Category Archives: Cameroon

Report clears WWF of complicity in violent abuses by conservation rangers

Posted on by

But independent review criticises wildlife fund’s inconsistent approach to human rights

A long-awaited report into allegations that conservation rangers supported by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) committed violent abuses in several countries, including murder, has cleared the organisation’s staff of complicity but criticised it for serious shortcomings in oversight.

But even as the report was released, campaigners for tribal rights – including Survival International, which has long been a critic of WWF – suggested the report had failed to investigate some of the most serious issues and that it had been released two days before the US Thanksgiving holiday in an attempt to bury the news.

Continue reading...

US to send asylum seekers home to Cameroon despite ‘death plane’ warnings

Posted on by

Move by the Trump administration comes despite reports that other deportees have gone missing since being repatriated

The US is expected to fly Cameroonian asylum seekers back to their home country on Tuesday despite fears that their lives will be at risk and reports that deportees repatriated last month are now missing.

Some of the deportees are activists from the country’s anglophone minority, who face arrest warrants for their political activities from government forces with a well documented record of extrajudicial killings. They and their lawyers refer to Tuesday’s flight as the “death plane”.

Continue reading...

For the sake of Cameroon, life-president Paul Biya must be forced out | Vava Tampa

Posted on by

The country should be rich, but millions live in dire poverty. France must stop supporting the president and his electoral ploys

On 6 December, Africa’s oldest serving leader, Paul Biya, and his ruling party, Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (RDPC), will be declared the winner of the country’s first ever regional elections.

That much is clear, and is expected inside and outside of the west African country – Biya has misruled with an iron fist for nearly 40 years. But the question we should be asking, but as yet have not, is what this means for Cameroon’s 25 million people. In my view the answer is more poverty, more violence, more corruption and more suffering. This should compel us all to act.

Continue reading...

Gunmen kill at least six children in attack on Cameroon school

Posted on by

Attackers fired indiscriminately at schoolchildren in area where separatist insurgents are active

Gunmen stormed a school in Cameroon on Saturday and opened fire indiscriminately, killing at least six children and wounding about eight more in a region where separatist insurgents operate, officials and parents said.

Arriving on motorbikes and in civilian clothes, the attackers hit the school around midday in the city of Kumba in the Southwest Region, according to the accounts, including from one parent outside the school at the time.

Continue reading...

US Ice officers ‘used torture to make Africans sign own deportation orders’

Posted on by

Cameroonians say officers choked, beat and threatened to kill them, as lawyers tell of pre-election removal drive

US immigration officers allegedly tortured Cameroonian asylum seekers to force them to sign their own deportation orders, in what lawyers and activists describe as a brutal scramble to fly African migrants out of the country in the run-up to the elections.

Many of the Cameroonian migrants in a Mississippi detention centre refused to sign, fearing death at the hands of Cameroonian government forces responsible for widespread civilian killings, and because they had asylum hearings pending.

Continue reading...

Jihadists kill 14 soldiers in attack on Nigerian army base

Posted on by

Islamic State West Africa Province fighters fired machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, sources say

Jihadists linked to the Islamic State group have killed 14 Nigerian soldiers in an attack on an army base, military sources have said.

Two sources told Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity that fighters from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) group had attacked the base in Jakana on Friday evening, firing machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

Continue reading...

Chad halts lake’s world heritage status request over oil exploration

Posted on by

Exclusive: African state says it has agreements with oil companies in Lake Chad area

Chad has asked to suspend an application for world heritage site status for Lake Chad to explore oil and mining opportunities in the region, it can be revealed.

In a letter leaked to the Guardian, Chad’s tourism and culture minister wrote to Unesco, the body which awards the world heritage designation, asking to “postpone the process of registering Lake Chad on the world heritage list”.

Continue reading...

Vaccine-derived polio spreads in Africa after defeat of wild virus

Posted on by

Fresh cases of disease linked to oral vaccine seen in Sudan, following outbreak in Chad

A new polio outbreak in Sudan has been linked to the oral polio vaccine that uses a weakened form of the virus.

News of the outbreak comes a week after the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that wild polio had been eradicated in Africa.

Continue reading...

‘Our dead are buried there’: Ebo logging decree sparks anger in Cameroon

Posted on by

Ebo forest is home to hundreds of rare species including Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees

A Cameroonian government decree allowing logging in a forest that is home to some of the world’s most endangered species has sparked outrage among local communities and conservation groups.

The richly biodiverse Ebo forest is one of the last intact forests in central Africa and home to hundreds of rare flora and animal species.

Continue reading...

‘Will we die of hunger?’: how Covid-19 lockdowns imperil street children

Posted on by

For millions of young people, coronavirus restrictions have made access to food, water and shelter even more precarious

Timothy, a teenager on the streets of Mombasa, wonders how he will eat. “Rich people can stay home … because they have a store well stocked with food,” he says. “For a survivor on the street your store is your stomach.”

However, says another, if the rumours are true and street children are arrested in the city during the Covid-19 crisis, he’d be happy to go to Shimo women’s prison, because there “you are sure to get free food, shelter and medical services”.

Continue reading...

Manu Dibango, Cameroon jazz-funk star, dies aged 86 of coronavirus

Posted on by

Musician who influenced Michael Jackson dies in Paris hospital from Covid-19 infection

Manu Dibango, the Cameroonian musician celebrated for his blend of jazz, funk and traditional west African styles, has died aged 86 in a Paris hospital after contracting Covid-19.

A message on his Facebook page announced the news with “deep sadness”, and added: “His funeral service will be held in strict privacy, and a tribute to his memory will be organised when possible.”

Continue reading...

‘Gold pits have become tombs’: mining leaves a tragic legacy in Cameroon

Posted on by

The ruthless quest for gold in eastern Cameroon has left the landscape peppered with deadly open pits

It was the last day of the summer holidays when, on his way to meet friends in his hometown of Batouri, eastern Cameroon, 12-year-old Saustem Brandon Samba slipped on reddish mud and fell into what at first looked like a large puddle.

The puddle turned out to be an abandoned gold mine, with a steep drop, 18 metres deep. Samba tried to get out, his arms and legs scrambling frantically in search of something to grip on to as muddy water choked him.

His father, Sah, still carries a photo of his son’s lifeless body after it was recovered from the mining pit in September 2017.

Between 2017 and 2019, at least 115 children and adults drowned or were buried alive by landfalls in the mostly abandoned pits in the East and Adamawa regions of Cameroon, according to Forests and Rural Development (Foder), a local watchdog that is alone in tracking the accidents and deaths.

“The whole area was not at all secure,” says Sah, whose fury is clear as he describes how gold mining pits in the region – which locals call “tombs” – have been left open and abandoned by Chinese companies, among others.

Continue reading...

Facebook removes Africa accounts linked to Russian troll factory

Posted on by

Fake networks in eight nations are connected to man allegedly behind disinformation empire

Facebook has taken down accounts linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin – the businessman allegedly behind Russia’s notorious troll factory – which were actively seeking to influence the domestic politics of a range of African countries.

The company said on Wednesday it had suspended three networks of “inauthentic” Russian accounts. The Facebook pages targeted eight countries across the continent: Madagascar, the Central African Republic (CAR), Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Sudan and Libya.

Continue reading...

Australia denies Cameroonian journalist visa for press freedom conference

Posted on by

Authorities believed Mimi Mefo, an award-winning journalist who works for Deutsche Welle in Berlin, might try to stay

A Berlin-based journalist who was due to speak at a press freedom conference in Brisbane has said she was denied a visa by the Australian government because they believed she might try to stay.

Mimi Mefo, an award-winning Cameroonian journalist who currently works for Deutsche Welle, was scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the Integrity 20 conference on Friday.

Continue reading...

Lake Chad shrinking? It’s a story that masks serious failures of governance | Oli Brown and Janani Vivekananda

Posted on by

Our two-year study shows the lake has been stable since the 1990s. Costly ‘solutions’ shift focus from the complex causes of the region’s deadly crisis

Lake Chad is a hydrological miracle – a life-giving, freshwater lake in the Sahara desert. But the region around the lake has been engulfed in a violent crisis for more than a decade, which has left nearly 10 million people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

Military crackdowns on insurgent groups such as Boko Haram have failed to end the violence. Bringing durable peace to the region requires unpicking a Gordian knot of many interlinked factors: poverty, sectarian mistrust, political marginalisation and corruption. The risks posed by the climate crisis to the rainfall-dependent livelihoods of the people of Lake Chad are an important strand of this challenge.

Continue reading...

Stay home or risk being shot: Cameroon’s back-to-school crisis

Posted on by

An education ban enforced by separatist rebels has affected 600,000 children in English-speaking areas

The lessons at Seraphine Akwa’s house were supposed to be secret. She had been teaching at a primary school in Bamenda, in anglophone Cameroon, but repeated threats had forced the headmaster to shut the school’s doors.

The threats were from the “Amba boys”, separatists who have been fighting a two-year battle with Cameroon’s francophone government to break off and form their own state, Ambazonia. They enforced a school boycott to protest against educational injustices against English-speakers.

Continue reading...

Violence forces 1.9 million children out of classes in west and central Africa

Posted on by

Unicef report points to three-fold increase in number of schools closed in the region in two years due to intensifying conflict

More than 1.9 million children are forced out of school across west and central Africa due to rising violence and insecurity, putting them at higher risk of recruitment by armed groups, the UN’s children agency has warned.

In an urgent report published on Friday, Unicef revealed that more than 9,000 schools have been shut down as of June this year in eight countries; Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger and Nigeria.

Continue reading...

Cameroonian forces in anglophone region accused of killing four people

Posted on by

Victims include male civilian, 20, with mental health disability and elderly disabled man

Cameroonian forces have killed at least four civilians during security operations in one of the country’s anglophone regions in the past month, according to a human rights organisation, including two men with disabilities.

An uprising by separatists that began two years ago and the response by security forces have caused intense suffering in the anglophone regions of the former German colony, which was carved up by France and Britain during the first world war.

Continue reading...

In a world full of wars, why are so many of them ignored? | Simon Tisdall

Posted on by

Instability across central Africa has resulted in a humanitarian crisis. There needs to be greater focus on conflict resolution

Cameroon, a central African state of 24 million people on the Gulf of Guinea, is rarely in the news – which is surprising, given the awful things happening there. In a warring world full of conflict, the country’s troubles barely rate a mention. That’s short-sighted. As Yemen shows, today’s local difficulties have a habit of becoming tomorrow’s international crises.

Long-running tensions between Cameroon’s French and English-speaking communities came to a head last week with the arrest of at least 350 members of the main opposition party, whose leader has been jailed since January. Human Rights Watch accused security forces of using “excessive and indiscriminate force”.

Continue reading...