Politics

 Martin Belinga Eboutou, Minister and Director of the Civil Cabinet at the Presidency of the Republic of Cameroon, made a public appearance last Sunday, July 24, 2016, at the Basilica of St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Yaounde, barely a few hours after  rumours when on air in the country of his passing away.  

The main "Man of the President", described as "vice president" by some local media,and insiders of Mr Biya's inner circles  represented the Head of State to at the closing Mass of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Catholic Church.

During the mass celebrated by Arch Bishop  Mathieu de Jesus, the Director of the Civil Cabinet of the Presidency of the Republic, appeared standing. Without support. Healthy,Energetic and Alive!

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Muluh Frank

26.Jul.2016

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Tapang Ivo

23.Jul.2016

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A command post of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) located at Damboré (Nigeria) occupied by Cameroonian soldiers, was attacked in the night yesterday Thursday, 21 July 2016 by members of Boko Haram. Last Sunday, Boko Haram had attacked (MNJTF)comand post in Kamouna (Cameroon), wounding a soldier and carrying away some arms and ammunition.

Nigeria and its neighbors pledged last year to come together to defeat Boko Haram, but experts say regional cooperation appears to be happening in fits and starts.

Collaboration across borders has long been seen as key to ending the Boko Haram insurgency, which started in Nigeria but has since spread through the country’s porous borders into neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

Nigerian and Cameroonian military officials say the Multinational Joint Task Force composed of troops from Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Benin is actively fighting Boko Haram and achieving some success.

Boko Haram, however, still carries out attacks in Nigeria and its neighbors, leading some experts to question whether regional cooperation is as deep as it should be.

In recent months, Nigeria’s military has announced joint patrols with Cameroon and operations backed by Chadian jets.

Nigerian military spokesman Rabe Abubakar said intelligence from U.S. drones based in Cameroon has been passed on to Nigeria, thanks to the task force.

“For the past three or four weeks we have been doing … operations in concert with other nations within the Lake Chad basin countries,” Abubakar said.

Cameroon military spokesman Didier Badjeck says the troops involved in the force mostly stay within their own borders but conduct joint operations and can cross into other countries to pursue the group.

“If everybody is playing his role in the zone, Boko Haram will finish,” Badjeck said.

Group remains potent

In June, the militants killed 26 soldiers, sacked a town and forced 50,000 people to flee in a series of attacks in Niger, not far from the Nigerian border.

And contrary to the assertions of Nigeria’s government, the group still controls territory in northeast Nigeria. A senior military official told VOA on condition of anonymity that the Mobbar and Abadam local governments, on the border with Niger, are still under Boko Haram control.

The group’s fight to impose strict Islamic law in northern Nigeria has killed more than 20,000 people and forced 2.7 million to flee.

John Campbell, a fellow at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations and a former American ambassador to Nigeria, said Boko Haram would not be as strong if the multinational task force was collaborating as intended.

“It would be transformative if it led to the destruction of Boko Haram,” Campbell said. “And it has not.”

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Rita Akana

22.Jul.2016

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Cameroonians have been expressing mixed opinions over the credibility of investigations carried out by the rights organization Amnesty International after a recent report accused the central African state of gross human rights violations in its fight against the terrorist group Boko Haram.

Twenty-six-year-old university student Haja Awah lost three members of her family to Boko Haram fighters in Mora on Cameroon's northern border with Nigeria two years ago.

She says as a victim of the insurgency, she was surprised by Amnesty International's accusations of gross human rights violations by the Cameroon military in the fight against Boko Haram, a group, she says, that is only interested in killing, raping, maiming and stealing.She says she has an impression Amnesty International has evil plans to destroy Cameroon because Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad and Niger are both fighting Boko Haram. But Amnesty is only interested in publishing reports about abuses in Cameroon. She says Amnesty should be explaining to the world that people are suffering and dying at the hands of Boko Haram fighters and Cameroon soldiers are struggling to save their lives.

Negative impact

Enenezer Akanga, Cameroon's state television journalist specialized in reporting the Boko Haram insurgency, says such reports are destabilizing and may discourage a military fighting to bring peace in a country that has suffered enormous human and material loses to terrorism.

"A country like Cameroon can not be in war against a terrorist group and Amnesty International thinks what it can do is to write reports saying that government is torturing Boko Haram militants. No. This is total rubbish. Has Amnesty International ever written a report to condemn the fact that Boko Haram is also killing Cameroonians? Does Boko Haram have the right to kill Cameroonians? Why is it that they don't make noise when Boko Haram kills Cameroonians, they only make noise when Cameroonian soldiers kill Boko Haram militants. No. We in Cameroon we fully support our soldiers, we support our government. Amnesty International should get away with this nonsense."

The report entitled "Right Cause, Wrong Means" published July 14 states that more than 1,000 people accused of supporting Boko Haram and arrested arbitrarily are held in horrific conditions and some are tortured to death, while some are dying from disease and malnutrition. It adds that Cameroon arbitrarily arrested hundreds of individuals accused of supporting Boko Haram, often with little or no evidence, and detained them in inhumane, often life-threatening conditions.

Pressure for accountability

Sociologist Emmanuel Ossomba says Amnesty International was simply doing its job to help protect innocent people who may be suffering in jail.

"They are merely doing their job. They talked about Cameroon respecting international laws," he said. "Amnesty says detention conditions are inhumane. It is true, some of the prisons were made for about 300 persons but they actually contain more than they are supposed to contain. Maybe [Cameroon should] look for alternatives to see how they could better handle the situation."

Cameroon Minister of Communication Issa Tchiroma has decried the report as done in bad faith, saying Amnesty's methodology followed no scientific norms. He accused Amnesty International of being biased and of intervening in security issues in a sovereign state without soliciting the government's point of view.

"I have never seen them here coming to me to say mister minister, we are here, members of Amnesty International and this is a study that we would like to carry and this is the result. I have never received them in my office with an application because they want to go to the field and do their investigation," said Tchiroma.

Alleged lack of cooperation

Ilaria Allegrozzi, Amnesty International's research officer for central Africa, says they respected research methodology, but says the Cameroon government failed to collaborate with them at the time the research was carried out.

She says after documenting the abuses, they informed Cameroon authorities, but unfortunately they did provide explanations before the publication of the report and as such the point of view of the government of Cameroon was not taken into consideration in the report. She says they have already explained to the government of Cameroon their worries and they are happy that on July 7, the minister of defense created an investigative commission on human rights violations in the fight against Boko Haram.

Amnesty has suggested that Cameroon should release people detained illegally to reduce the pressure on prisons and stop the abuses that it says intensified in 2016.

VOA

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Rita Akana

22.Jul.2016

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Security of Cameroon and its neighbors depends on seamless cooperation. At the last meeting in Abuja in May, during the second regional summit on security in Nigeria and neighboring countries, it was intended to maintain and develop military cooperation between the countries of the Basin Commission Lake Chad (LCBC),

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Rita Akana

21.Jul.2016

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Cameroon's Communication Minister and Spokesman for the New Deal Government of Paul Biya in a recent outing in Yaoundé, described imprisoned former Minister of Territorial administration and Decentralization, Marafa Hamidou YAYA,as a normal prisoner sentenced to 20 years in jail for intellectual complicity and embezzlement of public funds of about 14.5 billion FCFA.

 The Government Spokesman was reacting to allegations by the United Nations Working Group on Abitrary Detention that Marafa is a political prisoner. Thciroma, who has always been on the defensive, was once more seen in the spotlight making mouth watery declarations.

 In fact the Communication boss lambasted the results of an investigation carried out by five prominent UN appointed Jurists described by Marafa’s Counsel as Impartial and Independent Professors. It didn’t take more than a week for THCIROMA to present a defensive paper against a work that was done for six months. He was quick to say the UN Working group on Arbitrary Detention, WGAD, is not a court, not a conventional body and not even a supranational jurisdiction.

Mr TCHIROMA in his own words seems to say the Government of Cameroon did not violate any of what the Rights group has outlined ,that the rights of Marafa has been fully respected. But NO, the UN WGAD says Marafa was denied the right to fair public trial by impartial and independent judges, in clear violation of Cameroons voluntarily assumed obligations under article 10 of the United Nations declaration of Human Rights and article 14 of the international covenant on civil and political rights to fair public trial. Critics hold the response by Issa Tchiroma Bakary to the UN WGAD is similar to that which he gave to Amnesty International. Scanty, attacking. Poor in quality and heavy in quantity.

The government is giving an impression to the public that these foreign bodies hate Cameroon so much that they want to destroy it. Issa TCHIROMA attacked Amnesty International with an ill prepared counter offensive paper that only went a long way to rain insults on the Rights Group. But Both Tchiroma and Col. Badjeck of MINDEF lacked statistics in their counter report. An indication that Amnesty did their job at the back yard of the victim.

Critics have argued that Tchiroma had lame facts which proved the ill prepared nature of the Government in handling issues like this. Can the government not accept for once that they have made a mistake? Cameroon was quick to dance when Nigeria accepted the Bakassi peace agreement, what if Nigeria had refused? What if Nigeria had said same thing that the UN has no right to rule in favour of Cameroon? Cameroon joined the UN in 1960 and agreed to go by its decisions by implementing resolutions from any arm of the Institution.

My University Lecturers always told me that the Law is black and white with grey edges. We of Cameroon Concord support the government in its fight against terrorism, corruption and as a sovereign state; we think that foreign interference is out of question. But we as watchdog of the society are totally against inhumane treatment of innocent citizens with wide spread harassment by military in the Far North Region as reported by Amnesty International. People should be given fair treatment, fair trial like any free Cameroonian.

 Being the devil’s advocate will only go a long way to destroy the democratic principles preached by the government, preaching virtue and practising vice.

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Prince Nfor Hanson

21.Jul.2016

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