A 73-year-old Amnesty International volunteer appeared in court in France on Wednesday charged with helping two underage Africans illegally enter the country, the latest case involving activists assisting migrants on the move through Europe.

The trial of pensioner Martine Landry is the first of its kind in France involving a member of Amnesty.

It comes a day before three activists — two Swiss and one Italian — appear in court for helping a group of migrants cross from Italy to France through a pass in the Alps in April.

Landry is the coordinator of Amnesty’s refugee response in southeast France. She risks up to five years in prison and a fine of 30,000 euros ($34,700) if convicted of illegally assisting two Guinean youths in July 2017.

She is accused of helping the pair, both aged 15 according to Amnesty, cross back into France after they were arrested and returned to Italy during a raid on the home of olive farmer and activist Cedric Herrou, where they had been sheltering.

Landry claims that she did not help the teens re-enter France after they were turned back at the border by Italian police.

The white-haired campaigner said she stepped in only after they crossed onto French soil and took them to the police to register for asylum.

‘Solidarity is not a crime’

Her case, like that of the Alps campaigners, has become a cause celebre among critics of President Emmanuel Macron’s tough stance on migration.

Several dozen activists gathered outside the courthouse in the city of Nice holding banners reading “Solidarity is not a crime”.

In April, MPs voted to soften laws criminalising acts of solidarity with illegal migrants, to exempt those who provide them with free food, shelter or medical care.

Helping migrants illegally cross the border remains a crime, however.

Amnesty condemned the case against Landry.

“Dragging a compassionate pensioner before the court on these surreal charges makes a mockery of justice. Acts of solidarity should be promoted, not punished,” its senior campaigner on migration, Maria Serrano, said in a statement.

The three activists on trial Thursday in the Alpine town of Gap are accused of helping a group of migrants reach France after dozens of anti-immigrant campaigners blocked another pass on the trans-alpine migrant trail.

They face up to 10 years in prison and fines of 750,000 euros each as well being banned from France if convicted.

NGOs have contrasted the treatment of the campaigners with that of “Spiderman” Mamoudou Gassama, the illegal Malian migrant who was fast-tracked for French citizenship this week after rescuing a young boy hanging from a balcony in Paris.

“A few symbolic gestures mask a policy of repression and expulsion,” said migrant support campaigner Michel Rousseau.

(AFP)

On May 20, Cameroon’s national day, citizens in the capital of Yaounde marched in parades, and President Paul Biya congratulated members of the armed forces on their commitment to peace and safety. At the same time, in the country’s unstable Anglophone regions, separatists kidnapped a mayor, killed two police officers and intimidated people who tried to celebrate the holiday.

Such incidents have human rights activists worried that Cameroon could soon be the site of Africa’s next civil war.

“We are gradually, gradually getting there,” said Agbor Nkongho, an Anglophone human rights lawyer and director of the Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa. “I’m not seeing the willingness of the government to try to find and address the issue in a way that we will not get there.”

Since late 2016, Cameroon has faced an increasingly violent uprising in the bilingual country’s minority Anglophone regions, where English speakers say they have been marginalized by the French-speaking majority for decades. When peaceful protests started 18 months ago, government forces opened fire on protesters and looted and burned down villages. Now an armed separatist movement is gaining traction, kidnapping government officials and killing gendarmes.

Some observers say the situation has already reached a point where it could be considered a civil war.

“If you look at what is going on now, you can call it a civil war,” said John Mukum Mbaku, a professor at Weber State University in Utah and a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution. “The government is shooting down defenseless villagers, and many have decided to defend themselves and are fighting back.”

At the end of World War I, the League of Nations divided the German colony of Kamerun between France and Britain. The French-controlled territory won independence in 1960, and the British territories that now make up the southwest and northwest regions of the country joined the next year.

On paper, Cameroon is now the only country in the world other than Canada where both French and English are official languages. But only one-fifth of the country’s 22 million people are Anglophone. Biya, who has ruled for 35 years, is Francophone, as are most of the country’s elites.

“The fact of the matter is, if you don’t speak French, you cannot survive in the country,” Mbaku said.

Anglophones say they are being forced to assimilate into Francophone culture, and their frustrations reached a boiling point in 2016.

A protest movement was launched with teachers and lawyers at the forefront, attacking the “Francophonization” of their home towns. A particular complaint was the growing number of non-English-speaking teachers being sent to Anglophone areas.

“It’s not just about language,” Nkongho said. “It’s a culture, it’s a way of life, it’s the way they’ve been raised.”

The Cameroonian military responded to the protests with brute force. Videos emerged of the security forces kicking university students and dragging them through mud. They also opened fire on protesters, killing some of them. As the movement gained momentum and evidence of police brutality circulated on social media, the government cut the Internet in Anglophone regions. Julie Owono, executive director of Internet Without Borders, said the months-long shutdown “convinced people that, indeed, Anglophones are treated differently.”

Support for armed separatists, who want to establish a new Anglophone nation called Ambazonia, started to grow. “You talk to people who were very moderate but they are now supporting the separatist movement,” Nkongho said.

Last week, he said, civilians counted around 40 dead bodies in Anglophone regions of the country — at least 27 of which were allegedly killed in a standoff with government forces. That made for one of the bloodiest weeks since the unrest began 18 months ago. Col. Didier Badjeck, a Cameroon Army spokesman, said government troops engaged in a firefight with separatists and that “several terrorists were neutralized.”

A recent count by the International Crisis Group said at least 120 civilians and 43 members of security forces have been killed since the conflict began. Some 20,000 people have fled to Nigeria as refugees, and 160,000 are now displaced within Cameroon, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

A presidential election looms in October, with Biya expected to run again. Akere Muna, an Anglophone presidential candidate and prominent lawyer, hopes that better governance could keep the country unified. But he said the government has only ignited tensions and dismissed Anglophone calls for more autonomy.

Muna said he recently visited an Anglophone village that is normally home to 6,000 people. Only a handful of people were left, he said. “If [Biya] gets reelected, the country will become ungovernable,” Muna said. “By the day, it’s getting worse.”

Culled from Washington Post

The crisis in the South-West and North-West Regions of Cameroon has compounded pre-existing vulnerabilities. Since 2016, political and social instability, exacerbated by sporadic violence, has had a negative impact on the civilian population of Cameroon’s South-West and NorthWest Regions, hosting four million inhabitants (16% of the total population). In November 2017, the sociopolitical crisis progressively translated into insecurity and armed violence. Since then, the escalation of tension and upsurge in hostilities between non-state armed groups and defence and security forces have triggered humanitarian needs across the two regions, linked to significant internal displacement.

In recent months, the epicentre of the crisis moved from Bamenda (North-West) to Mamfe and Kumba (SouthWest). All divisions in the South-West region, host to more than 1.4 million inhabitants, are affected by the crisis.

The number of households forced to flee their villages – or the country – in search of safer areas has rapidly and steadily increased since November 2017. Recent needs assessments report that at least 160,000 people have been internally displaced in the two affected regions and would need humanitarian and protection assistance over the next three months. In addition, more than 21,000 Cameroonians have been registered as refugees in Cross River, Benue and Akwa Ibom States in Nigeria.1 This crisis is taking place against a backdrop of several other humanitarian emergencies affecting 3.3 million people across Cameroon.

Most affected areas

The South-West Region has become the hub of the crisis as it is home to more than 90% of the 160,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in need of humanitarian assistance; 135,000 are located in Meme Division and 15,000 in Manyu Division. The remaining 10,000 are displaced in the North-West Region.

Simultaneously, dozens of villages in Mbongue and Konye Subdivision (Meme Division) have been emptied of their populations. The situation is similar in the NorthWest, especially in Boyo Division.

Many villages have suffered significant material damage in Mbongue and Konye Subdivision (Meme Division), and in Eyumodjok and Akwaya Subdivision (Manyu Division). 1 This Response Plan does not include the need of Cameroonian refugees who found refuge in Nigeria Recently, insecurity has spread to new divisions in the South-West (Ndian, Lebialem, Fako) and North-West (Boyo).

Who are the most vulnerable?

Clashes between non-state armed groups and defense and security forces have displaced the civilian population into the surrounding forests and villages – 80% of the displaced population have found refuge in the forest.

The two regions has experienced a deterioration of living conditions – primarily affecting school-age children, women and the elderly – and a collapse of livelihoods as well as heightened abuses.
The crisis and subsequent displacement have prevented people from accessing their fields and markets. For most of the affected population who relied upon agriculture or livestock as their main sources of livelihoods before the crisis, dependency on external assistance will be inevitable in the short-term.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres arrived in Mali on Tuesday to show support for UN peacekeepers facing an Islamist insurgency that has killed scores of their colleagues.

Guterres went to the UN’s MINUSMA base for ceremonies marking the International Day of UN Peacekeepers.

“Today in these four countries, and especially here in Mali, you work in an environment where peace is not assured, you work in a setting where there are terrorist groups that do not respect anything and nobody, a setting where there is drug, human and arms trafficking,” he said.

MINUSMA has 12,500 military and police personnel. It has lost more than 160 people since it deployed in 2013 – a figure that accounts for more than half of UN peacekeeping fatalities over this period.

“The international community must understand that it must provide the G5 Sahel countries with support, assured and guaranteed support to enable the stability of the G5 Sahel force and the effectiveness of its work for peace and security in this region,” Guterres added.

Northern Mali fell into the grip of al-Qaeda-linked jihadists in 2012. MINUSMA was deployed to help stabilise the area but attacks have spilled over to the central and southern parts of the country and into neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Source: Africa News

Biya and his ruling CPDM crime syndicate are under immense pressure at the moment. The West including the United States are now supporting anti-government actions from opposition groups and the civil society. Southern Cameroonians are slamming the Biya regime for plundering the nation’s wealth on his family and tribesmen and have pulled out of the Cameroonian federation.  Will the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime pay attention to the demands of French speaking Cameroonians to end the senseless war in Southern Cameroons? Almost certainly not. For 57 years, the people of Southern Cameroons have been suffering under cruel and callous successive Francophone regimes that use brutality to oppress.

The Biya government will continue to fund state terrorism in Southern Cameroons and it will continue to destabilize the Central African Republic.  It will continue to deplore huge financial resources to get President Buhari elected in Nigeria. It will continue to train, fund and arm numerous other militias in the Central African Republic. It will continue to interfere in the internal affairs of nations such as Chad,Congo-Brazzaville and Equatorial Guinea and it will spark conflict where it can like in Gabon. And it will not put the needs of French Cameroonians before any of this.

How do we know this will continue if Biya stays on? Well, quite simply because this is what the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime is based on. It could not survive 35 years without this. For this reason, regime change in Yaoundé is the only option. Internationally, the regime has portrayed itself as having a moderate leader in the person of President Biya.  The regime itself has spoken about dialogue, peace and unity but this is a self-proclaimed label that is based on absolutely nothing. There have been no signs of dialogue ever since the Southern Cameroons crisis began. In fact, quite the opposite. When the teachers and lawyers strike action started, instead of engaging the Consortium leaders for all the concessions they granted the Paul Ghogomu Commission, Yaounde instead criminalized dialogue, arrested the leaders of the Consortium and continued to threaten and provoke Southern Cameroonians.

The consortium of CPDM crime syndicates has a history of crushing anti regime protests, but the current crisis in Southern Cameroons is unlike any before. This time, it is all sectors of the Southern Cameroons society that are calling for recognition of Ambazonia by the international community. Southern Cameroonians are facing execution, arrest, imprisonment and torture, yet they are still risking everything to make their calls for a new nation in Africa heard. It is clear now that regime change is the only way forward for the two Cameroons to live in peace. French Cameroonians too should take advantage of the happenings in Southern Cameroons and endorse regime change as the only way to ensure that their bleak futures have any kind of hope.

Since the Ambazonian uprisings started two years ago, instead of condemning the Biya regime and holding it accountable for the killing and violence towards Southern Cameroonians, the African Union, the EU and the UN have turned their backs on the people and remained silent. However, the US ambassador Peter Barlerin has expressed his support for the people of Cameroon and made it clear that the West wants regime change too. And he has the backing of the majority of the diplomatic community in Yaoundé including the US Congress.

Ambassador Barlerin has sounded a note of caution to Biya that the world was watching. His Excellency Peter Barlerin also reminded Mr. Biya that human rights are an automatic right – not something granted as a gift by an 85 year dictator.

By some strange happenstance, the European Union, on the other hand, is very reluctant to comment on the current situation in Southern Cameroons. It appears to want to ensure that nothing affects Sub Saharan Africa after Biya, so it’s keeping quiet. When will the EU realize that regime change will benefit not just French Cameroun, but the entire sub region?

Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

France’s President Emmanuel Macron has offered citizenship to an illegal Malian refugee who earlier risked his own life to rescue a child hanging from a fourth-floor balcony in Paris.

On Sunday, the 22-year-old Mamoudou Gassama, originally from Mali, scaled the facade of a Paris apartment block without any equipment to save a four-year-old boy clinging to railings and about to fall. Gassama’s successful rescue was filmed by horrified onlookers, and the video soon went viral.

Recognizing the heroic act, President Macron met with Gassama in person at the Elysee presidential palace on Monday, congratulating him on the “exceptional” move to save the French boy’s life.

“We’ll obviously be setting all your papers straight and if you wish it, we will start the process of naturalization so that you can become French,” Macron told Gassama.

He also offered the young Malian a job.

“What you have done corresponds with what firefighters do; if this fits your wishes, you could join the firefighters’ corps so that you can do (such acts) on a daily basis,” he added.

Gassama arrived from Mali in France a few months ago. He has been nicknamed the “Spider-Man” following the viral spread of his rescue footage.

“I did it because it was a child,” Gassama told French newspaper Le Parisien. “I climbed… Thank God I saved him.”

Europe has faced an influx of refugees arriving from conflict zones since 2014. Many of the refugees have been fleeing wars and conflicts in their own countries.

There have been instances of crimes committed by a handful of the refugees in Europe, and extremist politicians in European countries have magnified those cases to actively call for a stop to the flow of the refugees and for the deportation of the ones who have arrived.

But while it is an individual case, Gassama’s heroic act is certain to help change public sentiments toward the refugees.

Adam Thiam, a Malian analyst and former presidential advisor, said Gassama’s act was praised in his home country.

“There is great pride here in Mali,” Thiam said, adding, “But while (Gassama) gets the honors, there are… Malian citizens under the threat of being expelled by the French government.”

Meanwhile, the boy’s father, who had reportedly left the boy alone at home, has been arrested and an investigation is underway to see if he committed a crime. The Paris prosecutor, François Molins, said, “His behavior constitutes an offense, failing to honor parental responsibilities, which carries a possible sentence of two years in jail.”

Source: Presstv

More than two dozen people have been killed in one of Cameroon’s restive Anglophone regions, in what appears to have been an operation by government forces against alleged separatists.

One witness said anonymously on Saturday that she had seen 29 bodies — including those of women and young boys — in the town of Menka, in Cameroon’s Anglophone Northwest Region, where armed secessionists have been fighting against the predominantly Francophone central government since last year.

She said at least three bodies were lying outside a school.

The bodies “are rotting already and reek,” she said.

Another source told Reuters that 34 bodies had been discovered on Friday.

The exact circumstances of the deaths were unknown.

A spokesman for the Cameroonian army said in a statement that government forces had been tipped off to the presence of separatists in a hotel in Menka, had been deployed there, and had engaged in a long firefight with elements inside the hotel.

“Several terrorists were neutralized,” the spokesman, Colonel Didier Badjeck, said, without providing further details.

“The people in the village confirmed that there was an exchange of fire, and some bodies were found in the hotel rooms,” said Nji Tumasang, a member of the English-speaking opposition Social Democratic Front (SDF).

Tumasang said that John Fru Ndi, the SDF’s leader who led a delegation to Menka, said local “people do not think they (the deceased) were separatists, but rather criminals.”

Demands for independence by the English-speaking minority in the Anglophone Southwest and Northwest regions of Cameroon have been rejected by the country’s long-time leader, 85-year-old President Paul Biya.

Separatists advocating for the secession of Southwest Region from the Republic of Cameroon declared the establishment of the self-proclaimed “Republic of Ambazonia” in October last year.

Cameroon’s Anglophones make up about a fifth of the country’s population of 22 million. Both English and French are official languages in Cameroon.

Source: Presstv

The bodies of eight young men were discovered in Cameroon’s restive Northwest anglophone region, an opposition MP and eyewitnesses told AFP on Friday.

Local residents found the bodies in the bush in the town of Menka. Photos of a dozen dead bodies circulated on social media. Violence between armed anglophone separatists and government forces occurs almost daily in the Northwest Region and the Southwest Region, following an escalation of the crisis in late 2016.

According to Menka residents, the Cameroonian army fended off an attack in the area in mid-May but soldiers returned overnight between Sunday and Monday. Many young people have been missing since.

“There have been some killings in Menka by the army,” Nji Tumasang, deputy of the first anglophone opposition party, the Social Democratic Front, told AFP.

“We think that at first glance they are civilians because no weapon was found on them. The husband of an activist from our party is among the victims.”

The Cameroonian government did not comment when approached by AFP.

Since anglophone separatists declared independence last October, dozens of officials and foreigners have been targeted for abduction.

Abductions are also used as a tool to enforce allegiance among locals who have not taken up the separatist cause.

Earlier this month, the US ambassador to Cameroon accused government forces of carrying out “targeted killings” and other abuses in the fight against independence-seeking militants.

The foreign ministry later expressed its “deep disapproval” of the comments made by US ambassador in Yaounde, Peter Barlerin.

The presence of a large English-speaking minority — about a fifth of Cameroon’s population of 22 million — dates back to the colonial period.

It was once a German colony that after World War I was divided between Britain and France.

In 1960, the French colony gained independence, becoming Cameroon, and the following year, the British-ruled Southern Cameroons was amalgamated into it, becoming the Northwest and Southwest Regions.

For years, resentment built among anglophones, fostered by perceived marginalisation in education, the judiciary and the economy at the hands of the French majority.

Demands for greater autonomy were rejected by 85-year-old President Paul Biya, in power for more than 35 years, leading to an escalation that saw the declaration of the self-described “Republic of Ambazonia” in October last year.

Source: Pulse.ng

Cameroon government forces have killed at least 30 Southern Cameroons civilians in Menka- Pinyin in the Northern Zone outside Bamenda, while another Biya regime attack on a small settlement in the Southern Zone of Mbalangi left 22 dead.  The death toll came a week after the US ambassador Peter Barlerin called on President Biya to stop the senseless killings of Ambazonians and to step down.

In Santa Sub Division, the Anglophone Minister of Territorial Administration, Paul Atanga Nji reportedly planned and ordered government forces to use conventional explosives on innocent civilian population, a senior Roman Catholic clergy said.

The assault is part of an indiscriminate campaign by President Biya’s forces to retake control of the territory now known as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.  Cameroon Intelligence Report sources in Bamenda noted that there are no doctors to treat patients for severe gun wounds.

The Communication Secretary of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government, Hon. Chris Anu who confirmed the genocide currently going on in the Santa sub constituency said the toll is expected to rise. The spokesperson for the Ambazonia Self-Defense Council Restoration Forces said it had identified 42 bodies so far. Exhausted and shell-shocked Southern Cameroons civilians have fled into the forest.

An 83 year old woman interviewed by our correspondent in Santa said she had gone three days without food. Others said the Francophone army had hoarded food and humiliated civilians, even shooting people trying to leave.

The UN offices in Yaounde and Calabar have warned of a humanitarian crisis in Southern Cameroons and in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The assault on Southern Cameroons for over two years now has devastated more that 72 towns and villages across the territory and damaged and destroyed more than a dozen schools. At least 1,500 Southern Cameroons civilians have been killed.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with files from Sama Ernest in Santa