29, September 2018
Yaounde isn’t responding to a BBC investigation proving its soldiers killed unarmed women 0
The government of Cameroon still hasn’t reacted to a recent forensic investigation, led by the BBC and Amnesty International, which claimed to prove that a viral video showing the killing of unarmed women and children was carried out by Cameroonian soldiers.
The video which went viral in July, showed a woman carrying a baby on her back and another one holding a little girl by the hand. They are led to an uninhabited area by a group of soldiers. The one filming the act introduces his colleagues as they lead the women and children to their death; telling them they are members of the Boko Haram terrorist group. “You are going to die,” one of them says. The victims are stopped at some point, blindfolded and shot 22 times.
Back in July, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, government spokesman initially described the video as “fake news” propagated to tarnish the image of Cameroon’s military. Bakary said this in spite of early investigations by Amnesty International which identified the location where the video was shot and matched the military fatigues and weapons in the video to those of the Cameroonian armed forces.
The minister, however, disclosed about a month later that seven soldiers suspected to have been involved in the killings had been arrested. Government declared the incident was being investigated while the soldiers were held in pretrial detention.
Samira Daoud, deputy director of Amnesty International’s West Africa office cast doubts on government claims that investigations would be carried out so that the executioners are eventually court marshaled.
This month the BBC published a report of an extensive investigation it carried out in with Amnesty International, online investigation site, Bellingcat, and others. Going by the report, investigators used satellite imagery to identify the location and time of the killings. They also analyzed the video and with additional information from Facebook, identified three soldiers who they claim pulled the trigger. The soldiers identified were listed among the seven arrested by the Cameroonian government on Aug. 10.
According to the findings, the victims were killed in Karawa, Mafa in northern Cameroon sometime around March and April 2015. Since the release of the report on Sep. 24, the government spokesman who is usually quick to strike back at critics, has not responded to several requests by Quartz for comment.
The investigation report comes at an awkward time for the government as it is currently in campaign mode ahead of Oct. 7 elections. Aside the long-running difficulties with the Boko Haram Islamic terrorists, Cameroon is also dealing with the so-called Anglophone crisis with militant separatists in the northwest and southwest regions trying to create a new English-speaking country which borders Nigeria.
Ilaria Allegrozzi, Lake Chad Researcher at Amnesty International, told Quartz that video evidence is often vital to prove human rights violations and it can definitely be a very powerful tool for human rights defenders, and researchers.
She however noted that accountability cannot depend on video evidence; video documentation cannot become the minimum required evidence needed for concerned authorities to address human rights violations, said she.
“We urge the Cameroonian government to make sure an independent and impartial investigation is conducted on the case. We have seen in the past that all the cases documented with solid evidence by amnesty remained unaddressed and not dealt with. This is an indication of the climate of impunity looming in the country” she stated bluntly.
Source: Quartz Africa
29, September 2018
Pentagon stands by Biya regime-Despite forensic analysis showing its soldiers executed women and children 0
THE WOMEN WERE slapped and shoved down a dusty road. They were blindfolded and forced to the ground. Then they, and two young children, were gunned down — 22 shots from assault rifles fired at close range — by men in military uniforms.
In July, The Intercept was the first media outlet to publish the complete, unedited footage of this murder of four civilians by members of the Cameroonian armed forces — a key U.S. military ally in the region — drawing on extensive investigative work by experts at Amnesty International. The government of Cameroon quickly dismissed reports that its soldiers were involved in the atrocity, calling it “fake news.”
A newly released digital forensic investigation by Amnesty and the BBC offers overwhelming evidence that pinpoints the location of the killings, the make and model of one of the weapons used, and even the identity of the perpetrators, not only demonstrating that they are members of the Cameroonian military, but even providing names of some of the alleged killers. The massacre took place between March 20 and April 5, 2015, not far from the town of Zelevet, in the Far North region of Cameroon, according to the findings.
A “vital” U.S. counterterrorism partner in the Lake Chad Basin, according to the Pentagon, Cameroon has been authorized to receive roughly $200 million in American security aid since 2015. For years, the United States has also provided intelligence and training in counterterrorism skills, such as urban assault operations, to Cameroon’s armed forces. The U.S. military utilizes an outpost in the north of the country, known as Contingency Location Garoua, to fly drone missions. Members of the Army’s Task Force Darby, a military unit that includes soldiers and airmen, also serve at the base to support Cameroonian forces fighting the terrorist group Boko Haram.
“We are aware of the video. At this time, we cannot confirm the authenticity of the video, nor can we confirm any possible military affiliation of those shown in this troubling video,” Maj. Sheryll Klinkel, a Pentagon spokesperson, told The Intercept after the massacre footage surfaced online in July.
The Pentagon appeared to be unswayed by the new BBC/Amnesty investigation. “I don’t have much more to provide you beyond what I have previously, nothing has changed recently,” Klinkel told The Intercept when asked about the new analysis.
“This is not an isolated incident,” Ilaria Allegrozzi, Amnesty International’s Lake Chad researcher, said of the atrocity footage. “This is part of an inherently abusive system put in place by the Cameroonian security forces to address security threats. Cameroonian security forces have a long track record of abusive conduct both in the Far North region, where they fight Boko Haram, and in the Anglophone regions, where they are deployed to confront the armed separatists.”
Last month, The Intercept published another video showing the massacre of civilians by Cameroonian soldiers. That mass killing likely took place in the village of Achigachiya, also in the Far North region, in January 2015.
In 2017, Amnesty, the London-based research firm Forensic Architecture, and The Intercept exposed illegal imprisonment, torture, and killings by Cameroonian troops at a remote military base known as Salak, which is also used by U.S. personnel and private contractors for training missions and drone surveillance. U.S. Africa Command launched an investigation, but never publicly announced details about its aims and has not released the results. AFRICOM has not responded to repeated requests from The Intercept seeking comment about the parameters, scope, and findings of its probe, which was headed by Brig. Gen. Timothy McAteer and concluded in November 2017.
“We urge the U.S. to make the findings of the AFRICOM investigation public to ascertain whether there was any knowledge of incommunicado detention, torture, and death in custody at the military outpost where U.S. military personnel were based — Salak — and to show that they take human rights issues seriously when it comes to their military cooperation,” Amnesty’s Allegrozzi told The Intercept.
The BBC identified the three men shown shooting women and children in the spring 2015 video as Cyriaque Bityala, Barnabas Donossou, and Lance Corporal Tsanga. All three appear on a list of troops arrested by the Cameroonian government in connection with the massacre. “Seven soldiers were arrested,” Issa Tchiroma Bakary, a Cameroonian government spokesperson, told the BBC. “They are under investigation right now.”
“The Cameroonian government is taking some steps to address allegations of human rights abuses. This includes the arrest of seven individuals linked to the first video, and President [Paul] Biya ordering official investigations into all videos purportedly depicting Cameroonian security forces engaging in extrajudicial killings,” Nick Sadoski, deputy spokesperson of the State Department’s Africa Bureau, told The Intercept. “The Cameroonian government has made some efforts toward transparency and reached out to the international community for assistance. This includes the Ministry of Defense undertaking a U.S. government-funded program to train and establish 40 military legal advisers to advance human rights principles and promote security force accountability in the field commands around Cameroon.”
Cameroon’s embassy in Washington, D.C. did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. Nor has Cameroon’s government released any further information in regard to its investigation of the massacre of the women and children, according to the U.S. State Department.
“The next step is for the Cameroonian government to reveal more information about those arrested, where they are being held, whether they have a lawyer, the charges against them, and when or if a trial will start,” said Amnesty’s Allegrozzi. “They also need to provide information on who was in command of those soldiers. We are calling for an independent and impartial investigation into these heinous crimes.”
Source: The Intercept