29, April 2019

Boko Haram kills 3 civilians, a soldier in attack on Cameroon ⁰

Assailants from the jihadist group Boko Haram killed at least four people, one soldier and three civilians, and seriously injured four others during an attack on Kofia, a Cameroonian island on Lake Chad.

In the attack that occurred in the night from Saturday to Sunday the assailants also destroyed part of a military post and vandalized businesses, according to an official source.

Kofia Island is located in Lake Chad, in Northern Cameroon, not far from Chad.

Cameroonian and Chadian forces launched a pursuit operation immediately after the attack, the source said.

The jihadists of Boko Haram have recently increased deadly attacks in Cameroon and neighboring countries. In mid-April, eleven civilians were killed in an attack in Charkamari, also in northern Cameroon.

Since the beginning of the month, at least seven Cameroonian soldiers were killed in attacks by the terror group and in the explosion of a mine at the passage of a military vehicle.

Boko Haram group is active in all the countries of the Lake Chad zone (Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Niger), where it commits deadly attacks against security forces and civilians.

More than 27,000 people have died since the start of the Boko Haram uprising in northeastern Nigeria in 2009, and another 1.8 million are still unable to return to their homes.

Source: The North Africa Post

29, April 2019

“Military not the solution to Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis” ⁰

A military response will not solve the ongoing Anglophone crisis in Cameroon, says a spokesman for the local Catholic Church.

About 80 percent of Cameroon is French-speaking. However, the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon are majority English-speaking.

In October 2016, strikes by lawyers and teachers over perceived attempts by the Francophone administration to assimilate the legal and educational systems practiced in the two English-speaking regions turned violent, and morphed into rising demands by Anglophone Cameroonians for independence.

The government has been accused of razing entire villages and extrajudicial killings in their hunt for separatists, who are calling on the English-speaking areas to form a new country, called ‘Ambazonia.’

“Anywhere on Planet Earth, military response has never ever solved a problem. So let us not dream that we would be the first people to start on Planet Earth. Nowhere!” Father Humphrey Tata Mbuy told Crux.

Mbuy is the director of communications for the Archdiocese of Bamenda, the capital of the Northwest region of the country.

In its 2019 Report, Human Rights Watch accused the Cameroon military of committing extrajudicial executions, burning property, carrying out arbitrary arrests, and torturing detainees. The group claims over 500 people have been killed in the country.

The United Nations estimates nearly 500,000 refugees and internally displaced persons have fled their homes in the region due to the conflict.

The Cameroonian government has refuted reports of abuse by its military, calling them “reckless.”

However, Mbuy said the number of people killed is staggering, noting that 358 people have been killed in the Kumbo diocese in the last 6 months. He also said the diocese saw more than 800 homes burnt to the ground.

“It would take another generation for people to establish confidence in their military. This is the worst thing that can happen to a country where the population itself starts being afraid of the people who should be protecting them,” the priest said. He recounted that during Holy Week, the Cameroonians created a “harrowing” experience for the local population.

“We were coming out of Church on Holy Thursday and Good Friday in the Cathedral when there was just rampant shooting and there were military people around the Church premises. People were coming out and people ran back. Who provoked it? What was the problem? What was happening?” Mbuy said.

“So if you have these kind of things repeatedly happening, where you see clearly, houses burnt, villages burnt and people can identify who is burning them; when you see property being looted and people can identify who is looting them, it’s not things that are done in the dark. When a priest is shot and we can see the people who have shot, why do you expect people to still have trust when all these things have repeatedly gone on? When people are molested for no reason, some who don’t even know what is happening,” he continued.

Mbuy reaffirmed what the English-speaking bishops asserted in 2017: The situation in the Anglophone region is becoming like a genocide.

“What is genocide? A genocide is somebody is killed, even if it’s just one person, precisely for not doing anything because he belongs either to this group or because he belongs to this region. That is what a genocide is. Why are people being killed? When soldiers go into a village in Wum and are shooting everywhere. Is that everybody in Wum has suddenly become a terrorist? I would ask anybody to define a genocide and look at what is happening and tell me whether we have genocide or not,” the priest told Crux.

Cameroon’s bilingualism is a legacy of its colonial history. The country was originally German, but after World War I the defeated country transferred it to the Allies, and it was divided between France and Britain.

At independence, the two parts were reunited, and currently about 20 percent of the country’s nearly 25 million people is Anglophone. The Catholic Church is the largest religious group in the country, representing about 40 percent of all Cameroonians.

Last year, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group issued a report saying the Church is the only institution with the moral authority to broker a peace deal.

Source: Crux

29, April 2019

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Fru Ndi released by kidnappers ⁰

The chairman of Cameroon’s main opposition party Ni John Fru Ndi has been released after being kidnapped earlier Saturday in the Northwest Region, one of two English-speaking provinces in the grip of an armed conflict for over a year, his party said.

The SDF leader was abducted while leading a funeral procession, his party said earlier, without giving any indication of whether the kidnappers were believed to be separatists.

“President Ni John Fru Ndi has just been freed at 1834 (1734 GMT),” Social Democratic Front (SDF) official Jean Robert Wafo said in a statement.

A number of officials and members of the SDF have already been targeted in similar attacks.

In October 2018, Fru Ndi’s home was attacked by arsonists and his sister kidnapped and later released.

His party is the main opposition to 86-year-old President Paul Biya who has ruled Cameroon since 1982.

It has always opposed any partition of the country and defied separatists in the English-speaking regions who called for a boycott of the last presidential election in October.

Conflict in Cameroon, a majority French-speaking nation, broke out in October 2017 when anglophone militants declared an independent state in the Northwest and Southwest Regions.

The International Crisis Group has said the death toll since the start of the fighting had topped 500 for civilians and more than 200 for members of the security forces.

Around 530,000 people have fled the fighting, according to the United Nations.

English-speakers, who account for about a fifth of Cameroon’s population of 24 million, have chafed for years at perceived discrimination in education, law and economic opportunities at the hands of the francophone majority.

The self-declared entity, the “Republic of Ambazonia,” which has been named after the local Ambas Bay, has not been recognised internationally.

AFP

27, April 2019

Boko Haram overrun army base in Nigeria, steal weapons ⁰

Members of the Takfiri Boko Haram terrorist group have attacked and overrun an outpost belonging to the Nigerian government troops in the northeastern parts of the African country, stealing weapons before fleeing, military sources say.

Militants of the terror group launched their attack against the outpost at Mararrabar Kimba in the volatile Borno state late on Friday, two unnamed military sources told AFP on Saturday.

The assailants were reportedly driving more than a dozen pickup trucks with heavy machine guns mounted on their top. Terrorists were accompanied by three armored personal carriers stolen from security forces.

The terror convoy, flanked by a fleet of armed men firing from motorbikes, emerged from the woods and sped straight towards the outpost.

“There was a serious gunfight,” one of the sources said, adding, “The troops put up a good fight, but they were outgunned and overwhelmed… unfortunately, the base fell to the terrorists, who took away weapons and fled.”

PressTV-Boko Haram kills 60 in northeast Nigeria: Amnesty

The base lies some 135 kilometers from the state capital Maiduguri. It was not yet clear whether there were casualties, especially as some troopers reportedly scattered into the woods to escape the attack.

One eyewitness had told the sources that some of stranded soldiers arrived at Biu, a town around 45 kilometers away from the outpost, a number of them wounded.

Boko Haram’s nine-year militancy is estimated to have killed more than 27,000 people and forced 1.8 million others to flee their homes.

In 2015, Boko Haram pledged allegiance to the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group.

Source: Presstv

27, April 2019

5 facts about the Ambazonia crisis in Cameroon ⁰

Since 2014, Boko Haram’s insurgency has wreaked havoc in the Far-North region of Cameroon, displacing 244,347 people as of January 2019. As Cameroon grapples with this challenge, a relatively new and poorly understood crisis is simultaneously unfolding in the country’s North-West and South-West regions which, as of March 2019, has led to the displacement of 530,000 Cameroonians.

Here are five things to know about Cameroon’s North-West and South-West Crisis:

1. One Country – Two Languages

The Republic of Cameroon is a bilingual country with French and English as its official languages. Two out of Cameroon’s 10 administrative regions are English-speaking. They are the North-West and South-West Regions, which comprise about 20 percent of the country’s total population. The language split is derived from Cameroon’s colonial and post-colonial history. Prior to World War I, Cameroon was a German colony named Kamerun. Germany’s defeat in World War I saw Kamerun split between two League of Nations mandates. The first came under French Mandate which consisted of the majority of the former German territory, and the second under British mandate named the ‘British Cameroons’, consisting of two territories, Northern Cameroons and Southern Cameroons, located along the border of Nigeria. As Cameroon and Nigeria both gained independence in 1960, the question of what would become of the territories in the British Cameroons arose. In 1961 a referendum was held in which the citizens of the British Cameroons were given a choice of either merging with Nigeria or with French-speaking Cameroon. The results of the referendum saw the region known as Northern Cameroons merge with Nigeria, while the Southern Cameroons merged with Cameroon. As a result, in 1961 the English-speaking Southern Cameroons became a part of Cameroon and today the territory formerly known as the Southern Cameroons now forms Cameroon’s North-West and South-West Regions.

2. Protests and Disquiet Though the country has both French and English as official languages, activists in the two English-speaking regions have for a long period reported feeling marginalised. Their concerns reached fever pitch in 2016 when large protests were held in both the North-West and South-West regions about the appointment of French-speaking magistrates to preside over courts, as well as the posting of French-speaking teachers, in the English-speaking regions. The protests grew in scale, prompting a heavy crack down on protesters by security forces which led to widespread violence.

3. Violence and Fear

In 2017 non-state armed groups in the two regions officially declared their symbolic independence from Cameroon. The government of Cameroon rejected this secession and the Cameroonian army is currently leading a fierce crackdown against the non-state armed groups in both regions. Clashes between the parties escalated in 2018 and 2019, over which period both parties have been accused of horrific human rights violations.

4. Civilians bearing the brunt As is often the case, civilians are bearing the brunt of this conflict, with over 530,000 Cameroonians being forced to flee their homes, according to the UN. Many displaced citizens fled their villages to seek refuge in larger cities. Alfred, 42, who fled with his family from their village to Bamenda, the capital of the North-West region, said this about his decision to leave: “The moment I decided to leave was just out of reflex, because what I was experiencing was not the best, there were killings, there were burnings of houses and in fact it was not the best environment for people to live in so that’s how we decided to leave…. it was not safe for me.” While those who are able to relocate to the relative safety of bigger cities do so, several displaced people are either unable or afraid to, left instead to hide from both the non-state armed groups and the Cameroonian military in the ‘bush’ or dense thickets that surround both the North-West and South-West regions.

5. NRC is Responding to the Crisis

With offices in both regions, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is responding to the crisis. Working with partners such as local NGOs and local churches, NRC identifies displaced people in both regions and their surroundings, and assists them by distributing kits containing household items, as well as shelter and hygiene packs. NRC has distributed 3,918 Shelter and non-food item kits and has reached 23,912 persons through non-food item distributions and hygiene promotion sessions Since the beginning of 2018. As more people flee their homes and thousands more are in dire need of aid, we are working to reach as many people as possible with assistance.

Source: Norwegian Refugee Council

27, April 2019

Norwegian Refugee Council Urges World To Pay Attention To Humanitarian Outfall Of Southern Cameroons War ⁰

The Norwegian Refugee Council humanitarian organization expressed worries on Thursday about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon caused by violent conflict between the government and non-state armed groups and called upon international community to pay attention to the situation.

“We need to scale up the humanitarian response, and there is a need for independent reporting from the international media. But most of all, we urgently need stronger international diplomatic engagement to help solve the conflict,” Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council Jan Egeland said.

He pointed out that hundreds of villages in the English-speaking regions had been burnt during the conflict. Moreover, almost a million children did not attend school with tens of thousands of them “hiding in the bushes without any support.” According to Egeland, the locals felt abandoned by the UN and international organizations. In addition, they expected support from their former colonial leadership such as Britain and France.

Egeland urged the international community to help the warring parties to come to terms and to agree on such vital issues as reopening of schools.

Cameroon has been facing separatism in southern regions for decades. The German territory of Cameroon was partitioned between France and Britain under the 1919 League of Nations mandates. The French authorities administered the largest part of the country, while the British mandate comprised two geographically separate territories, Northern Cameroons and Southern Cameroons, which are currently part of Cameroon, called the Southern region.

The separatist crisis in the English-speaking parts of Cameroon sharply deteriorated in late 2016 with an appointment of Francophone judges in the areas. Later, it escalated to a violent conflict between the government and the militants. More than half a million people have fled their homes, according to UN figures. On October 1, 2017, activists from Cameroon’s English-speaking regions proclaimed their independence from country’s French-speaking areas. The declaration came on the anniversary of South Cameroon’s independence from Britain in 1961.

Source: Urdupoint

27, April 2019

Containing and Deterring Biya: Act now or face disaster, aid chief warns ⁰

A separatist conflict in Cameroon that has forced half a million people from their homes is in danger of worsening, the head of a major aid agency has warned, condemning what he called the “international silence” over the crisis.

Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said the world had underestimated the impact on civilians of the violence that has gripped Cameroon, where entire villages had been burned to the ground.

“I’ve been all over the world, dealing with humanitarian work for many years and I was really shocked by the unbelievable extent of this emergency that is underestimated, underreported and neglected by the international community,” said Egeland.

“There are atrocities every single day against civilians … and the world doesn’t seem to know or want to know about it,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone during a visit to Cameroon.

Long-running tensions in the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon erupted into conflict in late 2016, prompting crackdowns by security forces and leaving 1.3 million people in need of aid, according to the United Nations.

Egeland said the violence had pushed tens of thousands into hiding in the bush without access to food or medical help, and meant nearly a million children could no longer go to school.

But he said there was a danger the situation could worsen. “I really, really hope there will be mediation efforts, that there will be an outreach and an interest in dialogue on both sides that will lead to talks which can end this before it is too late,” he said on Thursday.

“I’ve seen too many places which started with a smaller conflict … and ended up in a war that no one could stop.”

Cameroon’s English speakers have felt increasingly marginalized by the French-speaking government in the capital Yaounde and in 2017 thousands took to the streets to demand a breakaway state.

The military stepped in and thousands of Anglophones fled the ensuing crackdown, which Cameroon authorities described as an anti-terrorist operation.

In a statement Egeland, whose organization is distributing survival kits to victims including food, tools and materials for temporary shelters, said there had been little pressure on the parties to stop attacking civilians.

“The international silence surrounding atrocities is as shocking as the untold stories are heart-breaking,” he said.

A U.N. human rights committee in February criticized the “heavy-handed approach” of the security forces to the crisis, which saw medical facilities, schools and entire villages destroyed. Allegra Baiocchi, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator in Cameroon, said the violence was hampering relief efforts, and also blamed a lack of funding from other countries.

“The violence has been characterized by massive human rights violations. Attacks against schools and health providers have reached an alarming scale,” she said.

“Negotiating safe humanitarian access is extremely complicated and it is slowing us down.”

Source: Reuters

27, April 2019

Southern Cameroons Civilians Continue to Be Slaughtered in Midst of Clash Between Soldiers, Separatist Forces ⁰

Civilians in the African nation of Cameroon continue to be killed in the crosshairs of ongoing violent clashes between French-speaking government soldiers and English-speaking separatist forces seeking to form their own country.

The violence has been unceasing for the past three years in the midst of grievances that boil down to the alleged underrepresentation and squelching of those who speak English and follow British common law.

As France and Britain were allies against Germany in World War I and were granted rule of the colonies by the League of Nations, Cameroon has been a mix of both French and English-speaking inhabitants. Areas were known as French Cameroon and British Cameroon. However, following the formation of a united Republic in the 1960’s that merged both into one nation, Anglophones — those who spoke English — began sensing that although the country was considered bilingual, they were in the minority. Out of the 10 regions, eight are French and base their legal system on French law, while the other two, in western Cameroon, follow British common law.

The government also speaks French, the country’s currency is in French, and most television and radio programs are in French.

Because of this, Anglophones have felt marginalized, and the last straw seemed to be in 2016 when a business transaction law was circulated in French but not also translated into English. Lawyers in the English-speaking regions had enough of the installment of local judges who didn’t speak English well and weren’t familiar with common law.

Teachers were likewise upset about Francophones increasingly being hired in Anglophone schools. According to reports, lawyers and teachers alike took to the streets to protest the encroachment, which resulted in both arrests and violence. During one protest, government forces used live bullets and tear gas to try to break up the gathering.

Anglophones have since called for the formation of their own country, called Ambazonia, but the Cameroonian government does not wish for the nation to be divided and has sought to put down any rebellion.

Over the past three years, as clashes between English separatists and the French security forces have raged, thousands of residents have fled for their lives into other regions or to the neighboring nation of Nigeria. Reports of innocent civilians being killed have regularly been in the headlines, and both sides have been blamed for the violence.

“People are dying everywhere,” Pamela Njoke told the New York Times. “In short, it’s horrible.”

“Armed separatists in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions have stabbed to death and shot military personnel, burned down schools and attacked teachers, while security forces have tortured people, fired on crowds and destroyed villages, in a spiral of violence that keeps getting more deadly,” wrote Amnesty International in June.

It explained that video footage obtained by the organization showed military forces burning down the village of Kwakwa, while residents in other areas have allegedly been detained and tortured in an effort to get them to confess that they supported the separatists.

However, those who do not cooperate with the efforts of the Ambazonia Liberation Forces, or who are even suspected of supporting the government, are reportedly also vulnerable to violence and unmerited attack by the separatists. A number of schools have been set on fire or principals abducted, and some students or teachers have even been shot.

“The assailant … told me that I was still coming to school in defiance of calls for a schools boycott. … He then asked me to raise my hands, but before I could do so, he shot me,” one teacher told Amnesty International.

A report published by AFP earlier this month says that five civilians were shot and killed by security forces in an English-speaking village, with one beheaded.

“Three of the bodies were later discovered mutilated, including two found with their hands tied and their genitals cut off,” the outlet states.

One woman was also killed at a local hospital and another wounded while government soldiers searched for separatists.

“[S]ecurity forces allegedly shot and killed over a dozen civilians, including at least seven people whom witnesses said had intellectual, psychosocial or physical disabilities who did not flee because they were unable or refused to. At least four older women died, burned alive, after security forces set their homes on fire,” Human Rights Watch similarly wrote in its 2019 report.

In September, The Guardian published an article stating that “[a] self-declared member of the Ambazonia Liberation Forces appeared in a … video alongside images of a soldier’s decapitated head …”

President Paul Biya urged separatists last year to cease the fighting or they will be “neutralized.”

“If my appeal to warmongers to lay down their weapons remains unheeded, the Defense and Security Forces will be instructed to neutralize them,” he said, according to Journal Du Cameroun. “I am well aware of the distress these rebels are causing the populations of these regions. This situation cannot be allowed to continue.”

However, some have stated that the government’s equally violent response has not helped to bring peace.

“People in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions are in the grip of a deadly cycle of violence. Security forces have indiscriminately killed, arrested and tortured people during military operations which have also displaced thousands of civilians. Their heavy-handed response will do nothing to calm the violence. In fact, it is likely to further alienate Anglophone communities and fuel further unrest,” Samira Daoud, Amnesty International Deputy Director for West and Central Africa, said in statement.

More than 500 civilians have been killed as a result of the three-year clash, as well as over 200 government soldiers, and an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 residents displaced. The European Union has spoken out against the violence and has called for dialogue between the two sides.

“Regrettably, unlawful killings and atrocities continue to be reported regularly in the regions, allegedly involving both the security and defense forces and separatist groups,” one representative recently lamented before the EU parliament.

Source: Christian News

26, April 2019

Anti Ambazonia Policy: Biya regime’s new petroleum code to boost output ⁰

Cameroon’s new petroleum code is seeking to improve upstream production and revenues amid greater regional competition and major political troubles.

The national assembly has approved a new and expanded petroleum code. It must now be ratified by President Paul Biya in the next 15 days in order for it to enter into law.

Although Cameroon’s new petroleum code has not been made public yet, Interfax Natural Gas Insight understands it contains several provisions aimed principally at boosting hydrocarbon production, government revenues and local content. The majority of the changes appears geared towards rekindling investor interest and is being introduced against…

Source: Interfax Global Energy

26, April 2019

UK commits to help Biya regime tackle terrorism and Anglophone crisis ⁰

The UK is determined to help Cameroon overcome the challenges it has been facing,” in terms of terrorism and troubles in the northwest and southwest regions. This is, according to the Presidency of the Republic, an outcome of an audience granted April 24 by President Paul Biya to the British High Commissioner to the Republic of Cameroon, Rowan James Laxton.

According to the related statement, the African country has already benefited from UK support to fight against Boko haram and handle refugees. Cameroon welcomed the British government’s peace keeping actions in the face of separatist violence in the southwest and northwest.

According to the British diplomat, his country is also willing to contribute in big development projects in Cameroon. Focus is on key sectors that impact people’s lives energy, trade, social housing.

Source: Business in Cameroon