Tag: Cameroon

Africa
Cameroon soldier

Pre-electoral violence deepens Cameroon crisis

Cameroon’s two western regions saw a dramatic surge in political violence ahead of parliamentary and municipal elections. Amnesty International has accused the army of dozens of killings, the burning of villages, and the displacement of thousands of people in operations over the past weeks against the separatist movement in Northwest and Southwest regions. The anglophone militants demanding independence from the rest of francophone Cameroon vowed to disrupt the polls and also stepped up their attacks. They ordered the closure of schools and markets in the western regions, and told people to stay indoors. The crisis has shuttered more than 40% of the health centers in the two regions, and more than 600,000 children are out of school. At least 3,000 civilians have died since the conflict began in 2016, and 730,000 people have been displaced. (Photo via Jurist)

Africa
Cameroon soldier

Rights abuses mount in conflicted Cameroon

Human Rights Watch exposed the abuse of detainees at a detention center in Cameroon’s capital city of Yaoundé, identifying violations of domestic and international human rights law. Torture and arbitrary detention have been “endemic in Cameroon’s law enforcement and military system,” carried out by gendarmes and other security forces of the State Defense Secretariat. These tactics are employed against suspected members or supporters of Boko Haram or armed separatist groups operating in the country’s west. (Photo via Jurist)

Africa

Ambazonia leaders on trial in Cameroon

The 10 Ambazonian leaders facing trial before a military tribunal in Cameroon's capital Yaounde are disputing the tribunal's authority to judge them, denying Cameroonian sovereignty over their homeland. They also deny their own Cameroonian nationality. asserting that they are citizens of Ambazonia, or the former British Southern Cameroons—a country the Yaounde tribunal says "does not yet exist." The defendants are known as the "Nera 10," for the hotel in Abuja, Nigeria, where they were detained by security agents in January 2018 and forcibly deported to Cameroon. They had been seeking asylum in Nigeria following Cameroon's violent crackdown on the Ambazonia independence movement. The lead defendant is Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe, president of the declared Ambazonian government. Since the trial opened in November, violence has again escalated in Ambazonia, where some 400,000 have now been displaced. (Photo via Journal du Cameroun)

Africa

Podcast: the struggle in Ambazonia

In Episode 27 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg interviews Eben Egbe and Amy Dalton of the Global Initiative to end the Cameroons Colonial Conflict (Gi3C), who discuss the independence struggle in Ambazonia—a territory that was illegally annexed by Cameroon following the end of colonial rule in 1960. The past year has seen a terrible increase in state terror in Ambazonia from the French-backed neo-colonial Cameroon authorities, with protesters fired upon by helicopter gunships, and finally villages burned by military forces, sending the residents fleeing into the bush. Some 400,000 people have been internally displaced, with a further 20,000 having crossed the border into Nigeria as refugees. Cameroon also receives military aid from the US, ostensibly for the fight against Boko Haram in the north of the country—but this same military is now being unleashed against the civilian populace in the unrelated conflict in Ambazonia in the south. The Gi3C has issued an urgent call for the UN Human Rights Council, which convenes for it's 40th annual meeting this week in Geneva, to send a fact-finding delegation to the region. Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast via Patreon. (Photo: Ambazonia representatives with flag, far right, at France meeting of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, via Bareta News)

Africa

Nigeria: ‘war crimes’ in fight against Boko Haram

Thousands of women and girls who survived the brutal rule of the Boko Haram armed group have since been further abused by the Nigerian security forces who claim to be rescuing them, said Amnesty International in a new report. The report reveals how the Nigerian military and its paramilitary arm, the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF), have separated women from their husbands and confined them in remote "satellite camps," where they have been raped, sometimes forced to submit in exchange for food. Amnesty International has collected evidence that thousands have starved to death in the camps in Borno state since 2015. (Photo: IRIN)

Africa

Amnesty accuses Cameroon of war crimes

Amnesty International accuses Cameroon of torturing suspected supporters of Boko Haram in its military campaign against the jihadist group. According to the human rights organization, hundreds of suspects have been "subjected to severe beatings, agonizing stress positions and drownings, with some tortured to death" at the hands of government authorities.

Africa

Niger: army massacres displaced peasants

Niger's army killed 14 displaced peasants who were apparently mistaken for jihadists in a "free-fire zone" in the restive southeast, where Boko Haram militants stage regular attacks.

Africa

Cameroonians between army and Boko Haram

As Boko Haram continues its campaign of suicide attacks in northern Cameroon, the army is enforcing a "free-fire zone" along the Nigerian border, claiming still more local lives.

Africa

US troops mobilized to Cameroon

The Pentagon has dispatched the first contingent of a 300-strong force to northern Cameroon, where they are to provide intelligence for the regional military alliance against Boko Haram.

Africa

Chad, Cameroon terror attacks target refugees

Coordinated suicide attacks left over 40 dead in villages in western Chad and northern Cameroon that host thousands of Nigerian refugees who have fled Boko Haram violence.

Africa

Boko Haram kills hundreds in Cameroon: report

A report by Amnesty International details atrocities committed by Boko Haram in northern Cameroon, resulting in the killing of at least 400 civilians over the past months.