefully opened my palm. Some of my fingers were broken. They forced my fingerprint on to the paper,” they said.

Source: Aldianews.com

4 years after the Eseka train accident in French Cameroun which according to CPDM crime syndicate figures killed 79 people and injured 551, the promises made by the Biya Francophone regime are still awaited by the victims.

On 21 October 2016, the derailment of an Inter City 152 train plunged the entire CEMAC region into shock. Following the accident described as the “worst tragedy” experienced by the Bolloré group, the regime in Yaoundé had promised to build a memorial for the victims.

Among Yaoundé’s numerous promises, the then Prime Minister Philemon Yang announced the redevelopment of the Eséka-Makak-Ngoumou highway and the provision of medical ambulance to the district hospital of Eséka.

 Cameroon Railway Company, Camrail reportedly made the compensation of victims its priority and paid the funeral expenses of the deceased. Approximately 215 million CFA francs (about 327,995 euros) was handed over to the families of the victims on October 3, 2018 in Yaoundé.

Cameroon Concord News understands that as of 31 July 2019, a majority of the injured passengers had already been compensated while three cases that were subject to a medical evacuation abroad were still being treated.

While the Bolloré subsidiary has respected its commitments, Yaoundé’s promises are still being awaited.

Indeed, 4 years later, La Republique du Cameroun is still waiting for the completion of construction work at the Eseka train accident memorial, the redevelopment of the Eséka-Makak-Ngoumou highway and the provision of medical ambulances to the district hospital of Eséka.

All these promises were announced in the presence of the international media with great fanfare by the Biya regime in the wake of the worst railway tragedy in French Country’s history.

By Rita Akana