At least five separatist fighters have been killed in an offensive by Cameroon’s military against armed separatists in the restive English-speaking Northwest Region, local and army sources said Tuesday night.

The attack took place early Tuesday in the Ewai village of the region.

Cameroonian troops raided a separatist hideout, which was serving as the main base of one of the separatist groups in the region, killing the five separatist fighters, an army official in the region said.

“Our brave soldiers also captured so many of their weapons and rescued some people who were abducted by the separatist terrorists. Many of the terrorists escaped with bullet wounds,” the official who asked not to be named said.

Separatist leaders confirmed the attack on social media but claimed that only three fighters were killed.

A resident of the village, who asked not to be named, said that hundreds of people in the village fled to the bush as the offensive unfolded.

There was no word on casualties on the side of government forces during the raid.

The separatists, who have been in conflict with government forces since 2017, hope to establish an independent nation in the two English-speaking regions of Northwest and Southwest.

Source: Xinhuanet

Effective January 1, 2024, with the implementation of Cameroon’s 2024 fiscal law, the government has introduced new tax measures expected to lead to an inevitable decrease in salaries for some workers. According to Célestin Tawamba, the leader of Cameroonian business leaders, these measures are projected to result in a salary reduction ranging from 5% to 25% in various companies.

One significant measure involves the expansion of the list of in-kind benefits subject to the income tax scale. The related circular signed on December 29, 2023, by Finance Minister Louis Paul Motazé specified that “personal income tax (IRPP) in the salaries and wages category has been rationalized by fully taxing all benefits in kind paid in cash. The list of benefits in kind subject to estimation for the determination of the taxable base of IRPP in the salaries and wages category has been extended to include: telephone 5%, fuel 10%, security 5%, and internet 5%”.

This means that along with existing benefits in kind, such as housing allowances (15%), electricity (4%), water (2%), domestic help (5% each), vehicles (10% each), and food (10%), previously subject to the income tax scale, the State is adding, as of January 1, 2024, phone allowances (5%), fuel allowances (10%), security allowances (5%), and internet allowances (5%). According to information from sources within the General Tax Directorate, under this new provision of the 2024 fiscal law, a worker receiving, for example, a phone allowance of 50,000 CFA per month will only see 5% of that amount (2,500 CFA) exempt from IRPP. The entire remaining allowance, i.e., 47,500 CFA, will be subject to IRPP.

Significant deductions for high incomes

Similarly, a worker receiving a fuel allowance of the same amount (50,000 CFA) will have IRPP deducted from 45,000 CFA, while 5,000 CFA will be exempt from paying this tax. Considering that the IRPP rate for salaries below 2 million CFA is 10% in Cameroon, the worker in this scenario (assuming their salary is less than 2 million CFA, ed) will lose 4,500 CFA from their fuel allowance due to the payment of IRPP to the tax authorities, corresponding to a decrease in their salary by 4,500 CFA. This reduction will be even more significant as the same operation is applied to the phone, security, and internet allowances.

It is worth noting that the in-kind benefits targeted by this new provision of the 2024 fiscal law related to IRPP concern higher-income workers who generally enjoy substantial salary packages. In other words, the 2024 fiscal law will allow for increased tax revenue collection from higher salaries. The larger the salary, the greater the deduction for IRPP on in-kind benefits, as the IRPP rate varies depending on income levels. It is 10% for incomes below 2 million CFA per month, 15% for incomes between 2 and 3 million CFA, 25% for incomes between 3 and 5 million CFA, and 35% for incomes exceeding 5 million CFA.

Moreover, the government, in the 2024 fiscal law, caps the flat-rate deduction at 4.8 million CFA per year (400,000 CFA per month) for the 30% deduction from the gross annual salary. “Only salaries exceeding 1,333,000 CFA per month are affected by this limitation,” the Minister’s note read.

A worker with an annual salary income totaling 100 million CFA will now only benefit from a maximum deduction of 4.8 million CFA (the rest being subject to IRPP payment), compared to the previous 30 million CFA. The nearly 25 million CFA that were previously exempt from IRPP before the new fiscal law came into effect will now be added to the taxable base, resulting in a significant loss of income to the tax authorities.

Source: Business in Cameroon

Professor Joseph Owona, a cabinet minister under President Biya and a successful academic, has died aged 78.

A Cameroon government embassy official in Paris, France confirmed the death of the peer, who became Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research and was later appointed Secretary General at the Presidency.

Owona served as right-hand man to the 91-year-old President Biya during the early days of multi-party politics.

He would later serve as Minister of Health, Minister of Youth and Sports and President of FIFA’s Normalization Committee of the Cameroon Football Federation and retained a keen interest in the International Relations Institute (IRIC) in Yaoundé.

In the early 90s, he made a mockery of Cameroon researchers accusing them of not producing any results.

Sometimes referred to as a Biya favourite, Professor Joseph Owona began his rise through politics deep inside the secretariat of the ruling CPDM Central Committee.

He was a controversial figure described by many as the minister who brought problems to Biya while others brought solutions.

Owona was a law professor at the heart of the Biya’s government promoting tribalism and nepotism.  As Secretary General at the presidency, he was widely criticised for suggesting that no Bamileke could be head of state. He never withdrew his remarks after a firm rebuke from Etoudi but was removed from his role.

Born on 25 January 1945 in Akom, the polygamist served as a minister several times and was a member of the Constitutional Council from April 2020 to January 2024. He did his higher education at the University of Yaoundé and Panthéon-Sorbonne in France.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

For C.M., a member of Cameroon’s English-speaking minority, life in exile is a daily struggle.

Years ago, he was one of some 500,000 people displaced by a government crackdown on English speakers in the West African country. The violence, known as the Anglophone crisis, left hundreds of people dead and deepened festering divisions.

Seeking asylum, a legal status for migrants fleeing persecution, he made his way to the United States in 2019, only to be detained for more than a year and deported back to Cameroon — where he was once again detained, before bribing his interrogators and fleeing to Ghana, according to his account in the lawsuit.

C.M., who spoke on the condition that he be identified by his initials to protect his safety, is one of seven plaintiffs across three federal lawsuits filed against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and immigration authorities that allege African migrants seeking asylum faced racist abuse in U.S. detention facilities. Two of the suits allege hours-long confinement that amounted to torture in a full-body restraint called the “Wrap.”

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson said in an email that the agency does not comment on ongoing or pending litigation.

Living on the outskirts of Accra, Ghana’s capital, C.M. took on menial jobs and relied on the benevolence of advocates for deported asylum seekers. He grappled with the trauma of his mistreatment by authorities on two continents. And he said his deportation from the United States made him feel like an enslaved person.

“Our forefathers were taken from Africa in chains, and I was brought to Africa in chains,” he said, in an interview in his small rented apartment.

Four Cameroonian men seeking asylum, including C.M., were held for up to three years by ICE between 2018 and 2020, according to a suit filed in September in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

In 2020, the suit alleges, ICE sought to deport the men after Cameroonians at a Louisiana detention facility went on hunger strike to protest alleged mistreatment, including solitary confinement and the withholding of water.

While awaiting deportation, the men were detained in a device called the Wrap — “a temporary restraint system designed for emergency stabilization only,” according to the suit. Though people detained in the Wrap are meant to sit upright and remain free to breathe, the device was not used correctly, the suit alleges.

“Plaintiffs were restrained in The WRAP to silence them and other migrants and punish them for previous protests,” according to the suit. “They were left alone in the device for hours in some instances as they tried to alert officers to their medical issues and pain from the tightened strap folding their bodies into an acute angle stress position.”

C.M. and two other men were deported, upon which they had to live in hiding, the suit says. The suit seeks unspecified damages and the renewal of the men’s asylum claims. C.M. recently received a United Kingdom visa, according to his lawyer, and has traveled to Britain.

Had C.M. and his co-plaintiffs who were deported sought asylum in the United States just a few years later, they would have likely faced different circumstances.

In 2022, the Biden administration granted Cameroonians temporary protected status — a measure that the Trump administration fought to curtail that granted temporary permission to remain in the United States for migrants from select countries in the throes of war or disaster. Under Trump, the asylum process slowed to a crawl.

ICE’s use of the Wrap went against the manufacturer’s guidelines and was “unjustified and inhumane,” said Fatma E. Marouf, a law professor at Texas A&M University Law School, whose civil rights and immigration rights law clinics helped bring the litigation. “Our clients fled persecution in Cameroon and Uganda only to be subjected to severe physical and psychological harm in ICE custody,” she said.

“The treatment of Black migrants needs to be part of the broader conversation about race in this country,” she said.

Allegations in the suit align with findings by rights groups. In a report released in 2022, Human Rights Watch found that dozens of Cameroonians reported encountering “excessive force, medical neglect, and other mistreatment,” in ICE custody, only to face a range of abuses, including forced disappearances, torture and rape, upon deportation back to Cameroon.

“The US government utterly failed Cameroonians with credible asylum claims by sending them back to harm in the country they fled, as well as mistreating already traumatized people before and during deportation,” Lauren Seibert, a researcher at the New York-based rights group, said in a statement at the time.

A separate suit concerning an asylum seeker from Uganda filed in September by some of the same attorneys behind the Cameroon suit echoed the claims.

Steven Tendo sought asylum in 2018 after being repeatedly arrested and tortured by Ugandan authorities, according to the suit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont. During one torture session in Uganda, according to the suit, two of his fingers were cut off.

When Tendo arrived in the United States in 2018, he faced further abuse while detained. Officials wouldn’t give him his diabetes medication. He was denied cataract surgery for five months — and was held in solitary confinement after speaking out about poor conditions, he alleges in the suit.

When officials attempted to deport Tendo, he faced mistreatment, including detention for hours in the Wrap on two occasions, the suit says. The first time officials used the Wrap, according to the suit, Tendo was not permitted to use the restroom and soiled himself.

“The strap that connected his torso to his lower legs, just above his ankles, was cinched up to an angle of around 45 degrees, making it very hard for him to breathe, causing extreme anxiety, and inflicting excruciating pain,” the suit alleges, as “part of a practice of abuse and discrimination by ICE.”

“Black asylum seekers from Africa and the Caribbean have repeatedly reported experiencing serious impediments to seeking asylum in the U.S. and harms in immigration detention, including racist targeting, physical and verbal abuse, and higher rates of detention, solitary confinement, and denial of asylum claims,” the suit alleges.

After dozens of members of Congress advocated for his release, Tendo, a Christian pastor, was freed in 2021. He is living in Vermont, awaiting a final decision in his asylum case, he said.

A critic of Uganda’s autocratic government, Tendo said he left after officials killed his brother. He came to the United States after flying to Brazil and making his way north to the Mexican border. He was detained by ICE for 26 months in conditions he said were “subhuman.”

“Today, if you asked me to choose between being in prison for 26 months in the U.S. and going back to my country for torture,” he said, “you can take me back.” U.S. detention “is the most dehumanizing place that I have ever seen on the planet.”

The lawsuits, which follow still another filed by Cameroonian nationals in August alleging abuse in detention, seeks compensatory damages and a declaration that the DHS and ICE violated their own policies, among other relief.

In response to a complaint by advocates for Tendo, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties said it had issued formal recommendations to ICE “related to lack of policy, oversight, documentation, justification, lack of recording, training, use of the WRAP at detention facilities and during transport,” according to a letter from the office published by VTDigger, a Vermont investigative news outlet.

Charles Hammond is the CEO and president of Safe Restraints, the California company that sells the Wrap and trains people on how to use it. In an interview, he said that he was unfamiliar with the lawsuits’ allegations — but that the Wrap was designed to protect all people in conflict situations.

ICE had become one of the company’s top customers, the Guardian reported in 2022.

Hammond declined to comment on how specific agencies use the Wrap. However, he said that it is meant to end a conflict quickly and “control somebody in a manner that allows them to breathe and receive medical and mental health care.” He also said he was proud of the company’s 27-year track record.

“It’s not an agitation device — it’s a de-escalation tool,” he said.

Culled from The Washington Post

The security situation in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest has improved, said Cameroonian President Paul Biya.

“Thanks to the people’s active cooperation with our defense and security forces, the situation in the Northwest and Southwest has improved significantly. It is now possible to calmly implement the reconstruction and development plans for the said regions,” Biya said in a televised address to the nation Sunday night.

The president said “an increasing number” of fighters have laid down their arms and joined government-run disarmament centers, urging residents in the troubled regions to continue to cooperate with government forces.

“For those who persist in criminal activity, they must know that our firm determination to ensure the security of our fellow citizens will never falter,” he added

The armed separatist conflict has been going on in the two Anglophone regions since 2017. The separatists want to break away from the majority of French-speaking Cameroon and create an independent nation.

Source: Xinhuanet