The Chairman and Editor-In-Chief of the Cameroon Concord News Group says Ambazonia Restoration Forces in Ground Zero now headed by General No Pity reserve the right to explore all  means to protect the people of Southern Cameroons and the Ambazonian homeland, and to counter the so-called Cameroon government army that Biya and his gang have deployed to Southern Cameroons.

“General No Pity and all Self Defense Forces have the right to use all means that would yield positive results as Southern Cameroonians strive for freedom, independence and liberation. Our people should not accept diktats that advance French Cameroun and by extrapolation France’s economic and political interest in Southern Cameroons and undermines British Southern Cameroons independence and freedom and the struggle against occupation,” Cameroon Concord News Group Chairman Soter Agbaw-Ebai said at a gathering of Southern Cameroonians in London on Wednesday.

He added, “Southern Cameroonians should also not allow any French Cameroun hostilities against our people directed by the Beti and Ewondo ethnic groups to go unpunished. Southern Cameroonians: man and woman, boy and girl, old and young must be strong and prepared to take on challenges at self defense levels.”

The Concord Group Chairman hailed the performance of Vice President Dabney Yerima of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government and the emergence of General No Pity as a blessing for both the Federal Republic of Ambazonia and the resistance front.

“Thanks to the firm and courageous position of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government, its supporters and advocates of Southern Cameroons independence and dignity, the Francophone arrogance and military expedition in now crumbling” our senior political man said.

Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai went on to say that the actions of the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime do not correlate at all with morality and humanity, and that Yaoundé does not work for justice as it has been evident in Southern Cameroons.

By Isong Asu in London

For the past five years there has been conflict in the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon, with no solution or end in sight. There have been political, social and cultural differences and antagonisms for several decades. But the current conflict began in 2016 when lawyers and teachers started protesting over the increasing use of French in the legal and educational systems in these regions, known as Anglophone Cameroon.

The government of Cameroon’s poor handling of the crisis contributed to its escalation into an armed conflict. Thousands have been killed, are living in the bush, or have fled to other parts of the country (becoming internally displaced persons) or in neighbouring countries as refugees. The warring parties did not heed the UN secretary general’s call for a global ceasefire to focus on ending the conflict in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a result, the conflict continues to have a negative impact on all aspects of life, particularly the livelihoods and health of citizens in the battleground regions of the north-west and south-west. Access to already inadequate health services has been reduced. More insights about how the conflict is affecting the health of citizens are needed to understand the situation and propose solutions.

We set out to understand how the conflict was affecting the key determinants of health. These include poverty, particularly in contexts where there is no universal healthcare and where the cost of living continues to rise.

We believe in experts. We believe knowledge must inform decisions

As is the case in other conflict and war situations, it was difficult to collect public data. So we examined tweets to understand what topics were being discussed.

In 2019, the number of mobile phone subscriptions in the country was 21.4 million out of a population of around 27 million people. Data for phone usage is expensive, and internet access is not reliable. Hootsuite, a social media management platform, reported that approximately 23% of the population – 6.21 million people – were internet users. And of these, 4.3 million were active on social media platforms.

This report estimated that there were fewer than 125,000 Twitter users in the country. Nevertheless, we believe examining the use of Twitter can provide insights about the crisis because social media can provide short descriptions of the issues that people are facing.

Our use of Twitter to gather information isn’t novel. Scholars are increasingly using social media to collect data about conflicts. But we have not found many studies exploring health and the social determinants of health using this approach.

We used the descriptions shared on Twitter to provide a more visible and robust picture of health related issues. This approach can help identify health challenges and how they’re affecting citizens.

How we examined tweets

We collected and analysed 1,868 tweets posted from 1 October 2016, the month when the conflict began, to 1 September 2019 to understand what people were discussing. The tweets were from everyday citizens, the government, news outlets and nongovernmental organisations that were communicating with people in Cameroon and abroad to draw attention to the effects of the crisis on citizens and, in some cases, what actions had been taken by the government.

Our focus was on the social determinants of health, often used to understand public health issues. These are the non-medical factors that influence the health of people. They include:

policies and systems such as social, economic, employment, education and health policies and systems

social attitudes and practices related to inclusion and discrimination

factors influencing daily life in other ways such as housing, food, and cultural policies and practices.

Our findings showed that Twitter was being used to share information and to call for action. Analysis of tweets revealed eight distinct themes:

neglect from government related to health:education, loss of employment, increased poverty, housing and homelessness, social exclusion and oppression, women and gender inequality, health services.

People felt neglected by the government. There were negative tweets and criticisms of the government’s neglect of its citizens and lack of support during the crisis.

Tweets also referred to failures in the education system. Most schools in the north-west and south-west regions have remained closed for years with teachers and students staying at home due to insecurity. Several tweets called for schools to reopen.

Tweets also referred to a deterioration in work opportunities. Some businesses were closed, resulting in job losses for thousands of people. Many who were still employed either went for several months without pay or received salary cuts.

There was also evidence of poverty increasing because of the conflict. Despite these impacts, some tweets reported that the government was discouraging humanitarian support.

Thousands of people lost their homes and were displaced. Several villages were either burned down or seized by the military or non-state armed groups. Hundreds of thousands of people were internally displaced within Cameroon or fled to neighbouring countries as refugees.

People experienced social exclusion and oppression. There were tweets about the lack of human rights and the prevention of freedom of expression. Children’s rights were violated, with references made to child trafficking, slavery and a decrease in basic education.

Women and girls were very vulnerable. Sexual violence and rape increased. Some pregnant women were forced to give birth in unsanitary conditions with minimal supplies.

Health services were difficult to access. The fighting resulted in the destruction of some hospitals and clinics. Some nongovernmental organisations provided services to the vulnerable population.

The way forward

Our findings highlight two important points. The first is the need to develop and implement effective systems to collect data in regions and circumstances where conventional methods of data collection are limited.

The second is the various inequities that are affecting the citizens of Cameroon amid the ongoing political conflict.

Using Twitter to collect data demonstrates the importance of identifying new ways to actively explore the social determinants of health in understudied regions and situations.

In addition, our results have highlighted several disparities that have resulted from, or have been exacerbated by, the consequences of the conflict that continues to negatively impact the citizens of Cameroon.

Culled from The Conversation

The song “Oh Teachers” by Cameroonian singer Aunty Clo blasted through speakers Tuesday at Yaounde’s city council courtyard with about 200 teachers listening.

Aunty Clo’s lyrics are about how teachers should be respected and protected as they are the ones tasked with molding young minds for the future and Cameroon’s development.

Most of the teachers attending the protest, held to mark U.N.-declared World Teachers Day, say they fled the Boko Haram insurgency in the north or fighting between the government and English-speaking separatists in the west.

Fifty-two-year-old Peter Tar, a spokesperson for the teachers, says instructors working in Cameroon’s conflict zones endure a lot of suffering.

“Teachers are being persecuted every day, every hour. Some have been brutally killed. Others, brutally deprived of some parts of their bodies, forced out of their areas to become internally displaced persons. Some are now jobless. My heart bleeds for these teachers. I pray peace should return,” he said.

Tar said he escaped from a government school in the town of Ndop after separatist fighters kidnapped him.

The protest was organized by the Cameroon Association of Teachers in Crisis. Tar said the teachers want the international community to know that they are suffering.

More than 40 teachers have been killed in Cameroon since 2017. At least 300 others were abducted and freed only after their families paid ransom.

Hundreds of schools in the north and west were destroyed or shut down.

Valentine Tameh, president of the Teachers Association of Cameroon, says teachers sometimes have no option but to flee the violence.

“It becomes, really, a sorry spectacle, seeing teachers running with their families, some losing their lives, some fleeing to areas where they cannot do anything to sustain themselves. We are appealing that everyone who is engaged in a kind of war should understand that teachers and the milieu in which they operate are sacrosanct and fighters should understand that, without teachers, the community is preparing for a kind of dark ages,” Tameh said.

Cameroon’s Minister of Basic Education, Laurent Serge Etoundi Ngoa, says the military is protecting schools, teachers and school children in regions where there is a security crisis.

He encouraged teachers who fled insecurity to return to relatively peaceful areas for the sake of the children in need of education.

“We’ve just recruited 5,000 teachers to support those who have already been in the field. When you (teachers) go to teach in a region of Cameroon, you must know that it is your country. The children, who are there, are all our sons and daughters, so we have to do everything necessary for them to have a safe education because they are the actors who tomorrow will continue building Cameroon,” Etoundi Ngoa said.

The United Nations declared October 5 as World Teacher’s Day in 1994 to honor educators for the important role they play in economic development and other sectors.

Source: VOA

Distant machine gun fire interrupted a speech by Cameroonian Prime Minister Dion Ngute on Tuesday during a visit to the capital of the restive North West region that Anglophone separatists had vowed to disrupt.

A video on social media shows Ngute trailing off mid-speech as the crowd turns and exclaims at a burst of far-off shots. In other footage, a suited man in a flak jacket puts his arms protectively around the premier as they are escorted away by security forces.

It was not clear who was responsible, but the incident underscores the insecurity plaguing Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions since insurgents seeking to form a breakaway state first took up arms against the military in 2017.

There was no immediate comment from the prime minister’s office.

A source at the office of North West’s governor said the shots were fired in the mountains outside Bamenda, the regional capital, and the prime minister was unharmed

“The situation was brought under control,” the source said on condition of anonymity.

Before the shots rang out, Ngute told a cheering crowd that he was there to help resolve the crisis. “It is time that this suffering ends for us all. This is what brought me here,” he said in pidgin English.

North West is one of two regions where English-speaking secessionists seeking to form a state called Ambazonia have been battling government forces over perceived marginalisation by Cameroon’s French-speaking majority.

Both sides have committed atrocities in a conflict that has killed over 3,000 and forced hundreds of thousands to flee.

Ahead of Ngute’s visit to Bamenda, the so-called Ambazonian Defence Forces ordered residents to stay at home, saying that anyone participating in meetings with Ngute did so at their own risk.

“There will be planned military operations to challenge the colonial prime minister’s visit,” they said on Monday.

The separatists were not reachable for comment.

Last week, the U.N. humanitarian agency (OCHA) said it had been obliged to halt its activities due to a lockdown imposed in both regions by a non-state armed group banning all movement, work, or social activity between Sept. 15 and Oct. 2.

There had been a notable increase in violence, kidnappings and attacks against those defying the lockdown, including teachers and students, it said.

Source: WSAU