Switzerland’s appeal court has upheld guilty verdicts against six bodyguards of Cameroon’s President Paul Biya for the 2019 assault of a journalist, the Keystone-ATS news agency reported Monday.

The judges, whose ruling was confirmed by Robert Assael, a lawyer for one of the six, rejected their claims that they had immunity as they were protecting the president.

La Tribune newspaper reported that all six were ordered to pay fines, but that the punishment was suspended.

The appeal judges decided the six were outside their duty to defend Biya when they beat up Adrien Kreuze, a journalist for the Swiss public broadcasting network covering a demonstration outside a Geneva hotel.

The bodyguards injured Kreuze and took his phone and other items in the attack on June 26, 2019. The Swiss foreign ministry summoned Cameroon’s ambassador over the incident.

After the ruling, Assael still insisted that his client had been protecting the president. He said there had been violence involving Biya opponents in Switzerland and Germany in the weeks ahead of the incident.

Source: AFP

At least two people died and 20 others were injured in an explosion on Sunday in Nkambe, Northwest region, according to witnesses and local police.

The blast occurred in Nkambe, a town in the region, as school children were taking part in activities to mark National Youth Day, which has been celebrated in the country on Feb. 11 since 1966.

Many of those affected were school children.

Health workers were “working very hard” to treat many of the children who sustained “very serious” injuries, a security source in the region said.

“The death roll could increase. It is a disturbing situation but our brave soldiers have beefed up security to track down the terrorists who committed this abominable act,” the source said.

Authorities were yet to make an official statement.

Separatists had imposed a three-day lockdown to disrupt the activities in the regions where they have been clashing with government forces since 2017 in a bid to create an independent nation they call “Ambazonia.”

Source: Xinhuanet

President Paul Biya has expressed concerns about the obsession of young people in the country to emigrate.

“The growing desire of a fringe of our youths to emigrate to other climes is increasingly a cause for concern, especially when it becomes an obsession and even affects people who are well integrated into their local communities,” Biya said in a televised message geared toward the younger generation on Saturday evening.

He said Cameroon, “like many others around the world” is facing difficulties but migrating “at all costs” was not the solution.

“You should know that while you yearn to leave, many foreigners are trying to settle in Cameroon, thereby confirming that ours is a hospitable country and a land of opportunities,” he said, adding that emigration was full of “illusions and perils”.

Last month, airport security officials in the country’s commercial hub of Douala said Cameroonian civil servants especially nurses, teachers and security forces were emigrating at an “alarming” rate.

Biya’s speech came on the occasion of National Youth Day, celebrated annually on Feb. 11 in the Central African country.

Source: Xinhuanet

Many school children are feared dead in an explosion on Sunday in Cameroon’s restive Anglophone region of Northwest, according to witnesses and local police.

The blast occurred in Nkambe, a town in the region, as children were taking part in activities to mark National Youth Day, which has been celebrated in the country on Feb. 11 since 1966.

Witnesses said the children had sustained “very serious” injuries.

Authorities were yet to make an official statement.

Separatists had imposed a three-day lockdown to disrupt the activities in the regions where they have been clashing with government forces since 2017 in a bid to create an independent nation they call “Ambazonia”.

Source: Xinhuanet

Fighting erupted again early Saturday in parts of Cameroon’s war-torn English-speaking regions of Southwest and Northwest as armed separatists began imposing a three-day lockdown to disrupt National Youth Day activities.

Residents of Bamenda, the capital of the Northwest Region and the largest city in English-speaking Cameroon, said they heard bursts of gunfire in some parts of the city.

“The streets are deserted. People are afraid to go out. Almost all activities are not operational,” a resident of the city, who asked not to be named, told Xinhua by telephone.

Officials in both regions have assured residents of “tight” security and urged “everyone, all the youth, to come out en masse to take part in National Youth Day activities.”

On Thursday, separatist leaders announced that they will impose a lockdown in the regions from Saturday to Monday as a measure to disrupt National Youth Day activities, which will be held in the central African country on Sunday.

Separatists said the event was “illegal” in the two Anglophone regions, where they have been clashing with government forces since 2017 in a bid to create an independent nation they call “Ambazonia.”

Source: Xinhuanet

At least two people were killed in a fire accident at a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Cameroon’s Far North Region, officials and local police said on Friday.

The fire, which broke out in a tent on Thursday night, gutted other shelters in the Ndaba locality that hosts the IDPs. Two children who were unable to escape were killed in the tragedy.

Local police said that at least 100 shelters were destroyed, while dozens of households in the camp were displaced.

Rescue workers were conducting an assessment to determine the extent of the damage, and the victims were in critical need of food, shelter, and other items, according to the police.

Fires in camps and communities where IDPs are resettled have become common in the semi-arid region, where temperatures sometimes reach 46 degrees Celsius.

Source: Xinhuanet

The Senior Divisional Officer for Bui should promptly and thoroughly investigate the killing of four Southern Cameroonians in the town of Kiyan instead of engaging in attempts to cover up the crime, Cameroon Concord News Correspondent in Kumbo said.

On Wednesday, February 7, Cameroon government military launched an attack on an Ambazonia fighter check point in Kiyan killing four innocent civilians held by the fighters.

The Cameroon government military has since maintained a kind of deliberate silence on the incident and has reportedly put out contradictory explanations.

The Cameroon government military’s recklessness is a result of the Yaoundé authorities’ consistent failure to hold them to account for a long list of such atrocities in Southern Cameroons.

The contradictory explanations offered by the prefect of Bui so far show complete disregard for civilian lives and suggest attempts by the Biya Francophone authorities to cover-up these grave human rights violations.

By Fon Lawrence