Government officials in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions of Northwest and Southwest on Wednesday denied reports that there is a mass exodus in the regions amid fears of a lockdown called by armed separatists.

“The people leaving are holiday makers who are returning to their regions of origin. It is a normal activity during this time of the year when schools are about to start,” Bernard Okalia Bilai, governor of the Southwest region, told reporters after visiting the main motor park in the region’s chief town of Buea.

He said the figure of those leaving had been exaggerated.

“Most of those leaving the Northwest region are students who were on holiday and are returning to start school in September. Nobody is running away from the region because of the so-called lockdown. It is false,” Adolph Lele Lafrique, governor of Northwest, said during a visit in the region to reassure security.

A United Nations (UN) spokesman said Wednesday that more than 500,000 people have fled the two Anglophone regions in fear of increasing violence.

Separatists have been clashing with government forces since 2017 in a bid to create an independent nation they call “Ambazonia.”

They called for a lockdown against the jailing of leaders of the separatist movement and for suspending school reopenings expected on Sept. 2.

According to local reports, the lockdown named “ghost city” began on Monday. On Tuesday, at least three civilians who defied rules of the lockdown were shot dead by separatists in the regions.

Source: Xinhuanet

With an estimated 30 percent of the country’s population of 24.68 million living below the poverty line, many young Cameroonians are looking to other countries to secure a better life for themselves. And young women are joining this trend with reports of some trapped in human trafficking rings operating in the Middle East.

“Migration appears to be the most popular resolution to individuals growing up in impoverished regions of Cameroon. In response to the increasing poverty, many people move out of the country to seek better living conditions,” said the Borgen Project, an organisation that fights global poverty.

The CIA World Report for 2019 reported that the West African country’s economy suffers from factors that often impact underdeveloped countries, such as stagnant per capita income, a relatively inequitable distribution of income, a top-heavy civil service, endemic corruption, continuing inefficiencies of a large parastatal system in key sectors, and a generally unfavourable climate for business enterprise.

And despite support from the UN World Food Programme (WFP), Cameroonians continue to battle other poverty-related issues including malnutrition, food insecurity and inadequate health care. 

While the government tries to fill in gaps by providing subsidies for electricity, food, and fuel, these have dented the federal budget which, in turn, has affected potential funding for education, healthcare and infrastructure, the Borgen Project reported.

In a bid to escape the grinding poverty, Enact Africa recently reported that lured by the promise of employment, some Cameroonian women are being trafficked to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

“In September 2018, the kidnapping of 14 young Cameroonian women in Kuwait City brought to light the trafficking of migrant workers in the Middle East,” wrote coordinator Agnes Ebo’o and researcher René Oyono, from ENACT’s Regional Organised Crime Observatory for Central Africa, which is part of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS).

Following diplomatic negotiations between Kuwait and Cameroon, the young women were eventually able to return home. However, Enact confirmed that the 2016 incident was neither unique nor unprecedented.  

“In 2016 Cameroon’s government was already referring to a five-year old practice, implying that the phenomenon has existed since at least 2011.”

As the trend continues, Cameroon’s unemployed women, often with limited educational qualifications, are still being smuggled to the Mideast by intermediaries whereupon arrival they end up trafficked or enslaved.

Their destinations predominantly include Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, according to Oumia Paba Salé, Near and Middle East Foreign Affairs Secretary at Cameroon’s Ministry of External Relations (MINREX).

Walk Free Foundation’s Global Slavery Index in 2017 ranked Saudi Arabia and Kuwait among the countries with the highest prevalence of slavery in the Arab world.

In most cases, the women are recruited through networks in Cameroon that advertise jobs for candidates through posters at universities and churches in the capital Yaoundé and another major city Douala.

The victims are then entrapped in a vicious cycle which begins when they are forced to pay between $2 000 and $3 000 to various players in the human trafficking chain, leaving them in debt upon arrival at their destinations where they are held in servitude – often with their passports taken away from them – until they are able to repay their debts, sometimes through sex work and at other times through low-paying menial labour – and they are not always freed once their debts are paid off.

“This practice has serious implications at individual, family, community and state levels. It causes financial losses that are devastating for poor families; and their inhumane treatment leaves victims highly traumatised,” said the Enact report.

African News Agency (ANA)

The death toll from a Cameroon ferry that capsized this week has risen to 17 after more bodies were found, state radio said on Wednesday, though the total number of victims was still unknown.

Fourteen more bodies were recovered from the Bakassi Peninsula on Tuesday, two days after the ferry sunk off southwestern Cameroon, Cameroon Radio Television reported.

A source with local authorities confirmed the details to AFP.

State media had initially reported that three victims – of Cameroonian, Nigerian and French nationality – were found and more than 100 people were rescued when the ship went down overnight Sunday to Monday.

The Austrheim, a trading vessel converted into a passenger ship was supposed to carry 75 people, but it was “overloaded,” according to a statement from the defence ministry.

So far, 111 survivors have been rescued, according to state radio and a local leader. Searches continued on Wednesday for survivors or bodies.

The ship left Sunday from Calabar, Nigeria, and was due to dock at Tiko in southwest Cameroon but hit a sandbar before capsizing, according to the ministry.

Source: AFP

A three-week lockdown on Cameroon’s two Anglophone regions is in effect. Thousands have fled the troubled regions, some permanently to Francophone provinces.

Rebels fighting for the independence of Cameroon’s two Anglophone regions called the lockdown to protest against the life sentences handed down to ten of their leaders last week.

Schools and shops are closed. There is no public transport. Hospitals and health clinics run by humanitarian organisations will remain open throughout the three weeks.

This, like previous lockdowns, has caused thousands of civilians to flee. Some permanently, especially those who have the financial means to put down roots elsewhere.

“It’s ironic that we professional Anglophones are starting new lives in the Francophone regions,” says Chantal (not her real name), who left her home town of Bamenda a year ago for a job in the Francophone Western region.

The push to secede began in 2016 after a government crackdown in the Northwest and Southwest English-speaking regions of the predominantly Francophone country.

Anglophones were angered that Francophone teachers and lawyers were being brought to their regions to work and teach.

Kindness of strangers

The professional classes in the cities of Bamenda and Buea have been hard hit, with many established businesses and organisations relocating to Francophone regions.

“The marginalisation and discrimination is still very much alive and visible in Cameroon,” laments Chantal and adds, “On the other hand there is so much solidarity from some Francophones who understand the crisis and how difficult it is for people to leave their homes.”

The UN estimates that 1.3 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance as a result of the Anglophone crisis.

“The security situation makes it difficult for people to move around, and for humanitarian organisations to access people in need,” explains James Nunan, director of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Cameroon.

There are no official figures of how many people have fled. What is certain is that a significant proportion of them are professionals, causing a brain drain from Anglophone to Francophone regions.

Source: RFI

The crisis in Southern Cameroons is in the midst of some seriously dangerous path. Ever since the Yaoundé Military Tribunal sentenced the Ambazonia leaders to life in prison, more than 54 people have been killed in several rural localities according to concerned NGOs and things could get much, much worse in the days ahead.

Cameroon Concord News reporter in Bamenda noted that bodies are dumped on the streets in villages on an almost daily basis. Troops loyal to the Biya Francophone regime in Yaoundé recently invaded Nkambe sub constituency killing civilians in Bongom, Njab and Mbipyi villages.

The UN agency for the prevention of genocide has been maintaining a kind of deliberate silence since President Biya declared war on the people of Southern Cameroons. Political commentators following the conflict have pointed out that the Francophone dominated government’s rhetoric has been very similar to language used before and during the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda.

The risk of more violence is real as the Yaoundé government is struggling to get children back to school in the war torn territory. What’s happening right now in Southern Cameroons is deadly serious as cabinet ministers of Ambazonia extraction serving the Biya government are all financing militias.

Paris is supporting the Yaoundé government in its resolve to kill the people of Southern Cameroons while many EU countries are insisting on an inclusive dialogue that will help normalize things in Cameroon.

The 86 years old President Biya has been indifferent to those calls. Many EU countries have already allied with the United States and Canada on how the Southern Cameroons crisis could be addressed. America’s determination and its ability to mobilize other countries, including some of Cameroons neighbours like Equatorial Guinea has still not yielded the required result.

The last few days have witnessed massive killings in many villages in Southern Cameroons. In the Bui, Manyu and Meme County Cameroon government troops have slaughtered more than 45 innocent civilians in a situation many observers say is unnecessary. In Bali, Esu and Jakiri and Wum army soldiers reportedly beheaded unarmed civilians. The killings have intensified over the last couple of days as the regime suspects that international pressure may increase over the sentencing of the Ambazonia leaders.  Cameroon government army soldiers have also been burning homes, destroying food crops and stealing cattle.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with files from Rita Akana and Sama Ernest