Rights groups have sounded a warning over the escalating crisis in western Cameroon, where separatists and government forces are locked in deadly combat.

“The international community is asleep at the wheel when it comes to the crisis in Cameroon,” the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), Jan Egeland, said in a report issued on Tuesday.

“Brutal killings, burned-down villages and massive displacement have been met with deafening silence.”

Two regions in Cameroon are in the grip of an armed campaign by English-speaking militants seeking independence from the francophone-majority country.

On October 1 2017, they declared the creation of the “Republic of Ambazonia,” covering the two English-speaking regions incorporated into post-independence Cameroon in 1961.

The declaration went largely unnoticed outside Cameroon, and “Ambazonia” — named after a bay at the mouth of the Douala River — has been recognised by no-one.

The government responded with a brutal crackdown, and the separatists in turn have mounted a campaign of attacks on state buildings, shooting and kidnappings.

According to the International Crisis Group think tank, 1,850 people have been killed, while more than 530,000 people have been forced from their homes, according to UN figures.

The NRC said the crisis in the Northwest and Southwest Regions topped its annual list of the world’s “most neglected displacement crises”.

There has been no major mediation effort, no large relief programme, minimal media interest and insufficient pressure to stop attacks on civilians, it said.

Second and third on the NRC list were long-running conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic.

Separately, a report by a Cameroon-based rights group in Africa, the CHRDA, and the Canada-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, accused the armed forces of conducting “a deliberate, violent campaign against civilian populations”.

It acknowledged that local armed groups also bore “much responsibility” for the violence.

“It is sometimes argued that the current crisis is just one more conflict in a series of reciprocal attacks and reprisals between government and secessionist forces,” the report, published on Monday, said.

“However, minimizing the seriousness of the attacks on civilians as part of the ‘normal’ conflict serves to shield serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity and may even enable their continuation.

“Minimizing the conflict also ignores evidence that the violence is spreading, engulfing Francophone regions of the country, becoming a threat to the entire sub-region.”

Around a fifth of Cameroon’s population of 24 million are English-speakers.

Resentment has long festered at perceived discrimination at the hands of the francophone majority in education, law and the economy.

In recent years, growing demands for autonomy or a return to Cameroon’s federal structure were rejected by President Paul Biya, prompting radicals to gain the ascendancy in the anglophone movement.

AFP

Item 1: Atrocities in Wum, Menchum County:
On Monday the 3rd of June 2019, we were stunt by a video on social media. It clearly showed the Cameroon military coordinating and inciting an armed gang of young men in Wum, Menchum County. These armed men purporting to represent the Bororo community, attacked their neighbours, the local Aghem people. They claimed these were revenge for previous attacks on their community in Naikom village by our Restoration Forces.
Eyewitnesses also report of soldiers from the Cameroon military base in Wum providing backup for the revenge attacks.

First of all, I want to extend our heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims of the Naikom village shooting and the Wum attacks. We must state that Cameroon soldiers who were on video fomenting thisattacks, and whom went on videotape the victims of the attack, were hailed by their Governor, Adolphe Lele Lafrique. We strongly condemn his actions!

This is clearly an attempt by the French neocolonial regime in Cameroun to kindle intercommunal violence in our communities. This is an effort to change the narrative of a war of extermination being waged against Ambazonians for matching on the streets with peace plants to demand their fundamental rights.

We saw this kind of escalation of provocation by the French neocolonial regime in Ivory Coast in 2011. In that country, French neocolonial pro-Ouattara forces went out of their way in Duekoue to make parents watch them chop off their children’s heads, in a desperate effort to trigger intercommunal violence. It worked in Ivory Coast but we must make sure it doesn’t work in Ambazonia.

Our mainly Muslim Borroro Brothers and Sisters have lived together in harmony with our predominantly Christian Aghem people for hundreds of years. These communities have intermarried and share several cultural values and practices.

As your Interim Government, we call for maximum restraint and vigilance from all in the affected communities.

We have reached out to Muslim and Christian leaders in Wum. This is their message for all of us especially our fellow compatriots in and around Wum – ‘Ambazonia is a country for all faiths living peacefully one with the other’.
We wish a blessed Eid to all Muslims and pray Allah accepts the Ramadan worship.

Item 2: Updates on SONARA Incident and Health Risk

We wish to express our gratitude to the Ambazonia Comrade in the ranks of the occupation regime who quickly publish on social media the preliminary measures from the smoke coming from the refinery after the fire, saving our people from the hazards of exposure.

We have confirmed the human and environmental risk, and restate the recommendations of the preliminary measures as advised:

• our children in and around Victoria should stop bathing under the rain. • we should stop harvesting and drinking rainwater in the near future. •we should avoid drinking any surface water like wells and streams for now. •those living really close to the refinery should try to use facemask

The crude oil that is burning now is said to contain Hydrogen Sulphide, Benzene, Phenols, Nitrates , Sulphates and Carbonates which burns to oxides (NOx, SOx and COx ). The oxides dissolves in rain to form Nitrous and Notric acid, Sulphurous and Sulphuric acid, and Carbonic acids.

The resulting acid rain as its known, is very caustic and corrosive. It will affect human bodies if bathed with it and can cause permanent lung damage if breath in. The probability of wounds is highly likely. If consumed it will reduce the pH of our body since it is acidic. Please advise and educate your neighbors.

As the situation develops, your Interim Government will do all it can to keep you and your family updated with critical information.

Item 3: Response Regarding UN Security Council Briefing

Much to our consternation, yesterday 4 June, 2019, at the UN Security Council Briefing, the former prime minister of the French neo-colonial regime of Lansana Conté in Guinea and current Special Representative and Head of the UN Regional Office for Central Africa (UNOCA) François Fall, continued in his shameful tradition of cover ups and championing of French neo-colonial policies in Central Africa, particularly the Cameroon regime.

An open letter from leading Human Rights Organizations called on “the Security Council to formally add Cameroon to its agenda as a regular stand-alone item,” following the ever growing ”…violence, especially abuse by [Cameroon]state forces…”, and for “[t]he Cameroon government [to] allow unhindered access to international and national human rights organizations”. We want to express our full support for the demands in this letter.

Human Rights and democracy are so unimportant to Mr. Falls he did not used both words in his speech to the council. Instead he droned ceaselessly about stability.

To the Potemkin institutions and total lack of commitment to solving the Ambazonia-Cameroon conflict described by the US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs to congress a few days ago, Mr. Falls said He “took note of efforts by the Cameroon government to find a lasting solution to the Crisis…” and asked the UN to fund the Potemkin institutions.

Mr. Falls claimed the situation has improved. His evidence being “a number of high profile visits and public statements .” Except this public statements are by Dion Ngute the new prime minister. In previous security council briefings Mr. Falls had indicated that similar pointless statements by the former prime minister Yang were signs of progress.

Fall goes on to repeat the pointless talking point of the Cameroon regime, that the world should allow the regime to find a solution by itself even as he ignored UNOCHA’s April 2019 report of more than 4.3 Million people affected by the conflict.
We want to add our voice to that of sixteen major human rights organisations and civil society organizations who signed the 7 February, 2019, petition, calling on the UN to Mandate an International Independent Fact Finding Mission to stop the killings, establish the facts on the ground and begin the process of ending the conflict.

Item 4: We Unequivocally Stand with our Political Prisoners in their fight against Isolation by the Cameroon Regime

I want to end this briefing with an emphasis on our firm stand with our Ambazonia political prisoners in their resistance to isolation efforts by the Cameroon regime via efforts to transfer individual prisoners to unknown destinations. Like the failed efforts to Transfer 62 years old Pa Ngwa Ngaling Joseph to Mbalmayo.

Sign:

Vice President

Dabney Yerima

As Ambazonians continue to deviate from the focal point of the Southern Cameroons revolution, its worth reminding Amba citizens that revolutions are never straightforward or predictable. Ever since the controversial Chairman Elvis Kometa confirmed that IG funds were used to pay the rents of disgraced former Acting President Dr Samuel Sako, our readers have expressed their frustration and anger at the fact that the IG could afford to squander huge financial resources when thousands of Ambazonia Restoration Forces in Ground Zero were desperately seeking for support. Thousands of Ambazonia refugees in Nigeria and IDPs are in need of basic human amenities. To be sure, nothing came under Sako’s leadership.

Three weeks ago, Cameroon Concord News and Cameroon Intelligence Report opened a joint investigation to uncover the truth about the Sako-IG Affair. The process was challenging but rewarding.  We found out that immediately after his appointment as the Acting President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, Sako’s maiden call to the cabinet was that he needed $450 to repair his car. This amount was made available to him at lightning speed as a goodwill gesture by the treasury department. Our whistle-blower later opined that Dr Ikome Sako owned no car at the time of the said request. Later that day, he met with a cross section of the exiled cabinet and made another demand for more money citing his rents. During that meeting, Dr Ikome Sako also pleaded that he needed to be relocated for security reasons. The cabinet ministers were unanimous in their decision in support of the relocation. The house he lived in was dilapidated and looked like an abandoned Shakespearean building.

The agreement was for Pastor Ikome Sako to pay a portion of the new lease. However, as the IG was looking for a new accommodation that befits an Acting President, Sako moved his entire family into a hotel all paid from donations intended for Ground Zero. Sako made matters more intractable when he made another request insisting on relocating to a posh area where the cost of accommodation was $2500 a month excluding utility bills. Our chief intelligence officer in the USA has facsimiles of IG documents revealing that all Sako’s utility bills were paid for by the Ambazonia Interim Government including gas, electricity and local rates.

Immediately after settling in his new comfortable presidential home, Dr Sako surprised members of the Ambazonia Cabinet again!! This time around, the man of God informed the Interim Government that he needed $1000 to pay for his immigration paperwork to be regularised so he could travel outside the USA. Alarm bells started ringing but the IG was already in a marriage and the need to keep the Southern Cameroons revolution going was prominent on the agenda. IG classified papers show that the said amount was handed to him. One of most pathetic and appalling revelation made to our cream of reporters covering the IG was that Pastor Samuel Ikome’s children started going to school on UBER rides all paid for by the Ambazonia Interim Government. This was facilitated due to the fact that Sako had a government debit card. We can now reveal that Sako’s monthly expenses came up to approximately $8000.

This document shows Sako paying 3 different insurance on the same day

Sako’s Meteoric Rise

The disgraced former Acting President had lost his job as a security officer two weeks prior to his appointment as Acting President. His wife, a hairdresser, was the breadwinner as Sako’s venture at selling Christianity had failed woefully.

We gathered that the lease signed by the Ambazonia Interim Government for the property that Sako tenanted was for 12 months. With the financial scandal that rocked his reign and subsequent fiscal drought faced by the IG, the payments of Sako’s rents became irregular.

Ikome Sako’s landlord issued two eviction notices late last year. As the ‘free’ money dried-up, the lease couldn’t be renewed and we can confirm that on March 2019 he had no choice but to move to a modest and cheaper area of town. One of Sako’s acolytes who elected anonymity said ‘In Buea terms, Sako lived around Muea market before his rise to prominence. The IG moved and sponsored his twelve months stay in Governor Street. He has now moved to Small Soppo.’

For all the chanting by pro Sako comedians on social media that he is still the President, the people yelling unconditional support for him aren’t opening their wallets.  A senior Southern Cameroonian who helped us during this investigation noted that ‘sadly the former acting First Lady has to go back to braiding hair to support this lazy and dishonest pastor’

Sako has set out over the last few weeks to prove his critics right. Never again will Ambazonians waste so much goodwill and financial resources on an individual.

Sessekou Asu Isong, London Bureau Chief

Cameroon Concord News Group

The newly minted Prime Minister of Cameroon, Dion Ngute, is losing sleep following the explosion at the country’s lone oil refinery located in his native southwest.

Mr. Ngute who spent a huge chunk of his time during his recent visit to the region dancing, is now suffering from insomnia, as the burden of getting the international community to come and rebuild the jinxed refinery rests on his fragile shoulders. Mr. Biya whose health has spiralled out of control lacks the credibility to mobilize resources from bilateral and multilateral sources.

After having spoken about the country’s sovereignty for a long time, the country’s authorities are now faced with the huge challenge of demonstrating that sovereignty by rebuilding the refinery without turning to those they have abused on several occasions.

Mr. Ngute will surely need to adopt a different rhetoric if he really wants to mobilize resources in record time. Times are hard and the adverse effects of SONARA’s meltdown are already emerging. The race against time is on, but has Dion Ngute got the right running shoes?

Kingsley Betek, the Cameroon Concord News Group‘s lead investigative reporter, will be providing updates on the state of confusion at the Star Building. He has been talking with senior officials of the Prime Minister’s Office and his thoughts will be yours in Cameroon Concord News and Cameroon Intelligence Report, your best online platforms for the latest on Cameroon. Stay tuned!

Four units are down at Cameroon’s only refinery, but the shortage will be covered by imports starting on Tuesday, the energy minister said late on Sunday.

The 42,000 barrel-per-day Sonara refinery in Limbe declared a force majeure on Saturday after a tank exploded, causing a fire that halted output.

“Flames consumed four of the 13 production units, stopping all the Sonara refining process,” Minister of Water Resources and Energy Gaston Eloundou Essomba said. “The market will remain supplied by imports.”

Sonara, which is almost entirely state owned apart from a 4% stake held by Total, has a capacity of 2.1 million tonnes of crude a year.

It serves the whole country, so any delay in getting it back up and running has the potential to cause severe fuel shortages.

Source: Sunday Times

Members of the United Nations Security Council should focus on the deteriorating humanitarian and human rights situation in Cameroon at the June 4, 2019 briefing by the UN Regional Office for Central Africa, nine human rights organizations said today in an open letter to Security Council members.

While UN Regional Office for Central Africa briefings are an opportunity to formally raise the situation in Cameroon at the Security Council, the groups also urged the Security Council to formally add Cameroon to its agenda as a regular stand-alone item. “The UN Security Council has largely kept silent on the crisis,” the organizations said.

“Without expeditious action, the situation is likely to worsen.” Cameroon’s Anglophone regions have been engulfed in crisis since late 2016, when English-speaking lawyers, students, and teachers began protesting against what they saw as their under-representation in, and cultural marginalization by, the central government. In response, government security forces have killed civilians, torched villages, and used torture and incommunicado detention, while armed separatists have also killed, tortured, and kidnapped dozens of people. This violence, especially abuse by state security forces, occurs in an atmosphere of near total impunity.

This week’s Central Africa briefing should serve as opportunity to urge the Cameroon authorities to investigate and prosecute members of the security forces alleged to have carried out human rights abuses. It should also publicly assert to armed separatist groups that their leaders will be held responsible for serious crimes committed by their fighters, the groups said.

The lack of access to Cameroon and its affected regions is hindering efforts by international human rights and humanitarian organizations to report on abuses and to deliver life-saving assistance to those in need. The Cameroon government should allow unhindered access to international and national human rights organizations, the groups said.

The groups that signed the letter are Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, Action by Christians for the Abolition of Torture, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Nouveaux Droits de l’Homme Cameroun (NDH – Cameroon), World Organisation Against Torture, Presbyterian Church (USA), and Réseau des Défenseurs des Droits Humains en Afrique Centrale (Central Africa Human Rights Defenders Network).

Source: Human Rights Watch

The Committee to Protect Journalists and eight other civil society organizations sent a letter to members of the United Nations Security Council about the deteriorating humanitarian and human rights situation in Cameroon. The letter was sent ahead of the U.N. Regional Office for Central Africa briefing to the Security Council, due to take place on June 4.

The letter highlighted the increasing violence across the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions, where schools and hospitals, teachers and medical staff are under attack. The letter noted that journalists have been detained and at least four are behind bars in relation to their reporting of the crisis, while member of the media face regular threats of arrest and attacks.

To all UN Security Council Members

Your Excellency, Ahead of the upcoming briefing of the United Nations Regional Office for Central Africa (UNOCA) in the UN Security Council in June, we, the undersigned organizations, would urge you to please pay particular attention to the deteriorating humanitarian and human rights situation in Cameroon. Political conflict over cultural rights and identity, as well as long-standing socio-economic grievances have escalated in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions since 2016 when English-speaking lawyers, students and teachers began protesting against what they saw as their under representation in, and cultural marginalization by, the central government. Since then, a crisis in the Anglophone North-West and South-West regions has pit government security forces and armed separatists against each other and has driven more than 560,000 Cameroonians from their homes, including 32,000 refugees into Nigeria.

Civil society organizations and national and international human rights and humanitarian groups report that government forces have killed civilians, torched villages, and used torture and incommunicado detention with near total impunity. Meanwhile, armed separatists have killed, tortured, assaulted and kidnapped dozens of people, including students, teachers, administrative and traditional authorities amid increasing violence across the North-West and South-West regions. Schools and hospitals, teachers and medical staff, are increasingly under attack. Journalists have also been detained and at least four are behind bars in relation to their reporting of the crisis, while members of the media face regular threats of arrest and attacks.

These abuses are fomenting severe instability across the regions and show that the government of Cameroon is failing to uphold its Responsibility to Protect the Anglophone population. Without expeditious action, the situation is likely to worsen. The UN Security Council has largely kept silent on the crisis. Even getting the Council to discuss

Cameroon has proven difficult. A recent informal Security Council meeting almost did not take place due to a lack of support from African member States. As you prepare your remarks for the UNOCA briefing, we respectfully urge you to consider the following recommendations:

 The UN Security Council should hold regular formal briefings and discussions on the situation in Cameroon and formally add it to its agenda. It should request the UN Secretary-General and key senior UN officials – especially the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights – to report regularly on developments in Cameroon.

 While we should not wait for the region to mobilize before taking action in New York, the African Union and Economic Community of Central African States should engage with Cameroon’s government and armed separatists in order to prevent any further deterioration of the crisis in the Anglophone regions. In this context, the African countries on the Council have a crucial role to play in facilitating mediation efforts.

 The lack of access for international human rights and humanitarian organizations to Cameroon and its affected regions remains disturbing. The government of Cameroon should allow unhindered access to international and national human rights organizations.

 Cameroon’s partners should ensure that any support to Cameroonian security forces does not contribute to or facilitate human rights violations. The UN Security Council, with the support of the OHCHR, should urge the Cameroon authorities to investigate members of the security forces alleged to have carried out human rights abuses and prosecute those responsible. It should also publicly announce to armed separatist groups that their leaders will be held responsible for serious crimes committed by their fighters.

 The international community should encourage mediation between Anglophone communities and the government, as well as an inclusive national dialogue in order to find a lasting and sustainable solution to the crisis, which addresses root causes and underlying grievances.

Signed,

1. Action by Christians for the Abolition of Torture (ACAT-France)
2. Amnesty International
3. Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
4. Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
5. Human Rights Watch
6. Nouveaux Droits de l’Homme Cameroun
7. Presbyterian Church (USA)
8. Réseau des Défenseurs des Droits Humains en Afrique Centrale (REDHAC)
9. World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT)