The whole world has been holding France responsible for the killings in Southern Cameroons, but the Macron government is sick and tired of supporting an uncompromising, corrupt and inefficient Yaounde government that is hell bent on killing its own people.

French President, Emmanuel Macron is tired of being accused of aiding and abetting dictators in Africa.

In a public discussion with a Cameroonian activist, Calibri Calibro, last week in Paris following the brutal killing of more than 30 people in Ngarbur in the country’s northwest region, Mr. Macron said he had put a lot of pressure on the beleaguered Cameroon leader, Paul Biya, for him to seek a peaceful and long-lasting solution to the crisis in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions.

“I have been putting pressure on President Paul Biya to deal with the issue of the English-speaking regions of Cameroon and his opponents.  I told him that I would not receive him in Lyon until Maurice KAMTO was released.  And he was released because we put pressure on the government.  But the situation continues to deteriorate,” Macron said.

“I will call President Biya next week and I will put maximum pressure on him to end this situation.  I am fully aware of the violence in Cameroon which is intolerable.  I am doing my maximum best,” he stressed.

“France is still caught in a complicated game in Africa.  We are a state of law and we defend the rule of law everywhere.  But when in Africa, a French president says that this leader is not democratically elected, Africans always say, why are you getting into our affairs? You have no lessons to give us,” he pointed out.

“Everywhere, I want democratically elected leaders and where the presidents are not democratically elected, I will work with the civil society.  I work with the African Union and international organizations to put pressure on those governments,” he said

“When President Joseph Kabila, DRC’s former president, was in power, there were opposition figures like you in that country.  We put pressure on the government.  We worked with several other presidents and we managed to get political alternation in the country which led to President Tshisekedi taking over power,” he revealed.

“Regarding President Paul Biya, I have told him that he must open up the system. He must decentralize.  He must liberate political opponents.  He must uphold the rule of law.  I will do everything in my power to ensure the issues are addressed.  I really want you to know that it is not for France to institute democracy in Cameroon. Cameroonians must bring about democracy in their own country,” he concluded.

But not many people around the world have faith in the French president who has been quiet ever since Mr. Biya started slaughtering English-speaking Cameroonians in 2016.

It should be recalled that in 2019 during a European Union session, France was the only European Union country that stood by Cameroon and its corrupt government while other European Union countries called on the beleaguered government to address the issues that had triggered the violence in the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon.

By Staff man Francis Ashu

New Boko Haram attacks have displaced more than 3,000 people along Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria in the past three months. Authorities say the Nigerian Islamist militants torched houses, abducted, raped and looted, creating panic among villagers.

Twenty-seven-year-old Cameroonian Alidda Mannodi is getting help from the Association of Muslim Women in the northern town of Mora, on Nigeria’s border, after escaping from Boko Haram.    

Last week, she managed to flee the border village of Touski, where the Islamist militants were holding her captive as a sex slave.    

She said at the first opportunity she fled a hut in the bush, where she was repeatedly raped by several men.  Mannodi said she told one of the men that she was menstruating, but the man still raped her.

Mannodi said she trekked for three hours before getting help from a Nigerian fuel vendor, who brought her to Mora.  She said she was among 12 people Boko Haram abducted from her village – some for a second time.    

The Association of Muslim Women is treating her and 16 other women who escaped Boko Haram in recent months.    

Cameroon’s military said the Islamist militants have in the past three months stepped up raids on villages along the border.    

Midjiyawa Bakari, the governor of Cameroon’s far north region, said the terrorists cross over from Nigeria in groups of 10 to 20, torch houses, abduct civilians, and steal livestock and grain.  

He asked villagers to help inform Cameroon security forces of attacks.      

“We have to call upon the population to help to bring information, to work hand-in-hand with forces of law and civil authorities and, by that way, it is obvious that the results will be there,” he said.

Bakari said the wave of attacks is a consequence of a porous border and the dry season, during which it is easier for militants to move around than it is during the wet season.    

He denied the attacks were made worse by the military withdrawing from several border posts to fight rebels in the English-speaking northwest.

United Nations officials, including the U.N. coordinator in Cameroon, Allegra Baiocchi, have been visiting camps to which thousands of people were displaced by the Boko Haram attacks this month.  

Baiocchi said they are in urgent need of humanitarian aid.

“We saw over 3,000 people in the area of Mora and Kourghi. So, we talked about the needs of these people, which are humanitarian needs.   We talked about how we are trying to help them. But we also talked about the importance of making sure that we help these populations regain their livelihoods,” said Baiocchi.

Neither the United Nations nor the government of Cameroon gave an estimate of the number of people killed or wounded in the attacks.  

The local tabloid L’Oeil  Du Sahel, which specializes in reporting on Boko Haram, estimates at least 90 people have been killed since mid-November.    

Boko Haram terrorists have been fighting for the past 11 years to create an Islamic caliphate in Nigeria’s northeast, but the attacks have spread to neighboring Cameroon, Chad, and Niger.      

When the fighting reached Cameroon in 2014, President Paul Biya declared war on the militants.    

The Islamist group has killed more than 36,000 people, displaced over 2 million, and left more than 7 million in need of humanitarian aid.

Source: VOA    

The Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, released his statement on 17 February, saying that he is “deeply concerned over reports about the killing of civilians, including children, in an attack on the village of Ngarbuh”.

A day later, the spokesperson of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights equally decried the killings as “a shocking episode” in what is an “ongoing crisis that has afflicted the country’s North-West and South-West regions for the past three years”.

23 killed, 15 of them children

The “ongoing crisis” referred to is the clashes between security and defence forces and armed separatist groups in these two regions, clashes which have displaced hundreds of thousands of people over the last years.

The UN reported witness accounts saying that 40 armed men opened fire on people and burnt down houses in the village of Ngarbuh on 14 February. Some of the men involved in the killings were members of the security and defence forces. According to Cameroonian authorities, the defence forces and gendarmes responded to fire from inside the village.

UN sources on the ground reported that 23 people were killed, 15 of whom were children and two of whom were pregnant women.

“Respect international human rights law”

The UN Secretary General offered his “deepest condolences” to the families of the victims, and called upon the Government of Cameroon to investigate the attacks and to “make sure those responsible are held accountable”.

After the Cameroon Government announced that they would open an investigation, the Office of the High Commissioner urged the authorities to ensure that it be “independent, impartial and thorough”.

Both the Secretary General and the Human Rights Office called on all armed actors in the conflict to refrain from attacking civilians and to respect international human rights law.

“We urge the Government of Cameroon to take concrete steps” the Human Rights Office said and reiterated their “readiness to help the Government to protect the human rights of people all across Cameroon”.

Pleas of the international community

The UN statements are just the latest of many appeals from the international community, many of them from ecclesiastical communities around the world.

Earlier this week, Catholic Bishops from around the world signed a letter to the President of Cameroon, Paul Biya, asking him to begin peace negotiations with the separatist movement.

The World Council of Churches also condemned the attacks, and encouraged all its member churches to keep those affected in their prayers.

Source: Vatican News

There’s an upsurge in armed attacks in Cameroon’s far north region, security officers said. The village of Ouzal is the target of a spate of Boko Haram attacks this week, which left 3 civilians dead.

“Everything was burned, the consulting room, the pharmacy, the head office and the treatment room, excluding the hospital ward”, a nurse at the Ouzal hospital, Amadou Dairou said.

Ousseni Oundi is one of the village elders. He’s concerned about the state of affairs.

“We’re losing lives, losing brothers, we losing mothers, every day we’re in mourning… you see how houses are burned, goats are burned, property and people. We couldn’t figure out the final toll. We built our health centre, we suffered for it, people worked, we struggled”, Oundi said.

Military sources told AFP that four other locations have been hit within the same period. They include Mandoussa, Oudal, Kouva and Hitere in Cameroon’s far north region.

A police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity said three children have been missing since the attack. The attackers also looted shops.

On Tuesday, the United Nations called on the Cameroonian government to undertake an impartial and independent probe into the death of 23 people in the English-speaking region during a military operation.

Source: AFP

As more and more civilians have been killed by the Cameroon government of Paul Biya, absentee president for 37 years, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has been silent.

Inner City Press was informed by sources in Guterres’ own 38th floor office that Guterres had made a deal with Biya’s UN Ambassador Tommo Monthe as chair of the UN Budget Committee for administrative favors in exchange for silence on the slaughter or “subduing” of the Anglophone minority.

When Inner City Press asked about it, Guterres used UN Security to rough up Inner City Press right after it interviewed Monthe, and to ban it from entering the UN, 595 days now.   UN “Human Rights” Commission Michele Bachelet as she came into the job picked by Guterres was contacted by Inner City Press  about Biya’s killing spree in Cameroon and relatedly about Guterres’ ban on Inner City Press, has done little to nothing on either.

 In her September 2019 speech name-checking 35 countries, Bachelet did not even mention the slaughter in Cameroon, here. In June 2019, Biya’s government praised Bachelet.

On February 16, 2020 Inner City Press from its sources in Cameroon reported on the killing of more than two dozen civilians including children in Ngar in NW Cameroon.

Before 10 am on February 17 Inner City Press in writing asked Guterres, his spokespeople Stephane Dujarric and Eri Kaneko about the killings. 

There was no answer, and with Dujarric on vacation in Orlando, Florida, Eri Kaneko fielded only two questions at a ten minute long noon briefing on February 17 that Inner City Press was banned from entering and asking at. 

Now on February 18, not Bachelet but her spokesman who has refused countless written questions from Inner City Press, about Cameroon and Yemen and Sri Lanka and Honduras, to name a few, has belatedly issued a statement which reminds that Bachelet’s wan visit to Cameroon “welcomed” Biya’s efforts:

 “The attack on 14 February on a village in Cameroon that left 23 people dead, the majority of them children, is a shocking episode in the ongoing crisis that has afflicted the country’s North-West and South-West regions for the past three years.     We note that the Cameroon Government announced on 17 February that there would be an investigation into the killings and that the findings would be made public. We urge the authorities to ensure that the investigation is independent, impartial and thorough, and that those responsible are held fully to account.     Witnesses said some 40 armed men, including members of the security and defence forces, attacked the village of Ngarbuh, in the department of Donga Mantung in North-West Cameroon, opening fire on people and burning down houses.     The authorities said defence forces and gendarmes came under attack from people inside the village with the exchange of shots igniting a fire that affected several dwellings.     According to information from UN colleagues on the ground, among the 23 people killed were 15 children, nine of whom were under the age of five. The victims also included two pregnant women, one of whom died of her injuries in hospital.     This attack is the latest deadly incident in Cameroon’s North-West and South-West regions where hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by clashes between security and defence forces and armed separatist groups.     We call on the Government to ensure that the security forces abide by applicable international law norms standards during the conduct of their operations. We similarly remind armed separatist groups of their responsibilities under international law and call on all parties to refrain from deliberate attacks on civilians.     The UN Human Rights Office has been following developments in the North-West and South-West regions as an already tense situation worsened ahead of parliamentary and municipal elections held on 9 February.     The Government deployed some 700 additional troops in the North-West and South-West where armed separatists reportedly kidnapped dozens of candidates, most from the Social Democratic Front which is one of the country’s biggest opposition parties. Most of the candidates were subsequently released. The UN Human Rights Office also received information that voting centres and the houses of those involved in the election campaign were attacked by separatists.     In May 2019, at the end of a visit to Cameroon, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet welcomed the Cameroon Government’s openness to work with the UN Human Rights Office, and the rest of the UN, to seek solutions to the major human rights and humanitarian crises in the country.     In light of the latest violence, we urge the Government of Cameroon to take concrete steps to implement recommendations made last year by the UN Human Rights Office. We reiterate our readiness to help the Government to protect the human rights of people all across Cameroon.”

Yeah right, UN Human Rights – it’s become an oxymoron, and Bachelet’s and Rupert Colville’s collusion even with outright censorship in UNHQ is a telling and indelible example. They did nothing, and said nothing, as Inner City Press was banned even from their “Human Rights Day” event, here.

Past 5 pm on February 17 from inside the corrupt UN headquarters, this: “The Secretary-General is deeply concerned over reports about the killing of civilians, including children, in an attack on the village of Ngarbuh in the North-West Region of Cameroon on 14 February.  He extends his deepest condolences to the families and calls on the Government of Cameroon to conduct an investigation and to ensure that those responsible are held accountable.   

The Secretary-General calls on armed actors to refrain from attacks against civilians and to respect international humanitarian and international human rights law. He reiterates the readiness of the United Nations to work with all stakeholders towards a political solution to the crisis in the North-West and South-West Regions of Cameroon through meaningful dialogue.     Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary-General  New York, 17 February 2020.”

It is a fraud. This is Guterres’ genocide

Culled from Inner City Press

The pressure on the Yaounde government has continued to increase as the United Nations and the USA call for an independent investigation into the Yaounde government’s barbaric acts that resulted in the deaths of some 40 civilians, with most of them being children and pregnant women.

On Tuesday, February 18, 2020, the United Nations issued a statement calling for a thorough and objective investigation into the Ngarbuh killings that have shocked the world and proven how barbaric and inhuman the Biya regime is.

Also calling for an independent investigation is the United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Tibor Nagy, who did not mince his word.

He condemned the Ngarbuh massacre and urged the Biya government to conduct an “independent investigation”.

“We condemn the killings of civilians in Ngarbu, NW Region of Cameroon, and offer condolences to the victims’ families. We call on the government to authorize an independent investigation, ensure safety of witnesses, and bring perpetrators to justice,” he said, adding that “the violence must stop”.

By James Nkongho in Yaounde

The Ngarbuh Massacre and a call for UN Fact-Finding Mission on Ambaziona

Since declaring war against the people of Ambazonia in November 2017, President Paul Biya of French Cameroun has overseen the brutal killings of over 10,000 civilians and the destruction of more than 280 towns and villages by soldiers loyal to him. Over 3,000 innocent Ambazonians remain in illegal detention without access to legal representation and over 1.5 million have been internally and externally displaced. 

 On Friday 14th February 2020, at about 4:00 West African Time (WAT), French Cameroon soldiers attacked sleeping children and pregnant women in the village of Ngarbuh, Donga Mantung County in the Northern Zone of Ambazonia, brutally killing 35 of them (several women and children are still missing) and burning down their homes. Among the victims found so far are 14 children, 11 of whom are girls and 9 under the age of 5, and 2 pregnant women. A third pregnant woman who survived the attack but lost her baby is in critical condition at a local hospital.

 We strongly condemn these acts of barbarity, which have become commonplace in this genocidal war that French Cameroun is waging against the people of Ambazonia. It is particularly disturbing that French Cameroun, being a signatory to many international conventions that are meant to protect human rights, is determinedly persecuting with impunity a genocidal campaign in Ambazonia while the rest of the world looks on with indifference.

 For 58 years, French Cameroun has pursued a policy of socio-political and cultural domination, assimilation and annihilation of the people of Ambazonia. This agenda was ideologically birthed and has been unconditionally sponsored by France for her own imperialistic objectives. The time has come for France to live up to its international obligations to protect life and uphold human rights and dignity. It is time for France to recognise that the life of an Ambazonian is as valuable as that of any French citizen. France must recognise that liberty, equality and fraternity are human values, not just French values, and that Ambazonians are human beings too.

 We, the people of Ambazonia are peace-loving. We are opposed to war and we are also opposed neo-colonial influences in all its forms. We are the sole owners of our land and its resources. We are proud of our cultural heritage and will not tolerate any attempts by anyone, whoever they may be, to assimilate and destroy this heritage. We are a progressive and forward-looking people and we are going to be the sole determiners of our destiny. 

To Ambazonians all over the world, this yet another senseless and heartless attack on innocent babies and pregnant mothers reminds us of the depravity of the enemy we face. An enemy that is neither guided by any moral compass nor inhibited by legal injunctions.  An enemy that will spare no resource or effort to continue their brutal and vicious economic exploitation of our land and its natural waelth. This is the true face of the enemy who seeks to make himself lord over us. The same enemy who want us to entrust our lives and destiny, and those of our children and grandchildren, into its cold hands.

 This travesty of reason and justice cannot be allowed to continue uninhibited. Even if the rest of the world stands by and watch, we Ambazonians do not have the luxury to be indifferent. If we must defeat this enemy, we must also spare no resources or effort at driving them out of our territory. We must all stand up with the strong and resilient people of Ngarbuh, and the suffering masses of Ambazonians at home and elsewhere. The time has come for us to unite and rededicate ourselves to funding our restoration project. Buy your Amba Freedom Bonds now and give us the means to protect our vulnerable civilians in our march to freedom.

 We have heard calls for French Cameroonians residing in Ambazonia to leave immediately or face mob justice. The Ambazonian Interim Government under the leadership of Sisiku Julius AyukTabe categorically rejects such sentiments. We shall not fight evil with evil as this does not represent the ethos of our nation. We call on all Ambazonians to exercise restraint in the midst of these provocations. The Ambazonia we plan to build will be an open society founded on the rule of law. We counsel all within our boarders to respect the rights and liberties of all aliens living in Ambazonia.

 We call on the United Nations to immediately commission a fact-finding mission on Ambazonia to probe the Ngarbuh and other massacres, which constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity. The recent call by the United Nations for the government of French Cameroun to investigate the Ngarbuh killings defies logic as that government cannot be trusted to unbiasedly investigate itself. The international community must pressure French Cameroun to immediately end all its genocidal operations in Ambazonia and withdraw its armies of occupation. We are still open to genuine negotiations to bring about a peaceful resolution of this crisis.

 Thank you.

 Dabney Yerima

 Vice-President

 Federal Republic of Ambazonia