Facing a growing pro-democracy movement, Cameroon is resorting to an old formula – namely unleashing government power in the form of threats, arrests and excessive force.

Hundreds of supporters of Maurice Kamto, leader of the opposition Cameroon Resistance Movement, have been filling the streets, demanding his release from detention but were detained themselves by security forces on June 8, 2019. According to his lawyer, Kamto could be charged with: insurrection, hostility against the homeland, criminal association, threats to public order, rebellion, group rebellion, and inciting insurrection.

A respected professor of international law, former dean of the faculty of Juridical and Political Sciences at University of Yaoundé II, and former chairman and special rapporteur of the UN International Law Commission from 1999 to 2016, Kamto has been locked up since January 28 after he challenged the sweeping electoral victory of President Paul Biya. His offenses could result in the death penalty.

He and his other jailed supporters are reported to have begun a hunger strike.

Ida Sawyer, deputy Africa director at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, commented: “The Cameroonian government’s crackdown shows that it is unwilling to accept a role for opposition parties, sending a chilling message to those who would dare challenge the status quo.”

She added: “The latest crackdown was consistent with the methods of a government whose security forces have committed grave abuses against civilians and dissenting voices in recent years.”

Local activists condemned authorities for denying lawful permits to protest – a violation of the Constitution. “We are exercising our constitutional rights,” said Christopher Ndong of the Cameroon Resistance Movement, “because we have a right to march and protest when things are going wrong.”

Human rights activist Jean Pierre Bengono also criticized the government of Paul Biya for deploying the security forces in riot gear to disperse crowds in Yaounde, Douala and Mbouda. Organized democracies need the opposition to check political excesses and discuss the well-being of its people, he maintained.

Kamto challenged the vote totals in the presidential election of October 7, 2018, and accused President Paul Biya, who has led the country for 36 years, of stealing his victory.

Beyond Cameroon’s borders, calls for his release have come from the UN Secretary-General, Amnesty International, and Board of The Hague Academy of International Law, in which Kamto serves, among others.

Government minister Paul Atanga Nji responded to the growing chorus of condemnation with a warning. “We can no longer tolerate those who undermine the laws of the republic. He [Kamto] has a hidden agenda to destabilize Cameroon. We will not give him the opportunity,” he said.

Source [IDN-InDepthNews

Cameroon’s House Speaker of National Assembly Cavaye Yeguie Djibril on Monday denounced foreign interference in the country’s internal affairs which he referred to as “conspiracy.”

“Cameroon has become an object of conspiracy intended to destabilize the country. To justify their interference in internal affairs, the conspirators pretend to denounce it. According to them, the political system in Cameroon is against all dialogue, upholds violence, and refuses to promote human rights,” Djibril said in the capital Yaounde at the opening of the June session of the National Assembly.

“These allegations are unfounded. The National Assembly condemns and denounces this with every ounce of energy,” Djibril said. “We welcome their support but not their interference.”

Foreign powers in Europe and North America have repeatedly blamed Cameroon government for “lacking the will” to solve the conflict in the English-speaking regions of the country where armed separatists want to create an independent nation.

According to Djibril, the government was “working very hard” to restore “durable peace” and security in the two Anglophone regions.

“There is a proper framework for this kind of relationship and that is what the speaker has been saying today and extending an invitation to the European Parliament for an information and study visit to Cameroon,” Joseph Owona, a senior member of parliament told reporters.

Source: Xinhuanet

A hundred members of the opposition Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC) were freed Thursday following their arrest during demonstrations last week, the party told AFP.

However MRC vice president Mamadou Mota, who was also detained on June 1, remains in detention, the same opposition party source said. “Today 100 of our members, arrested on Saturday… have been freed,” said lawyer Christopher Ndong, secretary general of the MRC.

In all, 351 MRC supporters were arrested during protests which took place in several towns throughout the country, including Nkongsamba, in the west, and Yaounde, according to the party’s figures.

“There are still 251 people incarcerated in prison cells,” said Ndong.

At least 30 of those arrested, including Mota, have been transferred to Yaounde’s main prison.

The prison also houses MRC head Maurice Kamto, the country’s main opposition figure who has been detained since January.

The MRC has been organising demonstrations since the October 2018 presidential election. According to official results, Kamto came second but the MRC says the vote was rigged in favour of President Paul Biya, who has been in power for 36 years.

Saturday’s protests called for the release of Kamto and other party supporters who were arrested after another protest in January.

Such protest marches are banned by Cameroon.

Video footage posted on social media sites Thursday show MRC militants claiming, after their release, that they were tortured while in detention.

The use of torture in police station is a frequent occurrence according to many sources.

In February Kamto and other opposition supporters appeared before a military tribunal in Yaounde accused of “insurrection, hostility to the homeland (and) rebellion”, offences which carry a possible death penalty.

Their lawyers have appealed to the UN working group on arbitrary detention over the arrests.

Source: AFP

Prospects for talks between authorities and separatist movements to end escalating violence in Cameroon’s English-speaking region are slim, a senior human rights official said on Friday (Jun 7), dismissing assertions by both sides to be open to dialogue.

A separatist insurgency broke out in 2017 following a government crackdown on peaceful protests in the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest, which complain of being marginalised by the French-speaking majority.

Prime Minister Joseph Ngute has said the government would be willing to talk to the rebels, but would not consider their demand for secession – a position hardline separatists have said they will never accept. Eleven movements representing Anglophone Cameroon, including the main armed factions, last month said they were willing to enter mediated discussions with the state. But almost daily violence from both sides has intensified, forcing thousands of civilians to seek refuge in Cameroon’s French-speaking regions and neighbouring countries. “There is no desire for dialogue … The abuses are coming from both sides and the civilians are finding themselves in the middle,” Ilaria Allegrozzi, Senior Central Africa Researcher at Human Rights Watch, told reporters in Paris. “The position of the government is an almost complete denial … and there is total impunity for the violence.”

The oil, cocoa and timber-producing nation was among western Africa’s most settled until a few years ago. But the United Nations estimates that, since 2017, about 1,800 people have been killed and more than 530,000 displaced with 1.3 million in need. Authorities have promised to act over accusations of rights violations by security personnel.

Allegrozzi, who was refused entry to the country in May over her research, said it was also clear that rebels were too divided to form a platform to negotiate, an element the government was using to its advantage. She estimated the total number of separatists fighters at about 3,000 and there was evidence that they were acquiring more sophisticated weaponry.

The crisis has tended to slip beneath the international radar given President Paul Biya’s close cooperation with Western states in the fight against Islamist militant group Boko Haram in West and central Africa. But the United States has become increasingly critical of the government and the separatist crisis was discussed for the first time at the U.N. Security Council last month.

Allegrozzi said the Anglophone population was increasingly in tune with idea of independence. “There is a growing feeling of support towards the separatists and secession,” she said.

Source: Reuters/nh

As Cameroon tops a list of the most neglected crises, the world must help those in need and demand an end to attacks on civilians

Mary hands me two tattered photos. In the first, family members stand proudly outside their modest home in Buea, South-West Cameroon. In the second, an empty plot remains, their wooden hut burned to the ground.

Mary and the 14 family members who lived in the house fled to the bush last December. They are still waiting for help to rebuild their home and their lives.

Conflict has uprooted half a million people in South-West and North-West Cameroon. Hundreds of villages like Mary’s have been razed. Hospitals have been attacked. Health workers fear being abducted or killed. Over 780,000 children are out of school, and their teachers are attacked and abused if they try to restart classes.

When brutal fighting displaces hundreds of thousands of civilians, it usually sets international alarm bells ringing. But Cameroon’s fast-deteriorating crisis has resulted in no mediation efforts, no large relief programme, little media interest and too little pressure on the parties to stop attacking civilians.

The silence is chilling.

This is why Cameroon tops this year’s global list of the most neglected displacement crises, according to NRC’s annual tracking system.

Cameroon’s crisis has roots in the country’s troubled colonial history. After World War One, the former German colony was split between a French and British mandate. When the French part became independent in 1960, people in the English speaking regions had to merge with either Nigeria- or French-speaking Cameroon. What was then known as Southern Cameroons ended up with the latter, creating a country with French and English as official languages. However, communities in the English-speaking part of the country have felt increasingly marginalized since.

In 2016, people took to the streets in peaceful demonstrations. A heavy crackdown by security forces ensued, leading to widespread violence and the formation of armed opposition groups.

A year later, non-state armed groups in the region officially declared a symbolic independence from Cameroon, followed by clashes between the national army and secessionist groups. Both sides have been accused of horrific human rights violations. The UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, described the situation as spiraling completely out of control, after visiting in May.

Unbiased information is scarce. Social media is swamped by photos of apparent atrocities. But independent journalists are absent or restricted, and the crisis rarely makes international headlines.

The lack of public attention to the crisis is followed closely by a lack of financial support. Despite being one of the smallest UN’s aid appeals, Cameroon is among the least funded. The consequences of this can been seen immediately.

When I visited Cameroon in April, only a splattering of poorly-resourced international relief organisations were visible on the ground. Too few reach beyond the provincial capitals, so many families receive no assistance, even though it is possible to negotiate access with the parties on the ground. Communities ration and share the little assistance they receive, often travelling long distances themselves to deliver aid to those still hiding in the bush.

The women I spoke with in Buea said they feel abandoned by the international community. They asked me, ‘where is the international solidarity? Where is Europe?’

Europe is dragging its heels. Cameroon’s colonial history should be an argument for positive engagement today, and not disengagement. Furthermore, Cameroon is seen as an important ally for many countries in the fight against Boko Haram in the country’s north. The attention to problems there is no excuse for political inaction.

Countries with influence in the region must demand conflict parties stop attacks on civilians and allow schools to reopen.

When I addressed an informal session of the United Nations Security Council in May, my message on Cameroon was clear. More aid is needed, but it is only a temporary solution. Coherent conflict resolution efforts towards a political solution are the only thing that will end the violence and the suffering. Regional and international bodies, like the African Union, the European Union and the UN Security Council can and should play a more important role.

There is still time to avert a full-blown war.

Source: Reuters

Cameroon’s opposition on Sunday denounced the arrests of more than 350 supporters at demonstrations calling for the release of their jailed leader, and criticised the refusal to grant them access to lawyers.

Maurice Kamto, the country’s main opposition figure, who has been held in jail in Yaounde since January, issued a statement via his spokesman decrying “excessive and unjustified use of violence” at the demonstrations held on Saturday.

According to Kamto’s Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC) party more than 350 people were arrested, including 180 at Yaounde and 100 in the western city of Nkongsamba.

The party also said that those arrested were denied access to lawyers or any medical aid. Contacted by AFP Saturday, Cameroon’s communications ministry did not respond.

The MRC has been organising demonstrations since the October 2018 presidential election. According to official results, Kamto came second but the MRC says the vote was rigged in favour of President Paul Biya, who has been in power for 36 years.

As well as Kamto, more than 150 of the party’s activists were also imprisoned after one such march at the end of January.

In February, they appeared before a military tribunal in Yaounde accused of “insurrection, hostility to the homeland (and) rebellion”, offences which carry a possible death penalty.

Their lawyers have appealed to the UN working group on arbitrary detention over the arrests.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini criticised the arrests in March and what she called the military court’s “disproportionate” proceedings against them.

US assistant secretary of state for African affairs Tibor Nagy said in March that Cameroon would be “very wise” to release Kamto because his detention is widely perceived as politically motivated.

The government has rejected the international criticism.

On Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told his parliament’s foreign affairs committee that he was “very concerned” by the plight of Maurice Kamto and wanted to see him released.

As well as the political crisis, former French colony Cameroon is wracked by a conflict between separatists and government forces in its English-speaking west, combined with an influx of refugees from the Central African Republic and Nigeria.

Source: AFP

In Cameroon, President Biya appointed a new Government on 4 January, which included 11 women. More than half of the country’s 60 ministers were replaced. As legislative and municipal elections remained postponed by presidential decree, supporters of the main opposition parties called for a revision of the electoral law. Meanwhile, on 5 April, Parliament enacted a law on decentralization to determine the number of regional councillors. On 26 January, protests erupted in major cities throughout the country, eliciting a violent response by internal security forces and triggering mass arrests. Those arrested included several Members of Parliament from the Social Democratic Front and the leader of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, Maurice Kamto, together with 200 of Mr. Kamto’s supporters, who are currently standing trial before a military tribunal on charges that include rebellion, insurrection and public disturbance. Some of those charges carried the death penalty. In an interview broadcast on 19 March, the spokesperson for President Biya announced that the President would reject dialogue with Mr. Kamto, who had requested a face-to-face discussion.

The security situation in the North-West and South-West Regions of Cameroon remained of serious concern, with a new wave of kidnappings and killings in early 2019. On 24 January, the leader of the separatist group, Southern Cameroons Defence Forces, was reportedly killed by the national armed forces. In February, nearly 70 people were killed during a separatist-imposed 10-day lockdown to disrupt National Youth Day activities in the two regions. On 11 February, an arson attack on the Kumba District Hospital in the South-West Region resulted in at least four patients killed and several others injured. On 19 March, the former Secretary of State in charge of secondary education was kidnapped from his residence in Bamenda by suspected secessionist fighters. On 20 March, 16 students were abducted from the University of Buea by unidentified gunmen. The Government accused the secessionists of the abductions. The authorities announced their intention to carry out investigations into alleged human rights violations by security forces in the affected regions, but no outcome was made public.

Culled from Reliefweb

Hundreds of members of Cameroon’s main opposition party are being held in custody after the country’s security forces carried out mass arrests during a series of anti-government protests over the weekend.

Two people were injured and 351 arrested on Saturday in four regions of the central African country in protests against its octogenarian president, Paul Biya, and his government. Several senior opposition leaders were among those arrested. Only a handful of people have been released.

The protesters’ demands included the release of their leader, Maurice Kamto, as well as hundreds of people arrested in earlier protests, and called for an end to the killings in the anglophone regions of the country, where a bloody conflict has played out over the last two years.

Kamto was arrested in January after protests against what he and his party, the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (MRC), say was a stolen election last October. He was later charged with insurrection, rebellion and “hostility to the homeland” by a military court, charges that theoretically carry the death penalty. Arrests have spiked in 2019, since Biya claimed a disputed landslide victory.

Saturday’s demonstrators also called for an investigation into what happened to the money for hosting the 2019 African Cup of Nations football tournament – a right Cameroon was stripped of because of delays in delivering the necessary infrastructure – and a revision of the electoral code.

“We were singing and asking them to free Mr Kamto and the other people, when they just came and asked us all to enter their vehicle,” said Samuel Kuetche, who was later released. “These people are heartless. We didn’t have any guns on us. We were not fighting anybody, but they forcefully took us to the police station.”

Opposition leaders said protest was a right enshrined in the country’s constitution.

Christopher Ndong, the secretary general of the MRC and one of the few leaders not behind bars, said: “It shows how dictatorial and how wicked [the government is] and how they are not willing to listen to the people. They shall continue arresting us because we shall not give up. You can’t be arresting people because you don’t want to listen to them.”

The situation in the anglophone north-west and south-west regions reached new depths last week with the killing of a four-month-old baby. Her parents were forced to flee after accusing state forces of killing her in a video, and are still in hiding. The government has not opened an investigation into the case.

Half a million people have fled their homes because of the violence, many of them crossing the border into Nigeria.

“Hundreds of villages have been burned, close to a million children are out of school, and tens of thousands are hiding in the bushes without any support. The international silence surrounding atrocities is as shocking as the untold stories are heartbreaking,” said Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, on a visit in April.

Another protest planned for next Saturday is expected to attract a higher number of people.

Source: The Guardian

Cameroon is accusing the international NGOs of exaggerating the crisis in the country’s two English-speaking regions. Separatists there have been fighting the government troops since 2017, alleging years of marginalization by authorities of the mostly French-speaking country.

External relations minister Lejeune Mbella Mbella said Thursday his country has been the object of ceaseless attacks from international NGOs, rights groups and aid agencies over its handling of the separatist movement.

This week, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told lawmakers in Paris that he is disturbed by the growing loss of human life in the regions.

On Wednesday, Refugees International said the Cameroonian government has refused to recognize the severity of the crisis and that international donors may be forced to reconsider their contributions.

The United Nations estimates at least 1,800 people have been killed and more than 530,000 displaced since fighting broke out in the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions in 2017. It says about 1.3 million people are in need.

Mbella Mbella said the figures are exaggerated to give the impression Cameroon is not able to handle the situation.

He said the government, with the assistance of its international partners, has distributed humanitarian assistance including goods of basic necessity, school books, planting seeds and building material to 75,000 of the 150,000 internally displaced persons.

Mbella Mbella did not give a number for those who have died but said it was Cameroon’s duty to lead peace efforts to ensure that stability and peace return to the regions.

He said the government is capable of doing that as a sovereign state without the intervention of other nations.

He said although it has been accused of committing atrocities, the Cameroon military has only been protecting its citizens from separatist fighters and defending the territorial integrity of the country. He said the military has been very professional in executing its task against what he termed barbaric fighters.

Mbella Mbella accused some rights groups of wanting to destabilize Cameroon by giving an impression the crisis is escalating and the government is not doing enough to resolve it.

One of the groups accused was Human Rights Watch.

Ilaria Allegrozzi, a central Africa researcher for HRW, was refused access to Cameroon last May, on the grounds she did not give proper information about the crisis.

She says the group should be allowed to do its work, which is essentially to promote human rights.

“We have tried to establish and open frank dialogue with the government and we will continue to do so. By enabling human rights organizations to operate without obstacles and without difficulties, Cameroon would demonstrate its willingness to allow rigorous and independent scrutiny of its efforts to adhere to international human rights law,” Allegrozzi said.

Alice Nkom, a local human rights lawyer, says humanitarian needs are rising by the day because the crisis is worsening and the military option taken by President Paul Biya is not a good one.

“He is still deaf and dumb when it is about peace or dialogue. He wants to use soldiers and give them the mandate to do what they can do with guns,” Nkom said.

Biya has said he is open to dialogue with the separatists but will not discuss the division of Cameroon. He has branded the separatists as terrorists.

Source: VOA

As students in Cameroon began their annual exams Monday, hundreds of their teachers in English-speaking regions were on the streets protesting. The teachers are demanding better security after three teachers and a student were abducted, adding to scores captured, killed, or whose property was torched during a two-year separatist conflict.

Teachers dressed in dark clothes and holding signs demanding better security walk down a street in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s northwest region.

While their students take end of year exams, the teachers are underscoring that the region’s schools are under attack.

A wave of school abductions and killings in the region’s separatist conflict has shaken the teachers, who have been protesting daily since Friday.

“We are tired. Lord, help the teachers of Cameroon, help the teachers of northwest. We do not know what to do, we do not know where to go,” says a teacher.

Thirty-one-year old teacher Wontai Vondou Olivier was beheaded here last week, and his head dumped on the street.

A video allegedly filmed by Wontai’s murderers has been making rounds on social media. In the video, Wontai begs for his life while his captors say they have caught a spy and will cut off his head.

In another post, suspected separatist fighters say Cameroon troops killed the teacher to frame the rebels.

General Robbinson Agha denies the military could be responsible and points at the rebels.

“They behead. They cut off the heads of the soldiers here and then send on social media. Not only do they do that, they attack the houses of the soldiers and then destroy their properties,” he said. “Despite all of that, the soldiers and the forces of law and order stay disciplined. The moral psychological and physical torture is not easy.”

Rights groups say both sides — the military and separatists — are guilty of atrocities in the conflict.

Schools, seen by rebels as organs of Francophone dominance, are among the worst hit in the uprising by English-speaking separatists. Hundreds of teachers have been killed, wounded, abducted for ransom, or had their houses torched.

“We need a minimum of security to be able to exercise our profession,” said Semma Valentine, who is with Cameroon Teachers Trade Union (CATTU). “Teachers are at the risk of their personal integrity. Why are we being victimized? Why are we unable to exercise the profession for which we were trained?”

Roland Ngwang, the highest secondary education official in the northwest region, says, despite the security risk, teachers should continue working.

“The situation is sufficiently painful and very serious, but my appeal has been that let us be calm. Let’s be calm,” he said.

And as the teachers protested Monday, hundreds of students at Government Bilingual High School Bamenda began taking their exams, under close watch by heavily armed troops.

Source: VOA