Politics

The African Union sought to reassure Burundi on Friday that a plan to send peacekeepers there is meant to bring a peaceful end to eight months of violence, and is not part of any "other agenda." Earlier this month, the AU said it was ready to send 5,000 peacekeepers to Burundi to protect civilians caught up in the country's worst crisis since it emerged from civil war a decade ago. It would be the first time the bloc has invoked powers to deploy troops to a member country against its will. Burundi has said the proposed force is a violation of its sovereignty and that no troops will enter the country without its permission.

The AU said its head, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, had contacted President Pierre Nkurunziza to make clear that "the AU has no other agenda than to assist the government and people of Burundi at their hour of need, consistent with its commitment to promote African solutions to African problems". It said in a statement that Dlamini-Zuma had "expressed the AU's readiness to rapidly initiate discussions with the government of Burundi to devise the best ways and means of facilitating the deployment of the mission, in a spirit of mutual understanding and cooperation".

The crisis began in April when Nkurunziza announced he would seek a third term, sparking a failed coup and months of street protests. The United Nations says at least 400 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have fled the country. The violence has unnerved a region that remains volatile two decades after the genocide in neighboring Rwanda. Dlamini-Zuma called on Burundi's feuding sides to cooperate with peace talks, which are scheduled to resume in Uganda on Dec. 28.

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Ngwa Bertrand

26.Dec.2015

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Prime Minister Philemon Yang has chaired the last cabinet meeting for the year 2015. The Head of Government seen here with the Cameroonian dictator President Biya, centred discussions on two major issues: the execution of construction projects of national road networks and the improvement of procurement procedures of public contracts.

Concerning road networks, especially the Yaounde – Douala highway, the Edea – Kribi port road and the Yaounde – Nsimalen urban motorway, the Prime Minister called for an acceleration of construction works. He did not make mention of roads in his enclaved Oku constituency. 

Yang called on the Minister of State Property and Land Tenure and that of Territorial Administration to ensure that compensations be paid for those displaced by such projects. Philemon Yang also mentioned the need to encourage the displaced population to contribute towards a successful completion of the projects.

In relation to the procurement procedures of public contracts, the Head of Government lauded the efforts of the Minister of Public Contracts and emphasised on the need to improve the system in 2016. Ministers of State, Minister Delegates and Secretaries of State took part in the cabinet meeting which lasted about an hour, forty minutes.

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Ngwa Bertrand

25.Dec.2015

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Suspected Boko Haram militants launched four attacks over 24 hours on villages in Niger, Chad and Cameroon, killing at least seven people, security and administrative sources said on Wednesday. The Islamist militants are mostly based in northeastern Nigeria but have become a major threat to wider regional security by carrying out attacks in the lawless Lake Chad zone where the borders of Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria meet. In the most deadly of three attacks since Tuesday, militants killed two soldiers and three civilians in Niger's southern border town of Abadam overnight, the sources said. About 150 km (90 miles) east in Chad, three militants were killed when they detonated suicide bombs after being found out by a group of local people as they sought to embark from an island to a lakeside market in Bol.

A fourth set off his bomb but survived. "They were intercepted by villagers who wanted to search them and they resisted," said a local official who asked not to be named. Three other militants managed to shed the explosives they were carrying and swim away, he added. A female suicide bomber blew herself up on Wednesday in the town of Nguetchewe in Cameroon's Far North Region, also killing a small girl accompanying her and a local resident. In northern Cameroon, several suspected Boko Haram fighters attacked three food trucks near the Chadian border on Wednesday, officials said. Cameroonian Special Forces (BIR) arrived shortly afterwards and there were no deaths or injuries. Boko Haram has killed tens of thousands of people and driven more than 2 million people to flee their homes during its six-year insurgency in one of the world's poorest regions.

Regional governments including Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Benin have pledged to destroy the group using an 8,700-strong regional task force. The United States has also sent troops to supply intelligence and other assistance. But joint operations have yet to begin, leaving it up to national armies to tackle the group individually. In the absence of effective coordination, security sources have warned this often means that soldiers just drive the militants across each other's borders. Both Chad and Niger have declared a state of emergency for the regions of Lake Chad and Diffa respectively which have been hit by dozens of attacks this year. Aid agencies say they often struggle to provide food and other support to the vulnerable local populations because of the security challenges.

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Ngwa Bertrand

24.Dec.2015

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Human Rights Watch (HRW) says the Nigerian army slew Shia children earlier in the month, opening fire on the unarmed youngsters with no provocation. The New York-based rights body said the instance of bloodshed was one among the several committed against the country’s Shia community in mid-December. The killing of the children was followed by another incident, in which Nigerian forces killed as many as 1,000 Shias in raids on three Shia centers in the northern Nigerian city of Zaria from December 12 to 14. The HRW also expressed disbelief at the army’s explanation for the three-day-long massacre.

The army says it carried out the raids after Shias set up roadblocks during a religious ceremony three days earlier, stopped the convoy of Nigeria’s Chief of Army Staff Lieutenant General Tukur Yusuf Buratai and attempted to assassinate him. The army’s version “just doesn’t stack up,” Daniel Bekele, the New York-based rights group’s Africa director, said on Wednesday, adding, “It is almost impossible to see how a roadblock… could justify the killings of hundreds of people.” “At best it was a brutal overreaction and at worst it was a planned attack on the minority Shia group,” he said.

The Shias have categorically denied the accusations of fully blocking roads and attempting to assassinate Buratai. On Sunday, the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN)’s spokesman, Ibrahim Usman, rejected the accusation that the Shias had brought about “complete occupation of a lane for four days.” “That was not the case. Blocks were only from junction to junction on the roads. The public was informed about these little inconveniences with apologies on public radio and television stations throughout the trek. Road users during the period would be surprised by” such claims, he said. “Clearly, this is a deliberate attempt to twist the facts,” Usman said, noting that during such ceremonies, “we block only [a] limited part of the road, and this is to protect persons from traffic accidents, control mass movement, and avoid chaos on the roads.”

The IMN said on Tuesday that people wounded in the attacks are dying in military and police detention because they are being denied medical care. A day after the ceremony, which saw Nigerian troops opening fire on the participants, forces raided the house of the country’s Shia leader Ibrahim al-Zakzaky, who heads the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), arresting him after reportedly killing individuals attempting to protect him, including one of the movement’s senior leaders and its spokesman. Zakzaky suffered four bullet wounds during the attack, which also saw the detention of scores of others.

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Ngwa Bertrand

24.Dec.2015

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Cameroonian troops are said to have killed at least 70 Nigerian villagers as they were chasing Boko Haram Takfiri militants into communities in northeastern Nigeria. Villagers said the Cameroonian troops invaded their community in the Gwoza area of the northeastern state of Borno on Sunday, December 20. They said troops entered Kirawa-Jimni Village and opened unprovoked fire on the villagers after asking for the location of the militants they were chasing.

“We didn’t know what was going on but the Cameroonian troops suddenly appeared and began to ask us for Boko Haram terrorists,” Mohammed Abba, the commander of a local group in Jimnana set up to fight Boko Haram, said late Tuesday. “Before we could say a word, they started firing. That scared most of us and we began to run,” he said, adding that when the villagers returned on Monday, they found 70 bodies.

Late last month, Cameroonian troops engaged in a similar chase in Cameroon, during which they killed 150 villagers. Cameroon’s government, however, denied the charges, saying the military is trained to respect human rights. It claimed that the troops carried out a coordinated operation on several border villages last month and freed 900 people held hostage by Boko Haram militants. At least 20,000 people have been killed and more than 2.5 million displaced since the beginning of the Boko Haram militancy in Nigeria in 2009.

The militants have recently pledged allegiance to Daesh (ISIL) Takfiri terrorist group, which now controls parts of Syria and Iraq. Cameroon is part of a regional task force set up to fight Boko Haram terrorists, who sometimes infiltrate Nigeria’s neighbors, including Cameroon, to carry out terrorist attacks there.

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Ngwa Bertrand

24.Dec.2015

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Cameroonian troops are said to have killed at least 70 Nigerian villagers as they were chasing Boko Haram Takfiri militants into communities in northeastern Nigeria. Villagers said the Cameroonian troops invaded their community in the Gwoza area of the northeastern state of Borno on Sunday, December 20. They said troops entered Kirawa-Jimni Village and opened unprovoked fire on the villagers after asking for the location of the militants they were chasing.

“We didn’t know what was going on but the Cameroonian troops suddenly appeared and began to ask us for Boko Haram terrorists,” Mohammed Abba, the commander of a local group in Jimnana set up to fight Boko Haram, said late Tuesday. “Before we could say a word, they started firing. That scared most of us and we began to run,” he said, adding that when the villagers returned on Monday, they found 70 bodies.

Late last month, Cameroonian troops engaged in a similar chase in Cameroon, during which they killed 150 villagers. Cameroon’s government, however, denied the charges, saying the military is trained to respect human rights. It claimed that the troops carried out a coordinated operation on several border villages last month and freed 900 people held hostage by Boko Haram militants. At least 20,000 people have been killed and more than 2.5 million displaced since the beginning of the Boko Haram militancy in Nigeria in 2009.

The militants have recently pledged allegiance to Daesh (ISIL) Takfiri terrorist group, which now controls parts of Syria and Iraq. Cameroon is part of a regional task force set up to fight Boko Haram terrorists, who sometimes infiltrate Nigeria’s neighbors, including Cameroon, to carry out terrorist attacks there.

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Ngwa Bertrand

24.Dec.2015

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