The Cameroonian authorities must come clean on the reality of the spread of COVID-19 in the country’s prisons, provide detainees with adequate medical care and stop exacerbating overcrowding with arbitrary arrests, Amnesty International said today.

The organisation confirms that at least one prisoner has tested positive for the virus at the “Kondengui” central prison in Yaoundé and has been taken to a health facility outside the prison. While authorities have not confirmed or denied the presence of the virus in detention facilities, Amnesty International received information stating the number of current and former detainees tested positive could be much higher.

“As COVID-19 spreads in Cameroon, it is essential that detainees and their families have access to accurate information about the virus. The poor conditions in detention centres mean they risk becoming epicenters of the pandemic unless urgent action is taken,” said Fabien Offner, Amnesty International West and Central Africa researcher.

“Authorities must take all necessary measures to allow those in prison to enjoy standard health-care services free of charge and without discrimination, and to urgently reduce the overall number of people in detention.”

According to the National commission on human rights and freedoms, the occupancy rate was high in many prisons in Cameroon, reaching 432 % in ‘’Kondengui’’, 729% in Bertoua prison (East), 481% in Sangmelima (South) and 567% in Kumba Main Prison (South-West).

Following a 15 April presidential decree commuting and remitting sentences, hundreds of prisoners have been released in all the regions. For example, 831 prisoners, were released in the Far North region, and the number falling from 3,370 to 2,547 detainees, according to state media. An independent source also confirms to Amnesty International that 214 detainees were released in the Maroua prison (Far North).

While this is a first welcome step in reducing overcrowding in prisons, it remains far from sufficient. Measures to fight the spread of the virus in detention facilities should include the release of detainees who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 such as the elderly or those with underlying medical conditions.

‘’Many inmates are sick in the central prison of Yaoundé’’

Prison conditions are dire in the central prison of Yaoundé. An inmate told Amnesty International:

“Prisoners often die in this prison; no one can really say who is contaminated. Many inmates are sick and because of the congestion everyone is scared. Those who are sick also fear going to the prison health services because of rumours of COVID-19 patients being admitted there”.

Most inmates who present COVID-19 symptoms are treated using hot liquids mixed with ginger and garlic. Last month, five other deaths have been reported in a week, according to independent sources. A letter sent on 21 April to the Ministry of Justice on behalf of detainees highlighted the persistent overcrowding, describing the nursing station in prisons as “saturated with sick detainees” and the medical staff as “overwhelmed”.

On 23 April, authorities announced measures aimed at containing the virus inside the central prison in Yaoundé, including the suspension of outside chores, the establishment of observation cells for suspected COVID-19 cases, disinfection operations and the application of barrier gestures.

At least two sick detainees died shortly after their release

According to information received by Amnesty International, at least two sick detainees died shortly after their release. One was buried in conditions applied to COVID-19 deaths without the presence of his family, although no test was made to determine the cause of death.

Even if authorities recently released some detainees, they failed to positively respond to the National commission on human rights and freedoms’ call to release the elderly who are most vulnerable to the virus, and to the UN call to release sick detainees, and those jailed without legal basis, including prisoners of conscience.

Detained prisoners of conscience include Mamadou Mota, vice-president of opposition party MRC, jailed for participating in peaceful protests and for “rebellion in group”. Others include Anglophones detained for protesting peacefully either against the alleged irregularities during the 2018 presidential election or in demand for economic and social rights in English-speaking regions.

Mancho Bibixy Tse is one of them. He was arrested on 9 January 2017 and sentenced on 25 May 2018 by a military court to 15 years in prison for “terrorism”, simply for having peacefully protested the marginalization of English-speaking Cameroonians.
Sick detainees still jailed include Amadou Vamoulke, 70, former director of state TV, who suffers from a severe pathology certified by two neurologists. He was arrested in July 2016 and has been illegally detained after his pre-trial detention exceeded the legal limit.

Among those detained for speaking out, there is political activist Franck Boumadjieu. He was arbitrarily arrested on 16 April 2020 for having denounced the silence of President Paul Biya since the start of the COVID-19 crisis and was sentenced to three months in prison and fined.

“Keeping elderly or sick people in detention or releasing them just to blow their last breath outside is inhumane. Authorities must treat prisoners with the respect due to their inherent dignity and value as human beings,” Fabien Offner said.

“Continuing to fill prisons with people who have done nothing but exercising their right to freedom of expression is not only a violation of international law, but is also hampering efforts to contain the virus.”

Culled from Amnesty International

Cameroon’s presidency known as the Unity Palace is in panic mode following the death of Chantal Biya’s driver on Monday, May 4, 2020 following an attack by the novel Coronavirus.

The driver has been down with flu-like symptoms which earned him a few days of rest; rest that will unfortunately be eternal.

The Unity Palace is concerned as the COVID-19 victim was the first lady’s driver and had recently driven her.

Since hitting the global scene, the novel Coronavirus virus has struck fear in many minds. It is no respecter of persons and it has sent many old people in the hiding, including Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, who is a colony of dangerous diseases.

Mr. Biya has not been seen in public since the virus emerged and sources at the Unity Palace have reported that Mr. Biya has been hiding under his bed and has lost appetite because he is scared that the virus will sweep him away.

For more than a decade, Mr. Biya has been assailed by many ailments with diabetes, high blood pressure and heart problems constantly using his body as conference room to discuss his fate.

His long marriage with alcohol has ruined his health and his distended prostate has always sent him to Switzerland and other European countries for check-ups.

But the shutting down of the world by the novel Coronavirus has left the president in deep thoughts. Any deterioration of his fragile health now might spell danger as the entire world, except Cameroon, is in lockdown.

A few days ago, Mr. Biya signed a decree opening up the country and sending Cameroonians to bars where they can run into the novel Coronavirus that is threatening to overwhelm the entire country.

While bars and crowded markets are open, schools have remained closed. National Day celebrations have been cancelled, as this would have required Mr. Biya who is a shadow of his former self to preside over the event which normally takes place on May 20.

Mr. Biya might have soldiers in his side, but COVID-19, which has attacked even royals and celebrities, fears no uniform and guns. Its dislike for old sickly people is exactly why Mr. Biya has decided to make the lower part of his bed his hiding of choice.

He does not receive anybody and all his staff are expected to keep a safe distance because they could infect him. The only person who comes close and who has been serving as his liaison officer is his wife who might have been infected by his driver who has kicked the bucket.

More will be yours as Cameroon Concord News Group gathers more details.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Switzerland has made available the sum of three billion CFA francs to help the French Cameroun army continue with its genocidal campaign in Southern Cameroons. But the Swiss ambassador to Yaoundé, Pietro Lazzer told the world that the donation was to combat the coronavirus.

According to the chief Swiss diplomat, the money is for humanitarian efforts but Cameroon Intelligence Report has documented evidence that the regime in Yaoundé is using the money to pay Cameroon government army soldiers currently killing innocent Southern Cameroons civilians in Bafut.

The Swiss have increased their business empire in Cameroon and the Swiss embassy in Yaounde is coordinating support from Swiss companies in Cameroon to help the Biya regime survive.

Ambassador Pietro Lazzer told Cameroon radio and television that Switzerland fully backs the ceasefire calls in Southern Cameroons as advocated by the United Nations Secretary-General last month. “Violence needs to stop in this area because the fighting of COVID-19 is a priority,” he said. The diplomat has maintained a kind of silence of the lamb on reports that Cameroon government soldiers have invaded Bafut in the Mezam County and killed scores of civilians.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Cameroonian journalists are marking World Press Freedom Day with protests against abuse from the government as well as from rebels fighting for an independent English-speaking state. Reporters Without Borders, in its 2020 World Press Freedom Index, ranks Cameroon 134th out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index. Some Cameroonian journalists have been detained for their reporting or are on the run from the military or separatists.

This message from the Cameroon Association of English Speaking Journalists, that journalism has rules, regulations and professional ethics, is broadcast on television and radio, and shared on social media platforms by journalists in Cameroon as a sign of protest against the abuses they face. The message insists that journalists be allowed freedom to practice.

“We say no to the constant harassment and haphazard arrest of journalists in their line of duties,” the message said.

Journalists did not organize popular celebrations and public protests as in the previous years because of the more than 2,000 cases of COVID-19 in Cameroon.

They said, however, they shared the pain of peers who have been in detention, such as Mancho Bibixy and Tsi Conrad, arrested and charged with insurrection against the state of Cameroon and who have been in detention since 2017, Samuel Wazizi arrested late last year and jailed for alleged collaboration with separatist fighters, and Wawa Jackson, who was arrested in 2019 and accused of propagating the secessionists’ agenda in the English-speaking regions where separatists are fighting to break away from the majority French-speaking country.

Ngah Christian Mbipgo, publisher of Cameroon’s lone English-language daily newspaper, the Guardian Post, said his news organ has been the victim of press abuses while covering the separatist crisis that has killed 3,000 people in Cameroon in the past three years. He said 15 of his reporters, newspaper vendors and their family members have fled from hostile areas in the English-speaking North-West and South-West regions.

“The separatists think that we have not been doing much to project their independence ideology, and that is why our reporters in the field are targeted. I have not gone out of Yaoundé [to the English-speaking North-West and South-West regions] since 2017 that [when] the crisis metamorphosed into an armed conflict because they have openly called to tell me that I am a target. We receive calls from top government officials who say we are a newspaper that is working for the separatists,” he said.

Cameroon’s government did not issue a statement on for World Press Freedom Day, as there were no public ceremonies due to COVID-19. However, the government has always maintained that there is press freedom in Cameroon and journalists are only arrested when they act unprofessionally.

Jude Viban, president of the Cameroon Association of English Speaking Journalists said the government should decriminalize media offenses and make sure abuses against the rights of journalists like Enowtaku Ebanghatabi Christelle by government officials and separatist fighters are stopped.

“What we are doing is to inform, and we do so for the interest of the population, so a handful of people should not attack the press. When stories are not told because journalists are under attack, the population would not be informed, which, of course, is their right to be informed in a democracy like ours,” said Viban.

Reporters Without Borders says press freedom continues its long decline in Cameroon, and reporters continue to be subjected to threats, attacks, intimidation and arrests after President Paul Biya’s reelection for a seventh term in October 2018.

Source: VOA

While debate rages in France over Professor Didier Raoult’s recommendation of a mixture of chloroquine (an antimalarial) and azithromycin (an antibiotic) to treat patients with Covid-19, some African countries have taken it very seriously. Such is the case in Cameroon, which has embraced the French professor’s method of treatment.

Despite having authorised treatment in a very restricted manner for serious cases, France has shown scepticism regarding a dual therapy combining chloroquine (an antimalarial), or its derivative hydroxychloroquine, and azithromycin (an antibiotic used for lung and ENT infections and angina) to treat patients suffering from Covid-19. On April 22, France’s Health Minister Olivier Véran said the most recent publications from clinical studies were not in favour of the dual therapy. Six days later, during a speech on France’s strategy for lifting its Covid-19 lockdown, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe clearly reaffirmed the government’s position: “To date, no treatment has proven effective.”

The debate surrounding the protocol of Dr Didier Raoult, the director of the University Hospital Institute (IHU) Méditerranée Infection in the southern city of Marseille, continues to divide the country’s medical community. But while some French professionals consider the treatment too toxic and doubt its effectiveness, many African countries, already accustomed to anti-malarial drugs, have decided in favour of the reseacher and professor. This is notably the case in Cameroon, which has adopted Raoult’s dual therapy.

Although the country increased its knowledge of epidemics following the appearance of Ebola in the region, its medical capacities remain limited and a European-style scenario, with a multiplication of serious Covid-19 cases, could lead to a catastrophe. In mid-March, as the epidemic began to spread across Cameroon and European countries, already hard hit, launched lockdown plans, the first video of Raoult selling the effectiveness of his protocol was widely shared on Cameroonian social networks, raising great hopes. In a country where part of the population still has major difficulties in accessing healthcare, the prospect of a treatment based on accessible, inexpensive and familiar drugs appeared to be a blessing.

A chloroquine treatment

On March 27, in a memorandum from Cameroon’s Ministry of Health, the country’s scientific council proposed the widespread use of chloroquine treatment. Judged “promising”, the treatment could make it possible to reduce viral load and contagiousness, even if the group of scientists acknowledged a “lack of conclusive data”. Finally, the council wished to combine the treatment, as recommended by Raoult, with azithromycin to avoid the risks of secondary infections. On April 9, the protocol was validated for the management of all types of patients with positive Covid-19 tests, from asymptomatic cases to patients suffering from severe infections.

“With the arrival of the first cases, the clinicians were tempted to try the protocols themselves, and it was necessary to give clear instructions quickly to organise the response,” explained Dr Alain Etoundi, director of the fight against disease, epidemics and pandemics at Cameroon’s Ministry of Health, to FRANCE 24.

“The question of the supposed toxicity of chloroquine has been addressed and dismissed by the council. So far, the results that are coming to us seem satisfactory, but the evaluation of the treatment is ongoing,” he said.

A ‘national hero’

Professor William Ngatchou is a cardiovascular surgeon at the General Hospital in Douala, the economic capital of Cameroon. When FRANCE 24 asked him if he had heard of Professor Raoult, he responded with amusement: “Everyone knows Professor Raoult in Cameroon! Some even consider him like a national hero.” Like many health professionals in the country, Ngatchou thinks that the effectiveness of dual therapy combining an antimalarial and an antibiotic has been proven: “It’s been almost two months that this protocol has been in use for patients with Covid-19. I myself have noticed significant improvements in patients with its use, and the debate about the side effects of chloroquine seems very exaggerated to me.”

Seven weeks after the detection of the first Covid-19 case on Cameroonian soil, there are more than 2,050 confirmed cases in the country. The progress of the virus seems, as in many African countries, to be much slower than indicated by scientific modelling. Nevertheless, Etoundi asserted that treatment is only one element of a global health policy and it is far too early to claim victory: “We are in a phase where the disease is on the rise and the peak has not yet been reached. Anything is still possible.”

Supply problems and a black market explosion

Beyond a public health resolution, the choice of dual therapy represents a logistical challenge in Cameroon. For while chloroquine was massively used in the country at one time, it has been several decades since it lost its effectiveness in the fight against malaria and was replaced by other, more effective drugs. “Stocks were totally exhausted, we had to place large orders abroad and restart national industrial production,” explained Etoundi.

In Cameroon, public hospitals have been selected to centralise Covid-19 patients. In theory, stocks of chloroquine and azithromycin are sufficient there, although a source within medical services, contacted by FRANCE 24, reported occasional shortages. But the situation is more complex in the pharmaceutical sector. Private pharmacies, very important in Cameroon, sometimes play the role of doctor, and they are not authorized to sell chloroquine.

“As soon as we started talking about the disease in March, a lot of people wanted to buy stocks of chloroquine from us, some aggressively. Others came to try to sell us some,” a pharmacist in a working-class neighbourhood in Douala told FRANCE 24. “Here, demand for the Covid treatment is exploding, we quadrupled our sales of azithromycin between March and April. Since we don’t have chloroquine, customers have switched to similar antimalarial drugs like Artequin, which is already out of stock at wholesalers,” she said.

The black market for drugs, already flourishing in normal times in Cameroon, is on the rise with the Covid-19 crisis. The authorities have already issued several alerts about the circulation of fake chloroquine within the health network.

Finally, another subject that worries the government is the disappearance of hydroxychloroquine, the chloroquine derivative,  also recommended by Professor Raoult. It was previously sold over the counter in pharmacies and was very little used, because it was reserved for the treatment of specific diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. “The shelves have been robbed very quickly, yet patients depend on these drugs. They now find themselves destitute and we must find solutions to protect them,” Etoundi said.

This article is a translation of the original in French as reported by France 24

A separatist commander known simply as General Alhaji was among some insurgents who were killed on Friday in Bafut, a locality in Northwest, one of the two troubled Anglophone regions of Cameroon, the Cameroon army said Saturday.

The death of Alhaji was confirmed by Kingsley Ashu, a separatist leader, in a Facebook post.

He was killed after a week-long military offensive in the locality that also witnessed the seizure of war weapons and dismantling of several separatist camps, local authorities said.

Alhaji was commanding one of the “largest and fiercest” armed separatist groups known as “Seven Katta Bafut Defence forces” in the region, according to security reports.

He became “notorious” in 2018 after kidnapping over 80 school children and teachers and a driver of a secondary school in Bamenda, Cameroon Anglophone’s largest city, security sources said, adding that his physical elimination could prove a major blow to the rebels in that region.

Since 2017, government forces have been clashing with armed separatist forces who want the two English-speaking regions of Northwest and Southwest to secede from the majority French-speaking nation and form a new country which they call “Ambazonia.”

Source: Xinhuanet

A political group from Yaoundé and a sea of French Cameroun army soldiers posing as bike riders heavily funded by French Cameroun’s Minister of Territorial Administration, Paul Atanga Nji have organized a raucous rally in Bamenda, the chief city in the Northern Zone of Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia calling on the occupying Biya regime to reform bike laws in the Mezam County. The participants did wear protective masks not as an anti COVID-19 gesture but to hide their identities from Ambazonia Restoration Forces. The Atanga Nji militia men did not observe social distancing recommendations.

Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered from a well-placed source in Yaoundé that the protest was organized and funded by the French Cameroun Minister of Territorial Administration with many of the participants transported to Bamenda from French Cameroun’s West Region.

Despite Mezam County having the highest number of French Cameroun military operations in recent times, along with nearly 98 deaths in Bafut, French Cameroun surrogate, Minister Paul Atanga Nji reportedly fighting for his political survival sponsored the Bamenda demonstration to give the impression that the Mezam County was now under the control of the Francophone dominated army.

One of the participants who spoke to our correspondent claimed Minister Atanga Nji did not sponsor the demonstration but that it was financed from Yaoundé.

The Ambazonia Vice President Dabney Yerima is expected to chair a town hall meeting in the coming days to redirect the Southern Cameroons struggle to self defense.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Frédéric  Nguiema Nzie a Sub-Lieutenant of the French Cameroun army recently assigned to head an operation with the Rapid Intervention Battalion (RIB) has been killed by Ambazonia Restoration Forces in Mamfe, the chief town in the Manyu County.

Sub-Lieutenant Frédéric Jeunesse Nguiema Nzie, enlisted in the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR), and deployed as part of the 6^th Division died on April 28, 2020 during an operation around the residence of the Senior Divisional Officer for Manyu.

French Cameroun media reported that he served the Biya regime only for four months and made what Yaoundé described as the supreme sacrifice.

The young soldier from La Republique du Cameroun was a laureate of the 37th badge of EMIA named after Major General Jacob KODJI who including 181 others graduated on January 24^th in a ceremony that was chaired by the French Cameroun monarch Paul Biya. He hailed from Kribi in the Ocean constituency in French Cameroun.

Oke Akombi Ayukepi Akap in Glasgow with files from CIN

The wife of a former French Cameroun Minister of Defence, Bernadette Mebe Ngo’o who has been in prison since the 11^th of March 2019 alongside her husband, Edgar Alain Mebo Ngo’o for complicity in a case of alleged embezzlement of public funds in the purchase of military equipment for the French Cameroun army, was rushed to intensive care on Saturday, 25^th of April 2020, at the Yaoundé Emergency Centre.

Bernadette Mebe Ngo’o was reportedly taken from her detention cell in Ward 5 of the Yaounde-Kondengui Central Prison and nothing has so far filtered about the woman who was prominent in French Cameroun some few years ago.

Cameroon Concord News gathered that Bernadette Minja Nkoulou (to use her name at birth) has suffered several minor heart attacks in recent months and has been abandoned by the ruling CPDM female mafia known as the Circle of Friends of Cameroun (CERAC), founded by the First Lady, Mrs. Chantal Biya.

By Asu Isong in London