Politics

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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Although Cameroon has received praise for its military action to push Boko Haram out of the northern part of the country and neighboring Nigeria, Amnesty International is criticizing the Cameroonian security forces for crimes including extrajudicial killings, torture and holding prisoners in inhumane conditions.

In a report titled "Right Cause, Wrong Means," published late last week, Amnesty International said more than 1,000 people accused of supporting Boko Haram are being detained in terrible conditions, many in a prison called Maroua in the northern part of the country. Built to house 350 people, it is holding more than 1,500. Amnesty said up to eight people are dying each month in the prison due to poor conditions.

"There's lot of illnesses, there's malnutrition and it's dirty conditions and, as a result, in the prison between six and eight people are dying every month because of diseases linked to those conditions," said Stephen Cockburn, the deputy regional director for Amnesty International West and Central Africa. "And there are also some people, not everyone, but some people who are subjected to torture, as well."

Cockburn said most of those who are picked up after allegations of supporting Boko Haram are tried before a military court, where they're offered few legal protections and there is a lower threshold for evidence than in civilian courts. In addition, prosecutors are able to submit accounts from anonymous witnesses who cannot be cross-examined. More than 100 people, including women, have been sentenced to death by military courts in the last year, he said.

Amnesty also references the case of a 27-year-old man, who has been detained over messages sent to his friends joking about Boko Haram's methods to recruit young graduates. The organization calls for the nation's anti-terror law to be revised so that it clearly defines an act of terror in order to avoid people being arrested for making jokes in text messages.

In addition the report states that suspects detained in 2014 and 2015 by Cameroon's elite anti-terror unit, the Bataillon d'Intervention Rapide, were beaten with sticks, whips and machetes. Some died in custody.

Government rejects report

Government officials have rejected the report, saying that human rights groups were not nearly as vocal when Boko Haram killed about 2,000 Cameroonian civilians, according to the government spokesperson. The military spokesperson, Col. Didier Badjeck, also downplayed the report, saying troops did not commit the alleged abuses and had received specific training in the protection of civilians.

"You tell us that you have gone in our prisons and that certain people are innocent. Where is the proof?" Cameroon's Minister of Information Issa Tchiroma Bakary told reporters.

Badjeck added that the report relies heavily on non-credible witnesses.

Additional attempts by VOA to speak to Bakary and the embassy in Washington were not successful.

Amnesty met with officials and wrote a letter to the government in May requesting input prior to releasing the report. However, Cockburn said, no responses have been received so far, but there is some work being done to alleviate prison overcrowding.

"There have been some efforts to improve or to build new parts of the prison in Maroua," he said.

Amnesty goes out of its way to emphasize that the threat posed by Boko Haram is real and the fight against them is necessary, but it believes security forces have crossed a line in terms of respecting human rights.

"What we found in our research has been — although the security forces have been trying to pursue the right goals — they've been using the wrong means," Cockburn said. "They have committed very serious human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests, torture, disappearances and subjecting people to unfair trials in military courts."

Potential for government action

Despite immediate rejections, the pressure to improve prison conditions and create better conditions for prisoners is mounting and the Cameroonian government seems ready to take steps to address these issues.

"There is a promise, just a few days ago, to open a commission of inquiry on human rights violations during the conflict," Cockburn said. "We have not seen the scope of that inquiry, we've not seen the terms of reference and we don't know how open and independent that would be, but that could be something."

If done properly, Amnesty says, the government can take this opportunity to turn things around. The organization called on the government to free those held with little or no evidence against them, and that "would also reduce the pressure on the prison system," Cockburn said.

VOA

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Rita Akana

20.Jul.2016

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With rumours about the ‘inhouse’fighting to succeed President Paul Biya, many Cameroonians are afraid of what becomes of the country after his reign. Going by reports, there are two camps engaged in this struggle for Cameroon after Biya. One is asking President Biya to continue ruling, by calling for early elections, while the other is asking the President not to do so. He should to step aside if peace must reign in Cameroon after him.

In the wake of the ongoing perceived or real battles to succeed President Biya, a Cameroonian USA based international business lawyer and politician, Dr David Makongo, believes that President Paul Biya can avoid bloodshed by putting in place a transitional government, now that he is still strong and retains some control, instead of running for reelection.

In a July 19 2016 statement, the man of law and politics argues that there is need for separation of powers between the executive judiciary and the legislative arms of government and most importantly for the neglected youths to be empowered.

 BIYA SHOULD  AVOID BLOODSHED IN  CAMEROON - DR DAVID MAKONGO

 

I think the youths should be given a chance to emerge now and not tomorrow. With so much natural resources and wealth underneath our earth surface, we refuse that the youths of Cameroon must continue to live in misery and poverty. With so many failed promises and false hopes, we refuse to wait again until the dawn of another false hope of emergence in 2035.

If the youth must emerge today, President Biya must abolish the discretionary tax policies responsible for corruption and for killing thousands of small and medium size enterprises.

If the youths must emerge today, President Biya must end corruption by declaring his assets and those of his Ministers and Managers, as required by the 1996 constitution.

If we must end job drought and attract meaningful foreign investment, President Biya must institute the rule of law and also abide by international court decisions that have gone against his regime.

If Cameroon must remain united, peaceful and secure in the long run, President Biya must close down his unpopular “kangaroo special criminal court” and release all political prisoners condemned by what many within the national and international community term as Biya’s “political lynching apparatus.”   

 If Cameroon must continue on the path of peace and internal security, the President must allow the lower and upper houses of parliament and the judiciary to function separately and without executive interference.

 

The President should resign now and form a transitional government that will include an equal number of representatives from Anglophone and Francophone communities; including Christians and Muslims, women and youth, from the opposition and his supporters. He must give the transition government a clear mandate with a free hand to prepare the nation for democratic, free and fair elections monitored by credible national and international observers. 

This is the only way President Biya, can assure himself of a perfect exit from the national political stage and also guarantee peace and security to prevail in Cameroon, long after his awaited departure.Only then can bloodshed that I foresee, could be avoided and for peace and prosperity to prevail in Cameroon.

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Solomon Amabo

19.Jul.2016

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Wilpf Cameroon has just ended a strategic consultative meeting with CSO's and Media in Douala which aimed at mobilizing them to support the WSR process. The main outcome was the setting up of a platform for peaceful elections led by WILPF Cameroon and composed of Women’s and youth organizations as well as peace advocates which will conduct the implementation process of the #WSR in Cameroon and a national Peace Education Programme.

The strategic consultative meeting resulted from the recommendations from previous meetings held in Bafoussam and Bertoua.
Many thanks to WILPF Sweden Styrelsen Ikff Malmö-Lund, PeaceWomen, WILPF International, Wilpf Nigeria, other WILPF Sections as well as all our members and partners for making this possible. We are conscious of the challenges ahead and do rely on your support to be up to the task of ensuring future elections are peaceful in Cameroon.

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Rita Akana

18.Jul.2016

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