Fifteen months back, when a group of Anglophone lawyers went on strike in Cameroon, few would have predicted how far and how quickly events would escalate.

Back then, in October 2016, the lawyers were objecting to the appointment of French-educated judges to their courts. A few other frustrated groups joined them later in peaceful protest against other government actions they perceived to be discriminating against the country’s English-speaking regions.

Fast-forward to today, however, and that initial modest impetus has spiralled into Cameroon’s most alarming internal conflict since independence. In recent months, scores of civilians have been killed. Armed attacks have led to the deaths of at least sixteen army and police officers. The government has deployed the elite Rapid Intervention Battalion, which is usually found combatting Boko Haram, to the area. And thousands of refugees have fled to Nigeria, with the UN Refugee Agency expecting up to 40,000 more.

Pushed to extremes

From the start of the crisis, the government’s instinct has been to respond to protest and grievances with force. The initial demonstrations in late-2016 were met with mass arrests and the deployment of security forces. In January 2017, there was brief hope that dialogue would lead to a resolution. But these talks fell apart as the government banned the umbrella group with which it was negotiating and detained its leaders.

Since then, the government has not looked like returning to the negotiation table. It has arrested around 1,000 people, according to activists. It has empowered the police, gendarmes and army to use heavy force. And it has shut off the region’s Internet for months at a time on at least two occasions.

These actions have had a high human cost. “Cameroonians in the hundreds have lost their lives needlessly while expressing themselves and their ambitions for Cameroon,” says Barrister Akere Muna. “Others remain incarcerated under circumstances that might well have been avoided by the simple choice of dialogue over confrontation and repression.”

Moreover, many argue that rather than stifling dissent, the government’s strategy has made the situation more volatile and extreme.

What began as more specific grievances regarding the perceived imposition of French in courts and schools has escalated into demands for greater autonomy, federalisation and even secession. Meanwhile, the repression of largely peaceful protests has contributed to the emergence of armed groups calling for secession. Even moderate voices have been pushed to more extreme positions, and Cameroon has seen attacks on security forces and growing threats of a violent insurrection.

On 1 October 2017, members of the Southern Cameroonian Ambazonia Consortium United Front declared the independence of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia. The government responded with what the UN criticised as “excessive use of force”. Its crackdown along the border with Nigeria caused thousands to flee. In response in November and December, separatists launched a number of attacks against defence forces that resulted in several casualties.

Combating separatists

In his address on 31 December, 2017, President Paul Biya sought to reassure the nation and project strength.

“I have issued instructions that all those who have taken up arms, who perpetrate or encourage violence should be fought relentlessly,” he said. “The security operations conducted to that end have already yielded excellent results. They will continue unabated, but without excesses.”

However, many Cameroonians are concerned that the conflict will deepen and spread. As the government’s crackdown continues, there are suggestions that militant elements within the secessionist groups are gaining in strength, number and resolve. On 5 January, several separatists were arrested across the border in in Abuja, Nigeria.

In December, Brigadier General Donatien Melingui Nouma, commander of the troops in the South West region, revealed that some of his troops had defected to the separatists. He also claimed: “We know that they are trained by foreigners, including some white mercenaries whose nationality I would not mention.”

Uncertain times for Cameroon

This ongoing crisis is occurring at a particularly difficult time for Cameroon. In the north, it is still contending with the menace of the Boko Haram insurgency and the thousands of refugees it has created. In the east, it faces a challenge from the presence of displaced persons and rebels from Central African Republic. A drop in commodity prices has contributed to a significant drop in economic growth figures. Meanwhile, the country is set to hold four sets of elections – municipal, parliamentary, senatorial and presidential – this year.

Amidst this uncertainty, many are calling for dialogue to resolve the Anglophone crisis. However, there are few indications that constructive steps are being taken to establish such talks. Minister of Communication Issa Tchiroma Bakary has said repeatedly that the government is ready to negotiate but only on the condition that issues related to the structure of the state are not discussed. That effectively rules out activists’ primary demands for federalism or significant structural change.

As the crisis deepens, international leaders such as UN Secretary-General António Guterres and Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland have increased pressure on President Biya to engage in talks. It remains to be seen if this will have any effect. If it does not and the government’s current military approach continues, many expect activists’ demands, grievances and strategies to get increasingly desperate, militant and extreme.

www.africanarguments.org

Nigerian Secret Service officers have arrested the leader of the Ambazonian Interim Government including seven members of the governing council. Cameroon Intelligence Report learned that Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and seven prominent members of the Interim Government were summoned to Abuja for questioning following the detention of 39 Southern Cameroonians in Taraba by Nigerian security forces.

Our correspondent in Abuja said the Interim President and 9 members of his team were last seen at Nera Hotels in Abuja. Nothing has so far filtered about the exact location of the incident and the names of the Ambazonians who accompanied the President to Abuja.

We understand the Ambazonian Secretary for Education, Wilfred Tassang was running late for the meeting. He has also not been seen ever since the trip to Abuja. CIR had reported that the Biya regime had authorized its secret service through a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Philemon Yang to liaise with Nigeria to assassinate Sisiku Ayuk Tabe considered to be the principal Southern Cameroons planner of military and terrorist operations against La Republique du Cameroun.

The Buhari administration has not claimed responsibility for the abdication. Abuja is one of the most secure cities in Africa and the seat of the Nigerian government.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Reports from Nigeria indicates that police have arrested about 39 men suspected to be separatists from Cameroon’s restive south. They were apprehended on Thursday by security forces in the town of Nguroje, in the country’s northeastern Taraba state.

Locals who spoke to Africanews correspondent Ibrahim Abdul Aziz said the alleged “separatists” have been hovering in the area for more than two weeks having training sessions on gun shooting.

They were initially arrested by the military before being handed handed over to police divisional headquarters in the town of Gembu.

They claimed to be refugees from Cameroon Republic, but their movement was suspicious because they did not report their arrival in the area to any security agency or any other appropriate authority.

“The gun trainees numbering 39, comprises of five trainers suspected to be Niger Delta militants from Nigeria’s south along with 34 Cameroonian trainees” a local chief told our correspondent on condition of anonymity.

Taraba State police spokesperson, Assistant Superintendent of Police, David Missal, confirmed the arrests to newsmen in the state capital, Jalingo. He, however, disputed the account of locals by saying there were no incriminating weapons found on the detainees.

Mr. Missal, added that the age range of the suspects was between 30 and 40 years. Their arrest he stressed followed an alarm raised by residents of Nguroje. Interrogations are underway to ascertain their “mission” in Nigeria.

“The strange men, who were allegedly harboured by a woman in the community, were first taken to Gembu Divisional Police Headquarters where they were interrogated and later transferred here, the Command Headquarters in Jalingo for further investigation.

“They claimed to be refugees from Cameroon Republic, but their movement was suspicious because they did not report their arrival in the area to any security agency or any other appropriate authority,” he said.

Missal recalled that earlier batches of refugees who fled the crisis-ridden northeast and northwest Cameroon especially women, children and the aged, had reported to appropriate quarters and were camped and catered for.

“This set of able bodied men only sneaked into Nguroje, passing through other towns and Gembu, the council’s headquarters, without information,” he said.

Meanwhile, a local government official has said the suspects, who claimed to be from Bamenda in Cameroun, did not notify the council of their coming.

What began last year as peaceful protests by Anglophone activists against perceived marginalization by Cameroon’s Francophone-dominated elite has become the gravest challenge yet to President Paul Biya, who is expected to seek to renew his 35-years in power in an election next year.

Government repression – including ordering thousands of villagers in the Anglophone southwest to leave their homes – has driven support for a once-fringe secessionist movement, stoking a lethal cycle of violence.

The secessionists declared an independent state called Ambazonia on Oct. 1. Since then, 7,500 people have fled to Nigeria, including 2,300 who fled in a single day on Dec. 4 fearing government reprisals after raids by separatists militants killed at least six soldiers and police officers.

At the end of World War One, Germany’s colony of Kamerun was carved up between allied French and British victors, laying down the basis for a language split that still persists.

English speakers make up less than a fifth of the population of Cameroon, concentrated in former British territory near the Nigerian border that was joined to the French-speaking Republic of Cameroon the year after its independence in 1960. French speakers have dominated the country’s politics since.

Source: Africa News

A passenger train smashed into a truck at a level crossing in South Africa on Thursday, killing at least 14 people, injuring 180 and throwing several carriages off the rails. Flames ripped through the twisted wreckage and choking black smoke rose into the air as desperate passengers clambered out of the train to escape the inferno.

Rescuers rushed to the scene to search for survivors and treat the injured. Officials warned the toll could rise as operations continued to clear the crash site. “Police are investigating. The truck driver was taking chances… that cost lots of lives,” Transport Minister Joe Maswanganyi told reporters at the scene.

“The truck driver has been taken to hospital where we are going to do a blood test to verify if he was sober or not, or what was the problem.” The Shosholoza Meyl rail company, which operates long-distance trains in South Africa, said the train travelling from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg collided with the truck at about 09:00 am (0700 GMT).

It said in a statement that the truck had made an “untimely” crossing of the tracks when it was hit by a train at high speed, between the towns of Hennenman and Kroonstad, 200 kilometers (125 miles) southwest of Johannesburg.

One of the derailed carriages was the power generator — the car, sitting behind the locomotive that provides power to the rest of the train. The car caught fire and the flames spread rapidly. Shosholoza Meyl said there were 429 passengers on board, though Maswanganyi put the number at 730.

“The death toll has increased to 14,” provincial government health spokesman Mondli Mvambi told AFP, adding that at least 180 people had been injured — two of them critically. “It is feared that they could find more bodies as the search, recovery and rescue work is ongoing.”

The number of injury reports also varied widely in the immediate aftermath of the crash. “We still have to lift the carriages to see whether there are any other people that are still trapped there or not. We still don’t know what is underneath,” said one railway official at the accident site, promising a full investigation.

Some victims were treated on a strip of grass beside the railway line while others were taken to hospital. Uninjured passengers waited on a nearby road, some of them carrying their luggage. The New Year is a busy period for transport in South Africa, with railways and roads carrying passengers returning to work after the holidays.

(Source: AFP)

The West African state of Equatorial Guinea said Wednesday it had thwarted “a coup” against President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Africa’s longest-serving leader that had allegedly been mounted by foreign mercenaries recruited by his political opponents.

Sources told AFP that the country’s ambassador to Chad had been arrested and was being held in a military camp. In a statement read on public radio, Security Minister Nicolas Obama Nchama said an attempted coup took place on December 24.

“A group of Chadian, Sudanese and Centrafricans [citizens of the Central African Republic] infiltrated Kye Ossi, Ebibeyin, Mongomo, Bata and Malabo to attack the head of state, who was in the Koete Mongomo presidential palace for the year-end holiday,” he said. The “mercenaries… were recruited by Equatorial Guinean militants from certain radical opposition parties with the support of certain powers,” the minister said.

The plot had been prevented thanks to an operation carried out “in collaboration with the Cameroon security services”, he said. Formerly a Spanish colony, Equatorial Guinea is one of sub-Sahara’s biggest oil producers but a large proportion of its 1.2 million population lives in poverty.

Obiang, in power for more than 38 years, is accused by critics of brutal repression of opponents, electoral fraud and corruption.

Arms –

Wednesday’s announcement came after Cameroon on December 27 arrested 38 heavily-armed men on the border with the tiny state. Two days later, Equatorial Guinea’s ambassador to France, Miguel Oyono Ndong Mifumu, referred to the incident as an “invasion and destabilisation attempt”.

The suspects, taken into custody in a bus on the border, had rocket launchers, rifles and a stockpile of ammunition, according to his office. On Saturday, the 75-year-old Obiang said “a war” was being prepared against his regime, “because they say I have spent a lot of time in power”.

The same day, the country’s ambassador to Chad, Enrique Nsue Anguesom, was arrested in the district of Ebibeyin, on Equatorial Guinea’s border with Cameroon, one of his cousins and a senior police officer told AFP on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He is being held in a military camp in Bata, Equatorial Guinea’s economic capital, “in connection with the investigation concerning the arrests” on December 27, said one of the sources.

Concurring sources said Equatorial Guinea’s borders with Gabon and Cameroon were closed on December 27. Other sources said military reinforcements had been sent to the fronter with Cameroon. Officials could not be reached to confirm these accounts.

Contested regime –

Obiang took power in a coup on August 3, 1979, ousting his own uncle, Francisco Macias Nguema, who was shot by firing squad.

He was re-elected to a fifth seven-year term in 2016, gaining more than 90 percent of the vote, according to the official results. Legislative elections on November 12 last year saw the ruling party win 92 percent of the vote, a result condemned as fraudulent by dissidents.

The Citizens for Innovation (CI) opposition group, which secured one out of the 100 seats in the legislature, later reported that at least 50 of its members were detained after the ballot. Its leader, Gabriel Nse Obiang, denied Wednesday that the CI had played any part in the attempted coup.

“I have no idea what they’re talking about,” Nse Obiang said, reached by phone from the capital Malabo. “The authorities are unable to come up with any proof.” “Is the real problem that we are a serious opposition party who does not want to play along with the regime?” he asked.

In 2004, mercenaries attempted to overthrow Obiang in a coup thought to be largely funded by British financiers. Mark Thatcher, son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was reportedly involved in the funding and was convicted and fined in South Africa.

In October last year, a French court handed down a three-year suspended jail term to Obiang’s son, Teodorin, who is also vice president, after convicting him of siphoning off public money to fund a jet-set lifestyle in Paris.

He was accused of spending more than 1,000 times his official annual salary on a six-storey mansion in a posh part of the French capital, a fleet of fast cars and artworks, among other assets. His lawyers said they would appeal the ruling.

Culled from AFP

Liberian President-elect George Weah has vowed to fight widespread corruption and improve people’s welfare in the impoverished West African Country.

Weah made the pledges at a press conference in the capital, Monrovia, on Saturday, delivering his first speech to the nation after securing a decisive victory at a presidential election run-off last week.

“Those looking to cheat the Liberian people through corruption will have no place,” the president-elect said, in an apparent reference to his predecessor, Johnson Sirleaf, whose 12-year presidency was tarnished by a series of high-profile scandals.

“I declare publicly today that transforming the lives of all Liberians is a singular mission,” Weah said, adding that he aimed to “improve the lives” of the people in Liberia.

The former football star stressed that the country would be open to foreign investments, also calling on Liberians living abroad to return home and promote national unity.

“To investors we say Liberia is open for business,” Weah said. “We are not enemies. We welcome you with open arms as we try to build our country.”

The Liberian president-elect said he would form his cabinet in the coming days prior to his inauguration in mid-January and work to expand the country’s revenue base.

Weah scored a landslide victory with 61.5 percent of the votes over outgoing Vice President Joseph Boakai, who got 38.5 percent in the run-off on December 26.

The Sirleaf administration, elected in 2005, guided the nation out of the ruins of civil war and through the horrors of a 2014-16 Ebola crisis but is accused of failing to combat poverty and corruption.

Source: Presstv

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has announced a six-month state of emergency in two of the country’s states.

On Saturday, Bashir issued a decree installing the state of emergency in North Kordofan and Kasala.

The announced measures need to undergo parliamentary approval, within two weeks, before coming into force.

According to local media, the measures are part of ongoing disarmament campaigns near Darfur and Blue Nile.

Seven other conflict-ridden states on the country are already under a state of emergency, five of which make up the Darfur region, where government troops have been battling insurgents since 2003.

Over 2.5 million people have been displaced and 300,000 killed in the conflict that erupted in 2003 when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against Bashir’s Arab-dominated government, accusing it of attempting to marginalize the region.

Source: Presstv

Authorities in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea say they foiled an overnight attempt to overthrow the government of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasago – Africa’s longest serving leader.

The attempt as reported by the French news portal Jeune Afrique took place overnight from Wednesday December 27 to Thursday December 28.

Even though details of the incident are sketchy, there is said to be heightened security measures across the country with reports of swoops on persons believed to be involved.

Some 31 mercenaries were also reported to have been arrested in southern Cameroon as they attempted to enter the country apparently to help execute the overthrow. This is the second such attempt, the first took place in 2004.

Some political and security watchers are, however, calling the report a possible move by Malabo to purge the military and other security agencies of unwanted elements. Opposition members are also claiming members are being picked up arbitrarily.

“The opposition Citizens’ Party for Innovation (CI) has claimed multiple incidents of electoral fraud, and at least 50 opposition activists have been detained at the Evinayong prison (central Equatorial Guinea) since the election.

“A hundred others have been seeking refuge for the past several days at the party headquarters, located in the Nkolo Mbong district of the economic capital Bata, to avoid ongoing nocturnal arrests being carried out at opposition activists’ homes,” GardaWorld, a security website reported.

Source: Africa News

Three soldiers were killed in central Mali on Thursday by a mine blast as they hunted for suspected extremists, the army announced in a statement.

“In their pursuit of the terrorists, the FAMa (Malian armed forces) were victims of a mine explosion,” the army said. “The incident took place… in the Bulkessy (Mopti) sector on the border with Burkina Faso.”

“The casualty toll is three dead and three wounded,” added the statement, without giving any further details.

On December 21, the army in the large northwest African nation, mostly desert, announced the killing of five armed extremists and the death of a soldier when troops fought off an attack near Niono in the center.

In March and April 2012, extremist groups linked to al-Qaeda seized control of the arid north of Mali, including celebrated ancient cities such as Gao and Timbuktu, centers of trans-Saharan trade and learning.

The extremists were largely driven out in a French-led military operation launched in January 2013, but large tracts of the country are still not controlled by Malian or French forces, nor a UN peacekeeping mission.

These forces regularly come under attack despite the signature in mid-2015 of a peace pact intended to isolate armed extremists.

Since then, the attacks have spread southwards in Mali and violence has also struck in neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Faced with deteriorating regional security, the G5 Sahel regional organization, which includes the three nations together with Chad and Mauritania, revived plans for a joint anti-extremist force, initially launched in November 2015 with French support.

(Source: AFP)