The Tunisian coastguard on Friday recovered the body of a young child thought to have drowned at sea when two vessels carrying migrants sank in the Mediterranean, a journalist working with news agency said.

The child’s body, dressed in a pink jumpsuit and grey woollen cap, was discovered during a patrol off the coast of Sfax, Tunisia’s second city, according to the journalist who was accompanying the coastguard.

The child was likely from Cameroon, as more than 200 Cameroonians had been rescued in the last two days, the coastguard undertaking the operation said.

The child’s mother was believed to have been one of the people missing after the sinking of two boats earlier in the week, they added.

The Cameroonian embassy in Tunis was nonetheless unable to confirm this information when contacted.

Local court spokesman Faouzi Masmoudi meanwhile said that two boats carrying migrants from sub-Saharan Africa sank off Sfax’s coast on Wednesday.

Six people died and 39 were rescued from the first boat, while 12 people from the second boat were rescued and 41 others are missing, he said.

Tunisia, whose coastline is less than 150 kilometres from the Italian island of Lampedusa, has long been a favoured launching point for migrants attempting the perilous sea journey from North Africa to Europe.

The flow of migrants from Tunisia has intensified since President Kais Saied made a fiery speech on February 21 claiming illegal immigration was a demographic threat to Tunisia.

Source: AFP

According to a recent study released on Thursday by Bénédicte Savoy of the Technische Universität Berlin and Albert Gouaffo of the University of Dschang in Cameroon, German museums that house world cultures have 40,000 Cameroonian artifacts, which is more than the British Museum’s entire African collection, The Art Newspaper reported.

There are roughly 6,000 pieces in the state collections in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon. Savoy stated that the majority of the 40,000 pieces in German museums are in depots and not on display, pointing out that this enormous number excludes, among other things, items in natural history museums, archaeological discoveries in prehistory museums, and any items in private collections.

The new study, titled Atlas der Abwesenheit (Atlas of Absence), was backed by 45 German museum curators and took two years to complete. It is now available to the public via open access.

Germany declared Cameroon a colony in 1884, motivated by the desire to increase commercial prospects. Until the First World War, Germany utilized increasingly violent methods to repress significant local resistance. After the war, the region was divided between the French and the British. Over the course of more than 30 years of German control, colonial troops conducted at least 180 “punitive expeditions” to secure land, destroying communities, farms, and cultural landmarks.

Savoy noted that because the brutal robbery on that occasion was carried out by British troops rather than German troops, it may have been simpler for Germany to concentrate first on returning the Benin bronzes to Nigeria. “Confronting one’s own acts of brutality requires more political and psychological work,” she remarked.

Officials from the Cameroonian embassy emphasized the importance of restitution during a panel discussion to unveil the report in Berlin. According to Maryse Nsangou Njikam, a cultural advisor at the Cameroonian embassy in Germany, “Germany is full,” but “Cameroon is empty.”

“We must have these objects back. We need them to build the future. Restitution is the cherry on the cake, the goal we are heading for,” she noted.

A commission for reparation has been established by the Cameroonian government, including members from the foreign, education, and culture ministries, as well as the traditional royal rulers, civil society, and academia.

“It has started work and meets regularly with museum directors in Germany,” she said, adding, “We are still a long way from restitution because several steps have to be taken first,” Nsangou Njikam said.

The artifacts at German museums of world culture include textiles, musical instruments, ceremonial masks, royal treasures like stools and thrones, texts, tools, and weapons — “none of which were conceived as display objects for vitrines,” Savoy claimed.

Some of the items mentioned in the study include a beaded stool from Bagam that was stolen during a punishment exhibition and returned by an army officer and is now in the Linden Museum in Stuttgart, in addition to a beaded cap that belongs to a Cameroonian leader, in the Linden Museum, that was one of 237 objects plundered over 2.5 years by a German officer.

The Linden Museum, which has more than 8,000 Cameroonian artifacts, the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, and the Grassi Museum in Leipzig each has more than 5,000. German museums “have a lot of homework to do,” according to Léontine Meijer-van Mensch, director of the Grassi Museum, who stated this during the panel discussion.

Source: English almayadeen.net

A commander of a vigilante group in Cameroon’s Far North Region was killed early Friday by suspected militants of the terror group Boko Haram, according to local and security sources.

The commander of the community defense forces was killed when the militants raided the Amchide locality of the region, said an army official in the region.

The 36-year-old was a high-profile commander in the fight against terrorism, and his death is a big blow, added the official who asked not to be named.

The militants also looted property, including food and clothes, local media reported.

More than 30 vigilante groups have been formed in the region since Boko Haram began operating in 2014, according to security reports.

Source: Xinhuanet

Islamic state on Wednesday claimed responsibility for an attack on a security post in northern Cameroon, the group said in a statement on telegram.

Two customs officers, a policeman and a civilian, were killed in the attack that took place on Tuesday at the entrance to the town of Mora in Cameroon’s far north region, about 30 km (20 miles) from the border with Nigeria.

Source: Reuters

The Cameroonian government has obtained a €50 million (about CFA32.8 billion) loan from France to strengthen its fire department. Per the related deal signed yesterday, the terms of which remain undisclosed, the beneficiary will receive 227 new fire and rescue vehicles over the next few years.

Alamine Ousmane Mey, the Cameroonian Minister of the Economy, revealed that the equipment will be supplied by French manufacturer Desautel, which specializes in the supply of civil security equipment. In addition, France will also provide staff training and help in the construction of a maintenance unit for the equipment. This is good news for local firefighters, who will benefit from improved working conditions and better response equipment. Minister Mey explained that of the 37 fire department centers in the country, 15 are not operational, lacking equipment and qualified personnel.

“The project aimed at acquiring equipment for the national fire department will undoubtedly bring Cameroon a high-performance risk management system. This advanced system is designed to effectively tackle the continuously evolving challenges, particularly those associated with risk prevention and the protection of individuals and assets against accidents, disasters, and catastrophes,” said Alamine Ousmane Mey.

Source: Business in Cameroon

A soldier of the Francophone dominated elite force, Rapid Intervention Battalion; BIR was killed in an explosion in Mbengwi on Wednesday.

Cameroon Concord News gathered that the BIR serviceman identified as Lieutenant Fabrice Boutou was killed when his vehicle ran over an improvised explosive device (IED) during an operation in Momo division.

The IED, which was planted and remotely detonated, destroyed his vehicle.

A Southern Cameroons Self Defense Group has claimed responsibility for the roadside attack.

The security situation in Southern Cameroons has improved since the start of the year, but clashes between the Francophone dominated Cameroon government military and Ambazonia fighters are still occasionally reported.

By Fon Lawrence

Officials in northern Cameroon have in a crisis meeting on Wednesday requested more troops from Cameroon, Nigeria and Chad to be deployed to their common border after fresh Boko Haran attacks killed at least 12 people including six soldiers on Tuesday. The officials say several hundred heavily armed Islamist extremists have infiltrated the volatile Lake Chad region attacking, looting and causing panic.

Cameroon military and government officials in the central African state’s northern border with Nigeria say they held a crisis meeting on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after a fresh wave of deadly Boko Haram attacks were reported.

Midjiyawa Bakari is the governor of Cameroon’s Far North region that shares a border with Chad and Nigeria. Bakari spoke on Cameroon state broadcaster CRTV on Wednesday.

Bakari said Cameroonian President Paul Biya ordered officials and troops in Cameroon’s Far North region to hold an emergency crisis meeting and make sure armed Islamist extremists who infiltrate the volatile Lake Chad region are stopped. He said Biya ordered the crisis meeting after several hundred militants killed three soldiers, two customs officers and two civilians in surprise attacks on Cameroon government troops stationed in the northern towns of Mora and Zigague on Tuesday.

Mora and Zigague are towns in Cameroon’s Far North region that share a border with Nigeria and Chad.

Bakari said Boko Haram is weakened but still very actively attacking communities to kill their opponents and to steal cattle, food and money.

The Cameroon military on Wednesday said troops found five other civilian corpses in the bush near Zigague and several dozen houses and government buildings were destroyed by the insurgents.

Military officials say soldiers killed several insurgents along the border with Nigeria and Chad but gave no details.

Government officials say villagers who escaped to the bush should return and be protected by the Cameroon military.

Bakari said civilians should help stop the new wave of attacks by reporting suspected militants to military officials. He said local chiefs and community leaders should reactivate militias to assist government troops in fighting the militants.

Hamidou Aladji is a community leader in Mora.

He said Tuesday’s attack on civilians and government troops in Mora indicate that Boko Haram is still a nuisance with an ability to create surprises. He said while the military is protecting civilians, it is imperative for community leaders and the clergy to assist in stopping or reducing terrorist attacks by reporting strangers in their communities to the military.

The Cameroon government says Boko Haram fighters crossed into the central African state from Nigeria in large numbers on Sunday and Monday evening before carrying out the attacks.

Military officials say the vast Lake Chad basin that stretches across the borders of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad is infiltrated by the militants who want to reestablish bases on the lake’s many small islands.

In June 2022, the Multinational National Joint Task Force of the Lake Chad Basin said 3,000 troops it deployed killed more than 800 extremists in about two months of fighting in the volatile Lake Chad region.

The force is made up of 11,000 troops from Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad.

Officials at the crisis meeting ordered by President Paul Biya on Wednesday in Maroua, the capital of Cameroon’s Far North region, requested that troops from Cameroon, Nigeria and Chad be deployed to stop militants from reconstituting groups and advancing.

VOA could not independently verify if Chad and Nigeria have agreed to deploy troops to the three nations’ common border.

Boko Haram attacks escalated in northern Nigeria in 2009 before spreading to neighboring countries.

The United Nations says more than 36,000 people have been killed, mainly in Nigeria, and three million have fled their homes.

Source: VOA

In Cameroon’s capital city Yaoundé lives a baker like no other. He did not want to be a baker, but circumstances forced him to become one to remain alive.

Lambert Kehven did not dream of becoming a baker, but a journalist. He started working as a journalist in Kumbo in the Bui division in the restive northwest region of Cameroon for a local media house, Canal 2 International. When the Anglophone conflict spiked in 2017, he found himself caught between state security forces and non-state armed groups who all wanted him to report their own sides of the story. They wanted to read his reports before they were published.

Kehven was arrested in December 2019, accused of working with non-state actors, and released on January 10, 2020, when he fled the conflict zone for his life and safety.

Samuel Ajiekah Abuwe, popularly called Samuel Wazizi who reported the Anglophone conflict for Chillen Media TV, was not as fortunate. He was arrested on August 2, 2019, supposedly because he allowed his farm to be used by armed groups and allegedly filmed military atrocities, the footage of which he supplied to the international media, the Cameroon police told journalists.

Samuel Wazizi died in custody; his death was reported by Equinoxe TV during their prime time news on June 2, 2019. His family has no clue where his remains could be. The military said he died of sepsis, no independent investigation has opened, and journalists dare not ask questions or investigate for fear of being killed.

As Cameroonian journalists were still processing Wazizi’s case, another journalist Kingsley Fomunyuy Njoka was arrested on May 15, 2020, in connection with his reports and Facebook posts on the Anglophone conflict, for allegedly sourcing his information by “sponsoring” terrorists in the region. Njoka was kept incommunicado for weeks. The military court later charged him with acts of terrorism, and he has been awaiting trial for about two years.

The most recent is the murder Martinez Zogo, a radio journalist investigating corruption who disappeared and whose mutilated remains were found along the Soa road on the outskirts of Yaoundé on January 22. Reporters Without Borders describes this as a “state crime.”

The scenarios painted above depict how journalists who are critical in their reports on the Anglophone conflict, both online and offline, are either jailed or forced to desert the conflict zones and journalism or die in the process. These also demonstrate how far the state can go to silence dissent and suppress critical reporting.

The Anglophone conflict

The Anglophone conflict is deeply rooted in the history of the partition of Africa where Cameroon was partitioned between France and Britain, with the former having a greater share. French Cameroons got independence first. The English side had to achieve independence by either joining French Cameroons or Nigeria. They chose to join French Cameroons to form a two-state federation, but the terms of the federation eroded, and as the English side was marginalized, which metamorphosed into a crisis and later a conflict.

In 1972, a new constitution revoked the autonomy of the English-speaking parts of the country, giving more power to the president, leading to friction with the leaders of the erstwhile autonomous Anglophone region of Southern Cameroons. Neglect, marginalisation and the erosion of the terms of the federation are the root causes of the ongoing Anglophone conflict in Cameroon, with devastating effects.

The Anglophone conflict reached its peak in 2016 when teachers and lawyers took to the streets with peace plants to denounce the diluting of the Anglo Saxon systems of education and law. The state responded with force, arresting and jailing the leaders. Separatist tendencies took over, and non-state armed groups took arms against the state security forces.

Seven years later, the conflict is ongoing, and the government is not tolerant of critical views on its handling of the conflict.

Four thousand civilians have been killed by both state security agents and non-state armed groups, with 87,000 refugees in Nigeria, and people 628,000 internally displaced as of December 2022. Arrests related to the conflict took place under the penal code punishing alleged acts of secession and terrorism, felony, and territorial integrity. The government does not define who a terrorist is, but the anti-terrorism law seems to trap more journalists than terrorists in its net. Arrested journalists are not given the right to a fair trial before an independent and impartial court, but are tried at the military court.

Freedom of the press

Freedom of the press is enshrined in the preamble of the Cameroon constitution. “The freedom of communication, of expression, of the press, assembly, association, and trade unionism, as well as the right to strike, shall be guaranteed under conditions fixed by the law.” Yet, Cameroon is described as the third worst jailer of journalists by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The Cameroon Association of English-Speaking Journalists (CAMASEJ) said about 80 journalists had fled the two regions, and a total of nine journalists were arrested in 2022.

The government has been criticized for limiting the freedom of the press and cracking down on journalists and media outlets that are critical of the government. According to the 2021 World Press Freedom Index, Cameroon ranks 135th out of 180 countries, which is a decline from its 2020 ranking of 134th. The report notes that journalists in Cameroon face harassment, intimidation, and physical attacks, and that the government has suspended or shut down media outlets that report on sensitive topics or criticize government officials. Additionally, the government has been accused of using the December 2014 anti-terrorism law to silence dissent and restrict freedom of expression.

In 2022, CPJ joined Amnesty International and 29 other civil society organizations, local and international in a letter demanded that President Biya free persons arrested for exercising their right to freedom of expression, among them journalists Tsi Conrad, Mancho Bibixy, Thomas Awah, and Kingsley Fomunyuy Njoka.

CPJ argues that journalists are not terrorists, but the government brandishes territorial integrity, public peace, and security to justify its actions. Government spokesperson Communication Minister Rene Sadi tacitly warned journalists against tarnishing the image of the country, saying that “incitement to violence and hostility against the homeland is not tolerable in the rule of law and in a society of freedom and responsibility.

Journalists have not been silent. World Press Freedom Day 2022 provided an avenue for CAMASEJ to register discontent with the treatment of journalists and call on both state security forces and non-state armed groups to stop attacks on journalists. It made little difference.

Culled from advox.globalvoices.org

For the Vice President of the Ambazonia Interim Government Dabney Yerima and the leadership of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania in the Republic of South Africa, the people of Southern Cameroons and the people of South Africa are comrades in arms.

Yerima was in Polokwane Limpopo, the birth place of the President of the Pan Africanist Congress on May 27, 2023.

The comradeship between the people of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia and people of South Africa was highlighted by the exiled Ambazonian leader.

During the rally held in Polokwane Limpopo, Yerima embraced Marius Moloto and Moloto intend reiterated PAC support for the Ambazonia Interim Government and the Southern Cameroons struggle telling the sell-out crowd that Dabney Yerima was fighting against a very dangerous form of colonialism and needed the support of the people of South Africa.

Comrade Marius Moloto told Yerima and his delegation that PAC identifies with Southern Cameroonians because the members of PAC do not believe it is right for the French Cameroun government to suppress basic human rights in Southern Cameroons under a primitive and cheap design scheme known as special status.

The leadership of PAC went on to tell the South African media that the party did not consider the Ambazonia Interim Government a terrorist group, stating.  “If one has to refer to any of the parties involved in the conflict in Southern Cameroons as a terrorist, one might refer to the French speaking government in Yaoundé, because they are the people who are slaughtering defenseless and innocent Southern Cameroonians in their homeland, and we think this is completely unacceptable.”

For his part, Vice President Dabney Yerima said it is important for South Africans all over the world to add their voices to the universal call for Southern Cameroons self-determination and statehood.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai in Polokwane Limpopo, South Africa