Governor of Cameroon’s North West region has issued an order suspending the total circulation of motorbikes within certain subdivisions of the region.

The regional order dated March 8 was made considering: the exigencies of security, the preservation of peace and maintenance of law and order.

The main sections of the order read: “As from the date of signature of this present order, the circulation of motorbikes is hereby suspended till further notice within the following Subdivisions – Batibo Subdivision and Widikum Subdivision of Momo Division as well as Balikumbat Subdivision of Ngoketunjia Division.

“During the period, motorbikes shall not be allowed to circulate both during the day and at night.” It added that the measure shall not apply to administrative motorbikes, those engaged in security operations by the forces of law and order and those in duly authorized to use them.

It cautioned that persons who violated the rule shall be prosecuted under available laws and subsequently charged relevant authorities with strict implementation of the measure.

The incidence of separatist elements using motorbikes to stage guerilla-style attacks on security forces is believed to be behind the order. But for some people, it is a case of their livelihood being taken away, especially for young people who shuttle people around for a living.

The North West has been under a curfew for the last few months since separatists elements increased the intensity of their attacks of security forces. The neighbouring South West region is under a similar curfew also aimed at containing separatists.

Minority Anglophone population in the country in 2017 started a series of peaceful protests against perceived marginalization by Cameroon’s Francophone-dominated elite. Their actions were almost always met with a government crackdown.

Reported state repression – including ordering thousands of villagers in the Anglophone southwest to leave their homes – has driven support for a once-fringe secessionist movement, stoking a lethal cycle of violence.

The secessionists declared an independent state called Ambazonia Republic on Oct. 1, 2017. Since then, violent scenes that have resulted in loss of lives for both the secessionists and government forces have played out in the Northwest region, whose capital is Bamenda.

At the end of World War One, Germany’s colony of Kamerun was carved up between allied French and British victors, laying down the basis for a language split that still persists.

English speakers make up less than a fifth of the population of Cameroon, concentrated in former British territory near the Nigerian border that was joined to the French-speaking Republic of Cameroon the year after its independence in 1960. French speakers have dominated the country’s politics since.

The crisis which has attracted considerable international attention has become the gravest challenge yet to President Paul Biya, who is set to seek a renewal of his 35-years in power in an election slated for later this year.

Culled from Africa News

War crimes judges at The Hague on Thursday rejected an appeal by former Congolese vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba against a bribery conviction, calling instead for a new jail term to be imposed.

Bemba, 55, was sentenced last year by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to a year in prison and fined 300,000 euros for interfering with witnesses in his war crimes and crimes against humanity trial at the court.

The sentence came on top of an 18-year prison term he is serving for crimes committed in neighbouring Central African Republic by a militia he commanded.

Sending the case back to trial judges, the appeals chamber said Thursday that the trial chamber wrongly assessed the gravity of the offenses.

Convictions also were largely upheld against four members of Bemba’s legal team.

Bemba’s lawyer Kilolo was given two-and-a-half years and a 30,000 euro fine, while legal case manager Mangenda, got two years. Both sentences were originally suspended.

The appeals judges also upheld sentences against defence witness Narcisse Arido, who got 11 months; and Congolese lawmaker Fidele Babala, who was sentenced to six months. Although they appealed their convictions, neither spent any time in jail as they had already been behind bars awaiting trial.

In an unusual move, ICC judges were Thursday ruling in three appeals cases, including one brought by Congolese warlord Germain Katanga, who has been ordered to pay his victims $1 million in damages.

Bemba, once a wealthy businessman, is also separately appealing his war crimes conviction and 18-year jail term, but no date for the appeals judgement has been set yet.

(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP)

The curfew in Cameroon’s North West region has been extended by another week by the governor. A March 4, 2018 press release said the extension was to contain growing threats from secessionist activities.

The governor “has renewed the regional order restricting the movement of persons and property as from the 3rd of March 2018 from 09 PM to 05 AM within the North West Region for a period of one week renewable,” the release said.

Governor Adolphe Lele Lafrique also appealed to the population to better collaborate with the law enforcement agencies to ‘put an end to the detrimental activities of secessionist activists and a few misguided individuals who are taking our peace loving and hospitable region hostage.

Under the measure, movement of vehicles, persons and goods shall be strictly forbidden between 9 pm and 5 am. All public places like restaurants snack bars and night clubs shall remain closed.

All transport terminals shall remain closed and night travel buses shall be expected to leave town before the curfew sets in. Circulation of motorbikes is completely suspended.

The orders, however, do not apply to administrative authorities, forces of law and order, persons and vehicles in possession of special authorisations to circulate, and ambulances.

The adjoining South West region also imposed a month-long curfew over similar security concerns. The two regions are at the heart of the Anglophone crisis, where separatists under the so-called Ambazonia republic are seeking to breakaway from French-majority Cameroon.

Source: Africa News

Seven people died in a raid by suspected Ugandan extremist rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the latest in a string of deadly cross-border attacks, officials said Sunday.

“Six people were shot dead and another was stabbed” in the village of Eringeti in DR Congo’s restive North Kivu province, a Congolese military source told AFP.

Eringeti’s mayor Leon Baungatho said the assault happened around 5.30 pm (1530 GMT) on Saturday.

“We are still grieving,” said regional official Noela Kavivutwiraki. “The army needs to redouble its efforts to prevent surprise attacks from Ugandan rebels.”

Thought to be behind a string of deadly attacks in North Kivu, the Ugandan Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) militia stands accused of a number of atrocities in DR Congo.

Congolese authorities and the UN mission in DR Congo, MONUSCO, accuse the ADF of having killed more than 700 civilians as well as combatants in the Beni region from 2014-16.

The ADF is also accused of killing 14 UN peacekeepers in eastern DR Congo on December 7, in the biggest single loss of peacekeepers in nearly a quarter of a century.

The government in January declared it was waging “war” on the ADF and a Congolese militia, the Yakutumba, which is active in South Kivu province, several hundred kilometers (miles) to the south.

(Source: AFP)

The Cross River government has provided food and non food materials to over 3,500 Southern Cameroonian refugees camping in Boki local government area of the state. Presenting the items on Saturday to the refugees, Dr Mercy Akpama, Managing Director, Cross River Food Bank Commission, said that the gesture was part of the activities to mark Gov. Ben Ayade’s 50th birthday. Newsmen recalled that the state government had donated some materials to refugees camping in Ikom Local government area and promised to also extend same to refugees in Etung, Obudu and Akamkpa local government areas.

Newsmen also report that the state government had promised to build camps for the refugees in order to alleviate their plight pending their return home. Akpama said that Ayade’s administration places premium on the welfare of residents in the state and those in distress. “The governor has sent us here to come and donate this food and non-food materials to you. “In his vision, he has decided that we come here today and give you this food so that you can also join him in celebrating his birthday.

“There is no greater pain like depriving a people of their ancestral homes and reducing them to wants in body and soul,’’ she said. Dr Itam Abang, member representing Boki I state Constituency in the state house of assembly, urged the refugees to be law abiding. Abang said that the state was working with the federal government and the international community to find a solution to their plight. “Governor Ayade’s administration has value for human welfare and security; this he has shown through the delivery of all these food and non food materials,’’ she said.

Mr John Inaku, Director General of Cross River State Emergency Management Agency, told the refugees that the state governor was passionate about their plight. “We have your brothers and sisters in other locations as well, these items are for those of you in Boki and I can assure you that the governor will also reach others soon,” he said. Mr James Ogar, who spoke on behalf of the refugees, lauded the government and people of the state for their concern, noting that the gesture was a sign of true love to those in need. Newsmen report that the items included rice, plantain, beans, yam, garri, palm oil, cartons of Indomie, toiletries, cooking utensils amongst others.

Source: www.vanguardngr.com

Cameroonian authorities say they have dismantled a network of child traffickers responsible for dozens of abductions in the region over the past several months. The network is said to have extended into neighboring Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Chad.

The operation intensified after three young children were found dead in the back of a truck, prompting angry residents to torch a hotel owned by alleged traffickers.

Hundreds of people are still visiting the neighborhood where the inn was razed last Tuesday by an angry mob in Cameroon’s southern town of Kiossi, on the border with Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.

Thirty-nine-year-old Vanessa Nzali was among parents of missing children who arrived in Kiossi Friday. She says she had traveled some 280 kilometers from Cameroon’s capital Yaounde when she heard that unidentified children had been found there by Cameroonian police. She says she immediately decided to travel to Kiossi to see if her missing 11-year-old daughter was among the children.

Nzali says four months ago she returned home from work and was informed by her neighbors that her daughter went to fetch water from a well and four men forced her into their car and drove off. She says her neighbors also told her there was a baby crying in the car.

Quetong Handerson Kongeh, the most senior Cameroon government official in the Ntem Valley administrative unit that includes Kiossi, says the inn was razed after a vehicle belonging to its owner was found with the three dead children who, as determined later, were aged two, four and seven years old.

“At about 2 p.m., their parents started looking for them and could not find them. These children had been kidnapped by some suspects who took them into an inn deep down into the quarter in Kiossi. They administered some toxic products and these children went off [died]. They now put these children inside bags and tied them, and put all of them in the back booth of a vehicle.”

Handerson Kongeh says 15 people suspected to be members of a network of child traffickers operating in Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea were arrested when investigations were opened.

In 2016, the Yaounde-based Interpol office for central African states reported that thousands of children, alongside men and women, were forcibly abducted in Cameroon, Chad, Central African Republic, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and the Republic of Congo to be used as combatants, cooks, guards, sex partners, servants, messengers, and spies.

Patricia Asta of the local non-governmental organization Children’s Rights says child kidnapping has increased in Central African states because many childless couples and mothers are ready to buy from the black market. She says some are forced to serve as commercial sex workers, while others are recruited or kidnapped and then transported to far away places where they are forced to work as pickpockets, beggars and drug transporters.

Asta says within the past several months at least 26 cases of abductions have been reported to her NGO, with parents saying their children either were tricked, forced or persuaded to leave. She says they also have had cases of children who were held for ransom.

She says her organization has decided to educate parents to be vigilant. It is also asking all victims to join the associations’s lawyers in legal processes that will protect and free children from predators who are out to target mainly naive teenagers. She says it is her wish to see to it that all child traffickers are punished.

Cameroon, according to the 2012 trafficking in persons report by the U.S. State Department, also is a source, transit, and destination country for children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking.

Source: VOA

A fresh flare-up of ethnic violence has claimed the lives of at least 49 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ituri province.

The murders took place overnight in the village of Maze, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Bunia, the capital of the northeastern province of Ituri, which has been wracked by conflict between the Hema and Lendu communities, the government said on Friday.

Alfred Ndrabu Buju from international Catholic charity Caritas said, “We have counted 49 bodies and are still searching for other bodies.”

“A child was admitted this morning in Drodro general hospital, with an arrow in his head,” Buju added.

Interior Minister Henri Mova earlier said 33 were killed in the unrest.

“The provincial governor is on his way to the site of the killings,” Mova said.

Witnesses said the assailants were members of the Lendu community.

“The attackers went into the village and committed a real massacre,” said local activist Banza Charite.

More than 100 people have been killed since the violence erupted in Ituri in mid-December. The unrest has also forced 200,000 people to flee their homes.

More than 28,000 of the displaced have crossed the border into Uganda in recent weeks, according to UN figures, most of them women and children, reporting horrific stories of violence.

Tensions between the Hema cattle herders and Lendu farmers have largely laid dormant since a 1998-2003 war, which claimed the lives of thousands, but have flared again in recent months because of disputes over land.

The United Nations said earlier this year it would seek more than $1.5 billion to respond to the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, warning the violence-torn country was at a “breaking point.”

Source: Presstv

The SouthWest region of Cameroon has imposed a month-long curfew on five out of six divisions / departments according to a release from the office of the governor.

The March 1, 2018 document said the move was important given the exigencies of security, the preservation of peace and the maintenance of law and order.

The affected divisions are Manyu, Meme, Ndian, Lebialem and Kupe-Muanenguba. The only division not under the order is Fako.

The orders were put into four articles as follows:

• That the movement of commercial vehicles and private cars shall, with effect from the date of signature of this order, be prohibited throughout Divisions – South West region from 7 pm in the evening to 6 am in the morning for a period of thirty (30) days renewable.

• That this prohibition shall not be applicable o Ambulances, vehicles of Administrative Authorities and/or Officials of the Forces of the Law and Order carrying out official duties.

• That Senior Divisional Officer, Regional Heads of Defense and Security Forces, Divisional Officers a,d Mayors of the Administrative Units cited above shall be charged, each in their sphere of competence with ensuring the implementation of this order.

• That this order shall be registered and communicated where need be. It was copied to the necessary agencies and signed off by the governor in the region’s capital, Buea.

The curfew order comes barely a week after a similar one was imposed on adjoining North West region. The two – known as the ‘Anglophone regions’ are at the heart of a secessionist attempt to break off from French – majority Cameroon.

Guerilla style attacks by separatists elements have claimed the lives of about twenty-four security officials. People in the region have also fled in their thousands into Nigeria for fear of reprisal attacks from the army.

Source: Africa News

At least 10 people were killed and 15 others were injured in a train crash on Wednesday in Egypt’s northern province of Beheira, the health ministry said.

Two passenger carriages separated from one train and collided with a cargo train, the official news agency MENA said, citing the provincial security director.

Egyptians have long complained that successive governments have failed to enforce basic safety measures for the railways.

A string of crashes have further inflamed public anger over the antiquated transport network.

A collision in August killed 42 people and injured more than 100 people.

(Source: Reuters)

In furtherance of Operation Deep Punch to smoke out remnants of Boko Haram Terrorists in the Northern fringes of Lake Chad and Sambisa Forest, a joint operation involving Nigerian and Cameroonian Troops have resulted in the killing of 35 Boko Haram terrorists. According to authorities of Operation Lafiya Dole, troops took the battle to the terrorists in their enclaves at Kusha-Kucha, Surdewala, Alkanerik, Magdewerne and Mayen villages, all situated along the Nigerian – Cameroonian border.

“In the fierce offensives, the gallant troops killed 33 Boko Haram insurgents and destroyed 15 locally fabricated rifles captured from them. “The troops also destroyed 4 Improvised Explosive Devices (IED), several motorcycles and bicycles belonging to the insurgents. “603 civilians held hostage by the insurgents were also rescued and conveyed to Bäma and Pulka towns, where they are currently being profiled before subsequent handover to IDP camp officials”.

Confirming the operations in a statement, Deputy Director, Army Public Relations, Col Onyeama Nwachukwu said, “Troops of Operation Lafiya Dole have continued to maintain the momentum in the ongoing Operation Deep Punch II to seek out and clear Boko Haram insurgents from enclaves in the northern fringes of the Lake Chad Islands and the Sambisa region. “On Monday 26 February 2018, combined troops of Operation Lafiya Dole and the Cameroonian Defence Forces, in a clearance operation, took the battle to the terrorists in their enclaves at Kusha-Kucha, Surdewala, Alkanerik, Magdewerne and Mayen villages, all situated along the Nigerian – Cameroonian border. “In the fierce offensives, the gallant troops killed 33 Boko Haram insurgents and destroyed 15 locally fabricated rifles captured from them. The troops also destroyed 4 Improvised Explosive Devices (IED), several motorcycles and bicycles belonging to the insurgents. “603 civilians held hostage by the insurgents were also rescued and conveyed to Bäma and Pulka towns, where they are currently being profiled before subsequent handover to IDP camp officials. “Relatedly, as the clearance operations progressed, the combined troops tracked the insurgents to Bokko, Daushe and Gava villages, where they unleashed another attack on the fleeing insurgents, killing 2 of them in the fire fight and recovering one AK 47 rifle, a magazine, a trolley and unspecified quantity of premium motor spirit in Jerry cans.

“The troops also extricated 194 civilians held captive by the insurgents and destroyed makeshift accommodations erected by the insurgents. “Additionally, the combined troops successfully cleared Miyanti and Wudila villages, where they rescued 3 men, 121 women and 209 children. The rescued persons are undergoing profiling, preparatory to their handover to appropriate IDP camps. “Meanwhile, troops carrying out clearance operations from the Sabil Huda axis of the Sambisa forest have recovered a cache of arms and tools from Boko Haram insurgents’ enclave in the Sabil Huda area of the Sambisa. “The munitions recovered include 3 Browny Machine Guns, two 81mm Mortar tubes, one 81mm Mortar tripod, one 60 mm Commando Mortar tube, twelve 40mm AGL cartridge , 5 AK 47 rifles ,1 sniper rifle, 3 Pistols with one magazine loaded with four 9mm rounds, one damaged pump action rifle. Others are 2 damaged G3 rifles, 1 Tear gas riflel, 2 Sub Machine Guns, 5 xG3 Magazines, 4 locally made rockets, 28 working parts of various weapons, 28 barrels of various weapons, 3 Browny Machine Gun bipods , 2 Anti Aircraft Gun Barrels, 12 Anti Aircraft Gun tripods, 8 Tool boxes, one welding machine, one Hayab crane, Assorted ammunition links, one packet of electrode and one power generator. “Troops remain highly motivated in continuing with the operations to locate and clear Boko Haram insurgents from their hideouts.

Source: www.vanguardngr.com