A senior aide to Acting President Samuel Ikome Sako has said that the Interim Government is preparing a response over recent shocking killings of Southern Cameroonians in Fako, Meme, Lebialem and Mezam Counties. The Ambazonian official who is currently in Southern Cameroons also underlined the need for an independent investigation into the carnage in Muyuka that led to the death of a Roman Catholic priest Rev. Father Sob.

In a telephone conversation with our correspondent in Buea, the President Sako senior adviser voiced concerns about tensions in Southern Cameroons over the past few months, which have seen French Cameroun government forces kill almost 300 Southern Cameroonians and injured dozens.

The Interim Government (IG) of the Federal of Ambazonia recently warned that the Biya regime military escalation has the potential to generate threats to peace even in French Cameroun. The Ambazonian Interim Government also noted that President Sako has ordered IG agents in both the Northern and Southern zones to advance accountability for the killings, as well as all alleged violations and abuses of international humanitarian law.

Tensions have been running high along the border separating the Lebialem County and Dschang in French Cameroun with a Cameroon government official revealing that some 140 Ambazonian fighters serving with the Red Dragons were reportedly killed by Cameroon government forces.

The Southern Cameroons war reached its peak recently following an attack on defense minister Beti Assomo’s convoy. Political commentators have warned that the situation in Southern Cameroons may be severely aggravated in the coming months. It is anticipated that the October presidential elections could also further inflame tensions.

No UN official has criticized French Cameroun military activities in Southern Cameroons.  The so-called African Union has also not condemned the Biya regime’s detention of thousands of Southern Cameroons children.

An estimated 865 Southern Cameroonians are being held in administrative detention in Kondengui and SED in Yaounde. Yaoundé has blatantly refused to charge or release all of them. The administrative detention is a form of imprisonment without trial or charge that allows the Biya Francophone regime to incarcerate Southern Cameroonians for an unlimited period.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

China’s President Xi Jinping pledged during a visit to Senegal on Saturday to strengthen economic ties with Africa, a continent already awash with cheap Chinese loans in exchange for minerals and huge construction projects.

Xi arrived in Senegal on Saturday for a two-day visit to sign bilateral deals, the first leg of an Africa tour that will also take him to Rwanda and South Africa, the latter for a summit of BRICS countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

China now does more trade with Africa than any other nation does, and its consistent overtures to the continent contrast sharply with the United States, whose President Donald Trump has shown little interest in it.

The visit was Xi’s first trip to West Africa as president, but his fourth to Africa, he told a joint press conference with Senegalese President Macky Sall after their third ever meeting.

“Every time I come to Africa, I have seen the dynamism of the continent and the aspirations of its people for development,” Xi said. “I am very confident in the future of Sino-African relations.”

Earlier, Xi was greeted by a brass band and hundreds of people waving Chinese and Senegalese flags and wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the two leaders’ faces.

Chinese investment in African infrastructure

Africa is in the midst of a boom in infrastructure projects, managed and cheaply financed by China, part of Xi’s “Belt and Road” initiative to build a transport network connecting China by land and sea to Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

China has pledged $126 billion for the plan, which has been praised by its supporters as a source of vital financing for the developing world. In Senegal, Chinese loans have financed a highway linking the capital Dakar to Touba, its second main city, and part of an industrial park on the Dakar peninsula.

China’s ambassador to Senegal Zhang Xun was quoted by the local press in March as saying China had invested $100 million in Senegal in 2017.

“Senegal takes a positive view of China’s role in Africa,” Sall said at the news conference. “For its contribution to peace and stability and equally … for the financing of budgets.”

But critics say Africa is loading itself up on Chinese debt that it may struggle to repay, with estimates ranging in the tens of billions of dollars. That could leave African nations with no choice but to hand over controlling stakes in strategic assets to the Chinese state.

U.S. officials have warned that a port in the tiny Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti, a host to major U.S. and French military bases, could suffer this fate, although Djibouti rejects the fear.

In Guinea, meanwhile, one of the world’s poorest nations, China is lending $20 billion to the government in exchange for aluminium ore concessions.

As well as trade and minerals, China has also seen Africa as a source of political support. Chinese diplomacy has, as of May this year, succeeded in getting every African country except Swaziland to break off diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which China sees as a renegade province.

(REUTERS)

Sama Jude knew it was time to flee his home town in western Cameroon when he heard the sound of gunfire ringing above the roof of the University of Buea where he’s taught for four years. As clashes between the nation’s army and separatist rebels intensified, the 41-year-old lecturer packed his bags and fled to the commercial capital, Douala, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) to the east.

In its first public report to detail the damage from the conflict, the government last month appealed to donors to fund a special humanitarian emergency plan to help 75,000 displaced people and 22,000 others who’ve fled the country. Separatists have killed 84 members of the security forces in at least 123 attacks since the crisis began in 2016, according to the report, a figure the Defense Ministry later put at about 120.

“This is heading straight toward civil war if nothing is done,” said Hans De Marie Heungoup, a Nairobi-based analyst at the International Crisis Group. “The military has killed civilians indiscriminately and burnt dozens of villages. Militias are also increasingly targeting civilians, particularly collaborators of the government. It’s getting more tense as the elections approach.” More than 220 civilians have been killed in the last 10 months, he said.

Roads Blocked

Campaigning is set to begin soon, even as it’s unlikely the vote can be held in areas of the Anglophone regions where regular gunfights between separatists and government troops take place. Across the main urban settlements, including Kumba, Muyuka and Limbe in Southwest, public transport is at a standstill and businesses are closed, with militias blocking major roads and setting fire to cocoa and rubber plantations.

With roads and ports that are vital for landlocked neighbors including oil-producing Chad and Central African Republic, Cameroon has the biggest economy in the central African monetary zone. Its population of 23 million depends mostly on agriculture.

The latest unrest began in late 2016 with peaceful protests by teachers and lawyers against the dominance of the French language in schools and courts. It’s escalated into a conflict in which armed splinter groups are killing soldiers and police officers, kidnapping government officials and harassing village chiefs they accuse of collaborating with the authorities.

The armed groups, estimated to comprise at least 1,000 active members, are largely funded by Cameroon’s diaspora, according to the ICG.

The political leadership of the Anglophone movement has been imprisoned since January. Advocacy groups including Human Rights Watch have said the government’s heavy-handed response contributed to an escalation of the conflict. Last week, the New York-based organization released satellite imagery showing security forces had torched dozens of villages, and accused them of committing torture and summary executions.

Social Media

In the latest incident, armed men dressed in camouflage are seen riddling two women and two small children with bullets on a dusty roadside after accusing them of supporting the Nigeria-based Islamist group Boko Haram. The video, which was widely circulated on social media, prompted the U.S. to call for an investigation into the killings. Amnesty International says it was carried out by the military.

The government has consistently denied allegations that the security forces commit abuses, saying the separatists conduct hate campaigns on the internet and falsely accuse troops of “imaginary atrocities.”

Social media platforms play a particularly toxic role in the crisis, the government said last month. Gruesome videos and photos of alleged human-rights abuses by both sides have appeared regularly on Facebook and Twitter, as have mobile-phone videos of military operations in the two regions.

“It’s now at a crisis level that we haven’t seen before with pictures of burnt-down villages and bodies hanging from trees circulating on social media,” said Jeffrey Smith, executive director of Vanguard Africa, a U.S.-based non-profit organization that monitors elections in Africa.

While very few people supported secession when the protests began, public opinion in the Northwest and Southwest regions has shifted toward separation, according to Heungoup.

“It’s impossible to resolve this crisis without involving the leadership of the Anglophone separatists, but there’s no dialogue with them,” Heungoup said. “The government comes across as arrogant and having no sense of accountability, and it’s done no fundamental concessions. That’s the problem with Biya — if two years ago he had done half of the little he’s done so far, the crisis wouldn’t have reached this level.”

Source: Bloomberg