29, April 2023
Antigua and Barbuda: Stranded Southern Cameroonians growing increasingly desperate 0
Cameroonian migrants stranded in Antigua say they’re reaching breaking point as the stress of surviving on meagre funds, separated from loved ones, takes its toll on their health and wellbeing.
Hundreds of refugees who arrived on charter flights from Nigeria late last year are believed to remain in the country, with their intended destination – the USA – seeming increasingly elusive.
Risky sea voyages to neighbouring islands taken by those hoping to reach the United States via South America have already claimed an estimated 16 lives. News broke on Thursday that several of those rescued from the March 28 boat disaster in St Kitts while attempting to reach the US Virgin Islands had escaped a Basseterre detention facility.
While many of the migrants still in Antigua have secured casual work, they say the paltry income falls far short of financing their onward journey.
One of those who spoke to Observer admits falling victim to scammers who conned him out of money wired from loved ones back home to pay for a fake passport that never transpired.
Thirty-five-year-old Jean* – who hails from one of Cameroon’s Francophone regions – says he arrived in Antigua on December 29, after forking out a colossal US$5,000 for a journey he was told would take him to Suriname.
From there, he planned to travel overland to the US, which last June offered temporary protected status to Cameroonians already in the country and where he hoped to claim asylum.
“The Nigerian agent abandoned us here,” he tells Observer. “When we call the agent or send a message – no reply.”
Desperate to get to South America, Jean says he paid another US$1,500 for a flight to Suriname.
“But when I get to the airport they say no, not possible, because Suriname say no Cameroonian in this country. I lost the flight,” he explains.
Suriname requires Cameroonians to have a visa to enter the country. Jean says he applied for one online and was initially successful.
“It is blocked because they found that it was a passage to the United States,” he says.
Exacerbating Jean’s anxiety is being separated from his wife and four-year-old son who he left at home, planning to send for them once he had secured his status.
Four months later – and still thousands of kilometres from the US – his frustration and anguish are palpable.
Jean is not an English-speaking Cameroonian – who have suffered years of discrimination in the majority French-speaking nation – but he says the bitter separatist conflict has become pervasive.
Many Cameroonians in Antigua say they face prison or even death if they were to return.
The pain of not being able to see or to provide for his family is insufferable, Jean says, adding that he occasionally avoids speaking with them because it torments him further.
“When I think about it sometimes I feel like collapsing, I can’t stop crying,” he tells Observer.
The Antigua and Barbuda government has waived work permit requirements for Africans who arrived on Antigua Airways and Hi Fly flights last November and December.
And it has told the migrants they are welcome to stay.
Indeed, around 60 percent of the 110 people interviewed by UN agencies recently indicated their intention to do just that.
Jean claims this is not the case in reality and that interviewees were simply keen to throw the authorities off the scent as they continue to find ways to leave the island covertly.
“No one wants to stay,” he says flatly. “Here, life is so difficult, everything very expensive. If I tell you that I live well here, I am lying. You think I can support my family? Do I eat well? With what appetite?
“The day I get out of here I’ll be relieved. Look at my face full of spots and pimples; these are the results of stress. Who can live away from his family and be comfortable?”
Jean might consider himself one of the lucky ones. More than 80 percent of those who spoke with the UN agencies reported being unemployed. Jean is eking out a living as a labourer for a benevolent Antiguan.
But as a trained lawyer, it’s far from what he envisaged as a young man studying to make a life for himself back in Cameroon.
“We had the chance to grow up with our own people and to have a reliable education. We didn’t ask for war.
“I was a young and brilliant lawyer of my state who had dreamed of becoming great. Today I am either a labourer or a worker, and it hurts me so much.
“If nothing is done for me I feel that I will crack, I assure you.”
Jean concedes that Antiguans have been good to him and his compatriots.
“Antiguans are kind to us, very nice people here, plenty people help us and send food. Every time we go to the shop they give us food,” he says.
Still, the 108-square mile isle doesn’t offer the opportunities Jean dreams of. Those, he thinks, can be better found in Florida where he has friends.
Several of his Cameroonian associates have already left the country on fake passports, he claims.
“Many have left this way; I do not hide you. I have someone who helped me with this but I never received it,” he says.
Asked how he got the money to pay for what he says was a counterfeit Ghanaian passport, he replies, “My share was paid from my home country by my close friend – US$2,000.
“The strategy was to make the passports that are visa-free for the countries that are on our way [to the US].”
Jean’s primary reason for speaking out now is in the hope someone can help him.
“If this message could reach the immigration officials of Guyana, Suriname, Nicaragua, for compassion to accept me in their territory,” he says.
“On the material level, any help is welcome, especially for housing here. The little money we had on arrival is completely finished; now we are just looking to eat.”
He adds, “I also need prayers.”
*Speaking on condition of anonymity
Source: Antiguaobserver
29, April 2023
Over 400 civilians dead as rival forces continue to fight over control of Sudan 0
Gunfire and heavy artillery fire persisted Saturday in parts of Sudan’s capital Khartoum, residents said, despite the extension of a cease-fire between the country’s two top generals, whose battle for power has killed hundreds and sent thousands fleeing for their lives.
The civilian death toll jumped Saturday to 411 people, according to the Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate, which monitors casualties. The fighting has wounded another 2,023 civilians so far, the group added, although the true toll is expected to be much higher. In the city of Genena, the provincial capital of war-ravaged West Darfur, intensified violence has killed 89 people. Fighters have moved into homes and taken over stores and hospitals as they battle in the densely populated streets, the syndicate said.
Khartoum, a city of some 5 million people, has been transformed into a front line in the grinding conflict between Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, the commander of Sudan’s military, and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who leads the powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces. The outbreak of violence has dashed once-euphoric hopes for a democratic transition in Sudan after a popular uprising helped oust former dictator Omar al-Bashir.
Foreign countries continued to evacuate their citizens while thousands of Sudanese fled across borders. Britain said it was ending its evacuation flights Saturday, after demand for spots on the planes had declined. The United Arab Emirates announced Saturday it had started evacuating its citizens along with nationals of 16 other countries.
Over 50,000 refugees — mostly women and children — have crossed over to Chad, Egypt, South Sudan and the Central African Republic, the United Nations said, raising fears of wider instability in the region. Ethnic fighting and turmoil has scarred South Sudan and the Central African Republic for years while a 2021 coup has derailed Chad’s own democratic transition.
Those who escape Khartoum face more obstacles on their route to safety. The overland journey to Port Sudan, where ships then evacuate people via the Red Sea, has proven long and risky. Hatim el-Madani, a former journalist, said that paramilitary fighters were stopping refugees at roadblocks outside Khartoum, demanding they hand over their phones and valuables.
“There’s an outlaw, bandit-like nature to the RSF,” he said, referring to Dagalo’s Rapid Support Forces. “They don’t have a supply line in place. That could get worse in the coming days.”
Airlifts from the country have also posed challenges, with a Turkish evacuation plane even hit by gunfire outside Khartoum on Friday.
On Saturday — despite a cease-fire extended under heavy international pressure early Friday — clashes continued around the presidential palace, headquarters of the state broadcaster and a military base in Khartoum, residents said. The battles sent thick columns of black smoke billowing over the city skyline.
In a few areas near the capital, including in Omdurman, some reported that shops were reopening as the scale of fighting dwindled. But in other areas, terrified residents hunkered down reported explosions thundering around them and fighters ransacking houses.
Now in its third week, the fighting has left swaths of Khartoum without electricity and running water. The Sudanese Health Ministry put the latest overall death toll at 528, with 4,500 wounded.
Those sheltering at home are running out of food and basic supplies. Residents in the city of Omdurman, west of Khartoum, have been waiting at least three days to get fuel — complicating their escape plans.
The U.N. relief coordinator, Martin Griffiths, said that U.N. offices in Khartoum, as well as the cities of Genena and Nyala in Darfur had been attacked and looted. Genena’s main hospital was also leveled in the fighting, Sudan’s health ministry said.
“This is unacceptable — and prohibited under international law,” Griffiths said.
Over the past 15 days, the generals have failed to deal a decisive blow to the other in their struggle for control of Africa’s third largest nation. The military has appeared to have the upper hand in the fighting, with its monopoly on air power, but it has been impossible to confirm its claims of advances.
“Soon, the Sudanese state with its well-grounded institutions will rise as victorious, and attempts to hijack our country will be aborted forever,” the Sudanese military said Saturday.
Both sides in the conflict have a long history of human rights abuses. The RSF was born out of the Janjaweed militias, which were accused of widespread atrocities when the government deployed them to put down a rebellion in Sudan’s western Darfur region in the early 2000s.
A unit of Sudan’s armed forces, known as the Central Reserve Police, have been sanctioned by the United Staets for grave human rights violations against Sudan’s pro-democracy protesters.
Accusations of rape, torture and other abuses against demonstrators carried out by the unit first surfaced in 2021, after Burhan and Dagalo joined forces in a military coup that ousted a civilian government. The Sudanese Interior Ministry confirmed the deployment of the Central Reserve Police in Khartoum on Saturday, posting photos of the fighters riding with heavy machine guns mounted on pickup trucks.
Former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who was ousted in the 2021 coup, appealed to the international community from a conference in Nairobi, Kenya, to push for an immediate halt to the conflict. He warned that a full-blown civil war in the strategically located country would have consequences not just for Sudan but for the world.
“God forbid if Sudan is to reach a proper civil war … it is a huge country and very diverse … it would be a nightmare for the world,” he said.
But the generals have so far rejected attempts at a compromise. Regional mediators have been unable to travel to Khartoum because of the chaotic fighting.
African Union Chairperson Moussa Faki said he would nonetheless try to send peacekeepers to the country.
“I’m ready to go there myself, even by road,” Faki said. “We ask the two generals to create the conditions for us to go to Khartoum.”
Source: AP