Cameroonian rights and press groups are alleging a military cover-up in the death of journalist Samuel Wazizi, after the military on Monday refused to hand over his body to the family.  Cameroon’s military in June admitted Wazizi had died at a military hospital in August last year after months of silence on his whereabouts or condition.  Supporters of Wazizi, who was arrested for allegedly collaborating with anglophone rebels, have accused the military of torturing him to death — a charge they deny. 

Spokesman for Cameroon’s military Serge Cyrille Atongfack says they will not hand over the body of journalist Samuel Wazizi to his family any time soon.  

Atongfack says no family member or lawyer can have access to Wazizi’s body now because it has been sealed.  He says the body was sealed to allow investigators to determine the cause of death, as ordered by Cameroon’s President Paul Biya.  Before Biya ordered the investigation, says Atongfack, Wazizi’s family had 10 months to remove the journalist’s body from the mortuary but they refused.

Wazizi family member and spokesman Tah Javis rejects Atongfack’s claim, which conflicts with the public record.   

He notes the family had been seeking the journalist’s whereabouts since his arrest and disappearance last August, when they filed a complaint, but authorities did not respond.

The military — under public pressure — in June finally admitted that Wazizi had died at a military hospital just days after his arrest.  

Javis says the family immediately went to court.  

“The family filed a case in court for the court to actually grant that Wazizi’s body be handed over to the family or be brought to Buea,” he said. “The person who actually kept the corpse in the mortuary was the government.  And, till now, the government has not contacted the family officially.”

French Ambassador to Cameroon Christophe Guilhou said President Biya in a June 5 meeting promised an investigation to determine the cause of Wazizi’s death.

Family members, their lawyers, and colleagues accuse the military of torturing and killing Waizizi — a charge the military denies.

President of the National Trade Union of Cameroon journalists Denis Kwebo says the military’s months of silence and refusal to hand over the body is clearly a cover-up.

He says the government confiscated the body of Samuel Wazizi to hide evidence of torture the journalist underwent before the military killed him.  Journalists are reiterating that a national, independent commission should be set up, says Kwebo, to investigate what killed Samuel Wazizi.

Wazizi was a presenter for Chillen Media Television based in the southwestern town of Buea. 

Cameroon’s military arrested Wazizi in Buea for allegedly supporting anglophone rebels who want independence from the French-speaking majority.

Cameroon’s four-year separatist conflict in its western regions has displaced more than half a million and left over 3,000 people dead.  

Rights groups have accused both sides of committing atrocities in the conflict, including abductions and murders of civilians. 

Source: VOA

The leadership of the Ambazonia Interim Government has censured French Cameroun government’s statement by Minister Rene Emmanuel Sadi as an act of continues aggression against the people of Southern Cameroons. The Biya Francophone government said via its Minister of Information that it is not in any talks with President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides’ as widely reported last week.

Vice President Dabney Yerima speaking exclusively to Cameroon Concord News London Bureau Chief, Isong Asu called for a solid and united front against the criminal regime in Yaoundé.  Comrade Yerima highlighted the serious dangers posed by unnecessary division and unhealthy rivalry among front line leaders to the Ambazonian cause.

“We should have been approaching Buea by now because the Ambazonia people are capable of confronting the French Cameroun army! So I am calling on Southern Cameroonians particularly those in the diaspora to quickly move to stop French Cameroun’s continuous aggression against Southern Cameroonians by investing in the Amba Bonds Project” he added.

The story about the Yaoundé meeting came from credible sources and Cameroon Concord News Group chief correspondent was among the people in the know.  However, the Group’s editorial team simply kept things under wraps, waiting for the right moment to fill the population in.

According to a well-placed source in Yaoundé, the Francophone government made a dramatic u turn after its military announced it had taken control of the main road leading to Kumbo in the Bui County.

Dabney Yerima however pointed out that the Ambazonia Security Council had ordered Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces to withdraw from the area. The Vice President reiterated the Interim Government’s unified stance against all French Cameroun plot and stressed that all conspiracies against the Southern Cameroons revolution and quest for independence would be thwarted.

Ever since the war started four years ago, thousands of Southern Cameroonians have become “roving Jews” of Africa, with many travelling to distant lands just to seek peace and stability.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai in London

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government, Dabney Yerima has assured the people of Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia that as always, President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe is carrying them along with him and will not forsake the duty of getting Ambazonians to Buea.

Dabney Yerima made the remarks to a cream of reporters late on Sunday in Holland. The exiled leader revealed that he was satisfied with the briefing he got from President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe immediately after the meeting with French Cameroun government officials in Yaoundé.

Yerima furthered that the Southern Cameroons Interim Government stays true to the struggle in line with the founding fathers of British Southern Cameroons and also in keeping with the value-based principles laid down for the Interim Government by the late Mola Njoh Litumbe.

Vice President Dabney Yerima also underscored the importance of strong communication among Southern Cameroons front line leaders and groups and on a humorous note he observed that “The meeting in Yaoundé with French Cameroun representatives was not to decide who controls My-Trip-To-Buea Funds but to put in place a mechanism that will foster dialogue to be chaired by the United Nation.”

By Chi Prudence Asong in Den Hague

Millions of French and Southern Cameroonians continue to become direct casualties of President Paul Biya’s misrule of the renowned United Republic of Cameroon. Today, the situation has become more intractable with the coming of the coronavirus.

For 37 years, the economy under Biya has grounded to a near standstill due to corruption, tribalism, nepotism imposed by the ruling CPDM crime syndicate. As a result, almost 10 million people in Cameroon have become unemployed with thousands migrating to neighboring countries.

Covid-19 has made thousands redundant overnight in Yaoundé, Maroua, Garoua, Edea and Bafoussam while thousands more have lost their livelihoods in the war ravaged Southern Cameroons and in the Douala metropolis.

President Biya’s failed policies had heralded many Cameroonian families into financial hardship before the pandemic hit. Now they have been pushed into abject poverty.

Cameroonian families are now struggling to provide just a meal a day for their children. Many now rely on their relations living in Europe; South Africa and North America.

From every indication, the economy will never pick up under Biya as many are still without work even after the Yaoundé Ali Baba launched the 2036 Emergence Program.

The threat posed by the secession war in Southern Cameroons and succession crisis in Yaoundé including a second wave of the coronavirus will only foster mass layoffs in Guinness, Dangote, and Brasseries groups.

By Isong Asu

Cameroon Concord News Group

United Kingdom

Cameroon says it has deployed more troops in the capital Yaoundé after yet another bomb exploded, leaving at least 20 people severely wounded. No one has claimed responsibility, but it is suspected that separatists fighting for the creation of an English-speaking state in Cameroon and people who escaped from prison a month ago are responsible.

Naseri Paul Bea, governor of the Central Region, where Yaoundé is located, says he convened a security meeting Friday night because there has been mounting insecurity in the capital city. He says he is calling on the clergy and traditional rulers to help bring peace back to the city.

“I instructed them to control those who sell arms, to include the traditional rulers to be able to know the new people who come into their quarters so that if there is any person who looks strange, they can be able to inform the forces of law and order{military},” said Bea.

The government said on Thursday night, yet another bomb exploded in the Damas neighborhood, severely wounding five people. 15 others with wounds were later discovered in their houses.

Bea says he has information that some prisoners were organizing the attacks from their detention centers.

“Some of the organizers are in the prisons and they have people outside who are doing it {planting the bombs} for them,” said Bea. “I instructed the penitentiary administration to put their ears to the ground to be able to get those information and sensitize the population to know that the security of the country is their own security.”

Bea said the bombs were locally made. It was the third locally made bomb to explode in a popular neighborhood in Yaoundé within two weeks. At least 37 people were wounded in the three explosions. No one has claimed responsibility.

Rights activist Edwin Ayuk of the Cameroon Human Right Center says it is imperative for the government to open negotiations with English speaking separatist leaders who are detained at the Yaoundé-Kondengui prison if they want peace to return. Speaking via a messaging application from the English-speaking northwestern town of Bamenda, he said the government should also investigate the activities of former ministers arrested and detained at the Kondengui prison by Cameroon president Paul Biya for corrupt activities.

“We have been calling on the government to call these individuals, sit with them on the table and let them discuss their differences so that the atrocities that have been going on can come to an end,” said Ayuk.

Innocent Ngono, a peace and development lecturer at the university of Yaoundé says Cameroon should handle the insecurity in its capital city with care since it already has many security challenges.He says if Cameroon has been able to resist the security challenges it has been facing since 2013, it is because the population has supported the military through information sharing. He says he is afraid Cameroonians may now be reluctant to assist the military because the government is not showing serious signs of wanting to solve the crisis the country is facing.   

Since 2013 Cameroon’s eastern border has suffered a spillover of the carnage in the Central African Republic with regular intrusions of rebels. Boko Haram terrorism on Cameroons northern border with Nigeria has entered its 10th year with at least 3,000 people killed. A separatist crisis in the English-speaking western regions of the French majority state has left at least 3,000 people dead and 500,000 displaced. The Cameroon military has been deployed to handle border disputes with Equatorial Guinea.

Many civilians say if the attacks on the capital city Yaoundé are not stopped, the military may be overstretched.

Source: VOA

A former employee at the U.S. Embassy in Cameroon claims he was fired because he filed a sexual harassment complaint against his male supervisor.

Julius Banka in a lengthy statement he sent to the Washington Blade says he was a warehouse supervisor at the embassy in the Cameroonian capital of Yaoundé from February 2009 until his termination on June 14, 2018.

“In my years of work at the embassy, I was never given any reprimand, put on any performance improvement plan nor sanctioned for any reason,” says Banka in the statement. “Instead, I had several awards for good work done and was even awarded employee of the month in 2017.”

Banka in a complaint he sent to the embassy’s Equal Employee Opportunity office on May 15, 2018, alleges his supervisor, William McllWain, “wanted me to be his gay partner and when I refused, he started retaliating.”

“I am straight,” Banka told the Blade last week. “I am not a gay and I have never been a gay … I don’t want to be a gay ever.”

The EEO complaint, which Banka provided to the Blade, does not contain anything that specifically says McllWain wanted to enter into a relationship with him. Banka on Wednesday referred to the complaint when the Blade asked him to further explain this claim.

Banka in his complaint does state McllWain “admired my body build and would like for me to come teach him how to work out and be like me at his home.”

“I felt very uncomfortable with the discussion because of his gestures during this conversation and quickly told him that I do not know how to teach sports, but (I) will however look for someone who can help him out,” wrote Banka in his EEO complaint.

Banka further alleges McllWain “constantly make comments about how I had a nice body and how what I was wearing looked good on me.”

Banka provided the Blade with a June 14, 2018, letter that informed him of his termination. Banka in the statement he sent to the Blade wrote “the security officer” who “gave me the termination letter … sounded surprised to hear that there was any sexual harassment case I had filed two months before.”

“This clearly showed that he only had one objective during his investigations and that was to fire me,” wrote Banka.

Banka in his statement said he wrote to U.S. Ambassador to Cameroon Peter Henry Barlerin and the embassy’s deputy chief of mission “to explain what happened, but none of them reacted or responded to my complaint.” Banka also said the State Department’s Civil Rights Office declined to help him.

Banka notes he “took” his case to Cameroon’s Ministry of Labor “and after careful review, the ministry sent a complaint to the Ministry of External Relations.” Banka in his statement further notes “after going through my case and asking me a few questions, the Ministry of External Relations eventually sent a letter to the embassy stating my complaint and their violation of the law in November 2018.”

“Till date, the embassy has neither responded to the ministry nor made any statement,” he writes.

The State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs in a Jan. 31, 2019, letter noted Harby Issa, the embassy’s Human Resource Officer, had due cause to fire him.

“Your separation was a result of the Embassy Regional Security Office (RSO) finding that you had been involved in the theft of embassy property — a charge to which you admitted,” reads the letter. “Further, you involved one of your direct reports in this theft, resulting in that employee being disciplined, as well.”

“Though that letter of separation does not specify the reason for your separation other than to state that it was due to security reasons, you were advised orally at the time that your theft of embassy property constituted grounds for termination of your employment,” adds the letter. “It does not seem credible that this termination came as a surprise, after your own admission of this malfeasance to the RSO.”

Banka provided the Blade with the letter. He denied the allegations in a June 26 email.

“None of these claims were mentioned to me while I was at the embassy and I never admitted to theft,” Banka told the Blade. “This was completely false because I have never admitted to stealing. Stealing was only mentioned when I left the embassy.”

“All of this had to be proven when I was there and the termination letter I was given on the day of my termination had to include this,” he added. “However, this was only mentioned in the second termination letter the embassy sent a driver to my house two weeks after my termination.”

Reported by Washington Blade

Cameroon’s government and nine imprisoned leaders of separatists fighting for the country’s English-speaking regions have started ceasefire negotiations over their nearly three-year conflict, rebels and a UN source said on Friday.

“Nine of us met with a team from the Republic of Cameroon to initiate a ceasefire following the appeal of the United Nations,” the main separatist leader Julius Ayuk Tabe, who is in jail serving a life sentence, said in a message sent to AFP by his lawyer.

“The details are still being discussed and we will keep you informed when significant progress has been made” in the talks that started on Thursday evening, he added.

The meeting between the leaders and the government is the first since the conflict broke out in the Northwest and Southwest regions, which account for about a fifth of a population that is overwhelmingly French-speaking.

The Cameroonian government neither confirmed nor denied the meeting had been held, but a senior UN official confirmed to AFP that it took place.

More than 3,000 people have been killed in the conflict since separatists declared the independence of Ambazonia, the name given to the two anglophone regions, in October 2017 after decades of grievances at perceived discrimination by the francophone majority.

The nine leaders are self-declared members of the interim government of Ambazonia. All are in jail in the capital Yaoundé on “terrorism” charges.

After months of protests in late 2017, decades of resentment boiled over into an armed campaign for independence that was then met with a brutal crackdown.

There has been almost daily violence in the two regions since, and civilians have suffered from abuses committed by both sides, with more than 700,000 forced to flee their homes.

In early March, the UN called for a ceasefire in the two regions to help combat the coronavirus pandemic.

But the appeal had so far gone unheeded, with violence continuing and military operations even seeming to have intensified.

Source: Urdupoint.com

A small homemade bomb exploded in Cameroon’s capital on Thursday, wounding two people, a senior official told Reuters, the third minor explosion of its kind in Yaounde in recent weeks.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack, which was also reported on state television. Government forces have been fighting Anglophone rebels in western Cameroon since 2016, but the conflict is more than 200 km (120 miles) from the capital.

“It’s a homemade bomb like the two that exploded recently,” Yaounde’s administrative officer Jean Claude Tsila said by phone, declining to respond directly when asked who the authorities believed had made the explosives.

“You know in which part of Cameroon they make homemade bombs,” he said.

The police and ministry of territorial administration could not immediately be reached for comment.

Some residents of northwest and southwest regions have called for a split from the country for decades, but fighting with rebels has escalated since 2017 as support for secession grows and armed groups appear.

The fighting, often in remote villages surrounded by cocoa farms and forests, has been one of the greatest threats to President Paul Biya’s government during his nearly 40 years in power.

Source: Reuters