Amid the UN’s failure on the conflict in Cameroon, now a specific plea about political prisoners in Paul Biya’s jails has been sent to members of the UN Security Council, beyond Secretary General Antonio Guterres who after taking Biya’s golden statue and UN Budget Committee favors colluded in the jailing and killing.

Among the political prisons are those sent back to Yaounde from Nigeria while Guterres’ Deputy Amina J. Mohammed was there. Inner City Press has been submitted written questions about Cameroon and its prisons amid COVID-19 to Guterres, Mohammed and their spokespeople Stephane Dujarric and Melissa Fleming, with no answer at all. The Security Council members must act on this:

“Ambazonian prisoners of conscience face the gravest risks from COVID-19 due to the unprecedented levels of overcrowding, inability to implement social distancing, lack of hygiene, and poor healthcare. Not suprisingly, many of these prisoners have been sickened by a wild outbreak of the pandemic at the two main prisons in Kondengui, Yaounde, capital of La Republique du Cameroun.

“Recent WHO figures place Cameroun’s COVID-19 ratio per million as one of the highest in Africa with 3,500 confirmed cases. Nigeria, seven times more populated, has 6,400 confirmed cases. The now not-so-secret plan of the regime of Mr. Paul Biya in Cameroun is to weaponize COVID-19 as both a death sentence and an execution squad for these Ambazonians. ACT warns: should any harm befall these Ambazonian political prisoners, the following are to blame:

1. French President Emmanuel Macron, who instructs and Mr. Biya obeys. This is how Macron and the European Union secured the release of Prof. Maurice Kamto and his aides. The silence of France and the EU suggests they endorse Biya’s plan to kill Ambazonian prisoners of conscience.
2. The Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guteress, who has not called for their release into the protection of the U.N. refugee agency although many of them were registered as refugees in Nigeria before their abduction and rendition to Cameroun.
3. The leaders of Cameroun, Paul Biya, and of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, for their role in the rendition. In addition (in the case of Buhari), his failure to comply with the ruling of an Abuja High Court calling for the prisoners’ immediate release and transfer back to Nigeria. And (in the case of Biya), the abduction in Ambazonia and deportation to Cameroun of thousands of Ambazonians. These prisoners have been systematically denied medical attention. One of them who was admitted in a military hospital in Yaounde, suffered an attack by soldiers in mufti in the dead of night even as he is locked in a fight for his life agaomst COVID-19. The prison superintendant has prison gangs and other officials targeting and brutalizing Ambazonian prisoners.

Access to these prisons by the International Commission of the Red Cross (ICRC) remains restricted. ACT calls on the U.N. Security Council, President Macron, the United States government, the European Union and the African Union to request the immediate release of all Ambazonian political prisoners and vulnerable people within the prison population in Cameroun and Ambazonia, particularly Barrister Shufai Blaise Berinyuy currently hospitalized. This will not only be an act of goodwill, but it will help curb the spread of the pandemic Time is, indeed, of essence!

Culled from Inner City Press