The government of Cameroon had vowed that it must roll back the fighters who had challenged its authority and were seeking to establish an independent Southern Cameroons, but the times have changed and a new invisible boss is in control.

The Coronavirus has dictated a ceasefire which both sides are respecting without any questions.

Around the world, the virus is spreading like wildfire and it has sent thousands to an early grave. This has struck fear in the minds of the soldiers and fighters who have been at each other’s throat for almost four years.

The new rule is social distancing and neither the soldiers nor the fighters are in the mood to disrespect this rule which if disrespected could lead to death.

The soldiers and the fighters who were displaying how cruel they could be just a few weeks ago, are today avoiding each other like a plague.

Soldiers cannot even shake the hands of their friends and it will be hard for them to stand together to prosecute a war that was erroneously declared because of a misrepresentation of facts.

The whole world had said the war was unjustifiable, but ruled by ego, the country’s authorities refused to listen to any advice. Today, they are listening to a virus they cannot even see.

The ceasefire is effective and even soldiers are respecting it. They are no longer worried about Amba boys. It is their hope that the dangerous Coronavirus will take care of them before it disappears.

Amba fighters, for their part, are still walking the jungles of the two English-speaking regions of the country, hoping that the virus will not extend its reach to them, but they are also respecting the ceasefire against their wish.

Schools have been shut down and the entire country is on lockdown. No more ghost towns. The Coronavirus has instituted its own lockdown which is “ghost country.”

It is hoped after the Coronavirus leaves town, both parties will see the need for peace. For now, they must respect nature’s ceasefire, if not they will be swept away by the wave of death blowing across the world.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with additonal reporting and editing from Dr Joachim Arrey

Yaounde Appeal Court judges have postponed today’s opening of the trial of the Southern Cameroons leader, President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his senior aides due to the coronavirus.

The trial is set to be first in the Yaounde Appeal Court ever since the popular Ambazonia chief executive and his cabinet were given a life sentence.

The Biya Francophone regime judges will now decide on further steps following a decision by the CPDM government to lockdown the country.

President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe is challenging crimes allegedly committed by Cameroon government forces but labeled on him.

We understand the Yaounde regime cautioned the judges that no court room should host more than 10 persons. The Appeal Court hearing again has been delayed.

By Oke Akombi Ayukepi Akap in Glasgow with files from Rita Akana in Yaounde

Humanitarian organisations are struggling to keep pace with the increasing needs of civilians as conflict between the government and pro-independence groups escalates in Cameroon’s anglophone regions.

Limited access to those driven from their homes, low levels of donor funding, and what aid workers have described as government “obstruction” means the majority of the 1.3 million people affected by the violence cannot be reached.

Since November 2019, there has been a surge in violence in the Northwest and Southwest regions – referred to collectively by pro-independence fighters as the Southern Cameroons or the Republic of Ambazonia. 

Growing humanitarian needs

Nearly 900,000 people have been made homeless, and an additional 60,000 have fled into neighbouring Nigeria. The four-year conflict, triggered by the perceived marginalisation of the region from majority French-speaking Cameroon, has left at least 3,000 dead.

Needs include food, shelter, and psychosocial support as the government forces and pro-independence fighters routinely torch homes and, increasingly, entire villages, forcing people into the bush.

Residents of Bali waited for shelter kits from the UN after their homes were torched.

Over 600,000 children have been unable to regularly attend school following an education boycott ordered by the separatists to protest the creeping use of French in class and attacks on schools, teachers, and students to enforce the ban. As a result, just 19 percent of primary and secondary schools remain open in the conflict region. 

The UN’s children’s agency, UNICEF, estimates that only 34 percent of health facilities are operating, causing a dip in life-saving immunisation and nutrition services.

Despite the humanitarian needs, the UN and its local partners were able to reach only 40 percent of affected civilians in 2019, Mobido Traore, head of the UN’s aid coordination body, OCHA, told The New Humanitarian.

Deepening insecurity 

The insecurity, particularly in the Northwest – the centre of much of the violence – has had a significant impact on humanitarian operations.

In January, seven aid workers from two local NGOs – COMINSUD and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Foundation – were kidnapped by pro-independence fighters. Although all staff were later released, the abductions resulted in several organisations restricting their area of operations.

Government security forces have also failed to respect humanitarian space. On 21 February, soldiers entered the St. Mary Soledad Hospital campus, a health facility supported by the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières in the town of Bamenda, and shot and killed a civilian driver in his vehicle. 

Stray bullets also hit an ambulance call centre, endangering the lives of patients and hospital staff, MSF said in a statement provided to TNH.

Aid agencies have increasingly relied on community and religious leaders to draw displaced civilians from their hiding places in the bush and to assemble them in “safe zones”, such as religious centres and former schools, where they can receive assistance. 

But the military has raided “safe zones” and killed and arrested the displaced, and those who assisted in organising the aid distributions, according to internal incident reports by local aid NGOs seen by TNH, press statements, and interviews with several eyewitnesses and victims. 

Government clamp down

The government has also clamped down more systematically on humanitarian access, imposing increasingly restrictive tracking and vetting procedures, aid workers say.

In June, it established Humanitarian Coordinating Centres in Bamenda and Buea – the capitals of the Northwest and Southwest regions – to assess incoming aid, provide guidance on distribution, and ensure traceability, government officials told local news media at the time. 

All local and international aid organisations – including the UN – are required to apply to the coordinating centres for permission to carry out needs assessments and aid deliveries. Food and non-food aid must be hand inspected at the centres before delivery to beneficiaries.

“The process for vetting humanitarian assistance in Bamenda and Buea has been in place just to place more burden on humanitarian actors,” Traore said.

Local aid workers who asked to remain anonymous over safety concerns described the time-consuming procedures as a “crackdown on humanitarian organisations”.

Last week, the government moved the vetting process from the coordinating centres to the governor’s office in Bamenda. 

It’s a step that not only politicises aid work, but will result in a “significant delay in aid reaching beneficiaries,” Traore said. 

The governor’s office did not respond to requests from TNH to comment on the most recent developments. 

Aid agencies accused of ‘collusion’

Government officials have also renewed their accusations that human rights and aid groups are colluding with the pro-independence groups, supplying them with weapons, and spreading false information that implicate the security forces in atrocities.

“Many NGOs have clearly revealed themselves as enemies of our country.”

In a televised press conference, the head of Cameroon’s Ministry of Territorial Administration (MINAT), Paul Atanga Nji, charged Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the think tank International Crisis Group, and OCHA – among other organisations – of working to “destabilise state institutions”.

“Many NGOs have clearly revealed themselves as enemies of our country,” Nji said. They have “become laboratories of fake reports with the sole objective to tarnish the image of the country’s defence and security forces.”  

The government was particularly incensed by the reports of a massacre in the village of Ngarbuh on 14 February, in which the security forces and allied militia were accused of killing at least 21 civilians. The UN demanded an impartial inquiry into the incident.

Rights groups and aid organisations have all denied Nji’s accusations. 

“The statement is just a new chapter of the government smear campaign against [Human Rights Watch], other human rights organisations, human rights activists, and journalists,” Lewis Mudge, Central Africa Director for HRW, told TNH.

“The government is trying to jeopardise our work and tarnish our image,” Traore said. “They don’t want external eyes there to see what is happening.” 

Funding woes

A persistent lack of funding has also hamstrung the humanitarian response. Donors have provided just over 40 percent of Cameroon’s aid appeal, but in the Northwest and Southwest regions, the figure is far lower – just 18 percent of the budget has been financed. 

As a consequence, the UN has only “limited capacity to respond timely to increasing needs,” said Traore.

A high staff turnover also means the UN has struggled to build trust with communities and representatives of both sides of the conflict, noted an OCHA official, who asked to remain anonymous. 

Another UN staff member was more critical. “This situation is unique because [this UN operation] is not very functional”, the person said, referring to the UN’s inability to provide assistance to the majority of those in need. “The UN’s reputation is plummeting. There is a failure to deliver.”

As the conflict widens in 2020, the UN predicts its funding needs will rise. Local and international aid groups are working to build capacity, especially in the troubled Northwest region, but it is an uphill struggle, they say.

“It is not a good situation,” one local aid worker told TNH. “It is not looking good for us.”

Culled from The New Humanitarian

An Air France flight that landed on Tuesday, March 17, 2020 in Douala, Cameroon’s economic capital, was at the center of heated debates at the Douala International Airport because of its contaminated human contents.

The flight has raised fear in the Central African country by many notches, as Cameroonians fear that their fellow Cameroonians and some Frenchmen returning to the country were bearers of the dangerous Coronavirus that has disrupted economic activity across the globe and killed thousands, especially in China where the virus started.

More than half of the passengers tested at the airport were positive, creating a situation that many think could bring the country to a standstill.

Upon hearing about the unfortunate situation in Douala, the low-energy and bankrupt government in Yaounde simply ordered that the plane should take its infected contents back to Paris, but the crew argued that Roissy Charles de Gaulle was on lockdown and that it would impossible to take the infected human cargo to France.

Even the Frenchmen who came on that flight said they could not return to France, as the insidious virus was prowling all over France in search of victims.

The situation required the intervention of the Littoral governor who promptly arrived at the airport to take care of business. The passengers and crew on the Air France flight have been quarantined at a local hotel in Douala

The world has not yet seen such a high number of infected people on one flight. Cameroon is always setting examples, even in bad situations.

144 passengers on the plane should not have even made the trip to Douala as they were already showing symptoms of the deadly Coronavirus disease even before boarding the plane in Paris.

There was total confusion at the Douala International Airport as the 144 infected passengers were told to fly back to Paris where they picked up the unwanted virus.

It is suspected that all 144 passengers on board the flight were escaping the Coronavirus outbreak in Europe.

A Douala airport official who elected anonymity told Cameroon Concord News Group that Air France had finally delivered death to Cameroonians, adding that more Cameroonians would soon be heading to an early grave due to the unpardonable mistake that had been made by bringing such unwanted cargo to the country.

To restore calm to the airport, the Littoral governor informed the passengers that due to many  Coronavirus cases on board the plane, they would be kept in a holding centre for thorough assessment and surveillance.

But Cameroonians are already losing sleep because they know how things work in their country.

The country’s monitoring systems leave much to be desired and given the level of corruption in the country, some of those passengers might bribe their way out of their quarantine centers.

“There is total panic in the country and city. These Air France passengers have spoiled my day. I have been seeing crowds of infected people on TV, I never knew my country will be receiving some of them right here in Cameroon,” the Cameroon Concord News Group source said.

“There is a lot of pressure across the country and news about these latest arrivals has only made things worse. Many people are contemplating escaping to their villages as the virus gains grounds in the cities,” he said.

He added that the government must act promptly and should ensure that even Cameroonians living abroad should not come home at least over the next three months.

“COVID-19 is nobody’s friends. It is a no respecter of people. If it could deliver a deadly punch to China and Italy, then it can rush us to an early grave with relative ease.”

“We do not have the health infrastructure and our leaders think in slow motion. If we are not careful, this virus will wreak havoc on the country,” he concluded.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai in the United Kingdom

The Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia leader, President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides are expected to be back in court on Thursday for the first time after they were handed a life sentence by the Yaoundé Military Tribunal.

Cameroon Concord News understands the defiant leader will take his place in the dock behind his defense lawyers at the Yaounde Appeal Court’s trial without any of the French Cameroun government fake witnesses giving testimony.

President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his cabinet are being held by a regime that is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Southern Cameroons.

But saying he was ready to die for the people of the Federal Republic of Ambzonia, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe alongside what is now referred to in Southern Cameroons political terminology as the NERA 9 ended their hunger strike while in detention and were later on sentenced to life in prison by a French Cameroun judge whose husband is a blood relation to President Biya.

The Ambazonian leader has denied all the charges concocted by the Francophone regime in Yaounde against him and members of his government.

Southern Cameroons has been mired for four years in a Biya French Cameroun-charged war, as Cameroon government army soldiers and Ambazonia Restoration Forces battle for control of the mineral rich territory.

By Chi Prudence Asong with additional editing from Oke Akombi Ayukepi Akap in Glasgow

The Speaker of the National Assembly, Cavaye Yeguie Djibril has not been diagnosed with coronavirus. But needed to have been self-isolating at home in Yaoundé upon his return from France-a country that recently confirmed its coronavirus outbreak is “very worrying” and “deteriorating very fast”.

Supported by two men, the 80 year old speaker of the National Assembly, the Right Honourable Cavaye Yeguie Djibril arrived Yaoundé from his sick bed in France in a bid to keep his job and was seen today participating during deliberations in the Lower House alongside other members of parliament.

Visibly in very bad shape, Cavaye Yeguie Djibril’s body is now a colony of diseases and there are fears he might just be Cameroon’s 6^th coronavirus case.

Cameroon’s Ministry of Health said in a statement that “We have just registered a 5th confirmed case in Yaoundé. He is a person returning from France. Like the others, he was immediately taken care of.” The development came hours after House Speaker Cavaye Djibril returned to Cameroon also from France.

The number of coronavirus cases in France where Cavaye Djibril spent the last two months doubled every three days and there were French citizens who were sick and who were in intensive care with the Francophone politician and that number runs into hundreds.

According to the latest official figures published on Sunday, France has had 127 coronavirus deaths and 5,423 confirmed cases.

That was a jump of 36 deaths and over 900 cases in 24 hours. More than 400 people have been hospitalised in a serious condition.

There is a real worry that the speed of the outbreak could saturate hospitals in France and this is something we absolutely want to avoid in Cameroon. This is also why Cavaye Djibril should have been told to remain at home.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai