Cameroon’s Minister of Defense Joseph Beti Assomo visited the military hospital in Yaounde on Thursday to pay homage to some 90 Francophone soldiers wounded in battles in Southern Cameroons.

“These are soldiers who are wounded in the northwest and southwest regions. They still have very high morale. Some of them even declared to us that they want to go back to the field and fight,” Assomo told reporters.

Thirty soldiers are bedridden with “serious injuries” in the hospital and some 60 others come for daily treatment according to the hospital records.

Assomo said the bravery of the soldiers in the battles was exemplary.

According to the Cameroon army, at least 150 soldiers have been killed in the two Anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest where Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces are fighting to defend the independent nation they call “the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.”

Xinhuanet with additional editing from CIR

High Court refused to release opposition leader Maurice Kamto, as well as six of his supporters, who were arrested in January on politically motivated charges.

The Mfoundi High Court, located in Cameroon’s political capital, Yaoundé, made this decision following a habeas corpus request filed by the detainees’ defence lawyers.

Kamto and his party, the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM), claim they won the country’s 2018 elections, although the official results say the current President Paul Biya – in power for 36 years – won the vote.

They were detained as a part of a massive government crackdown on demonstrations and political activities, including the arrest over 200 people on January 26. Since then, political activists have been regularly threatened and harassed.

Kamto and his six supporters are charged with a number of offenses linked to their rejection of the election results, including hostility against the homeland and threats to public order and rebellion.

These arrests highlight the tightening political space in Cameroon as well as the impunity with which police can disregard the law.

Kamto was arrested without a warrant on January, 28 in Douala and held for 15 days at the headquarters of the Special Operations Groups (Groupement spécial d’opérations, GSO), which is not gazetted as a detention facility for those awaiting trial.

Célestin Djamen, a member of Kamto’s party, was arrested at the hospital where he was recovering after police shot him in the leg during a January 26 demonstration. He was held for 15 days at the Secrétariat d’Etat à la Défense (SED) which also is not meant to hold people in police custody.

Lawyers for Kamto say that they were unable to access their client for two days, in violation of the Cameroonian law. A lawyer for Djamen said he did not see his client for 15 days.

Kamto and the other detainees were only presented before the prosecutor 15 days after their arrest, in violation of the Cameroon Criminal Procedure Code. Moreover, despite being civilians, they are being tried in a military court. This means there are real questions about the legality of the court itself.

These arrests appear to be a politically motivated move to curtail dissent, and what’s happened so far calls into questions Kamto’s ability to get a fair trial. Cameroonians – political opponents or not – should be able to expect that officials will uphold the law, not flagrantly violate it.

HRW.ORGNEWS

In the capital of Southern Cameroons, people drily say the streets are so dangerous that even the dogs are too scared to go outside.

Buea has been stalked by violence for 18 months, after English-speaking separatists declared an independent state and took up arms against the French-speaking authorities.

In Buea, barely a day goes by without the “Amba Boys” attacking police stations, state-run enterprises and public buildings — anything that is a recognisable symbol of the state.

Gunfire is heard frequently, despite army patrols introduced as part of a wide-ranging crackdown, and kidnapping is rampant.

Last month, around 15 Ambazonia Restoration Fighters entered the city, firing into the air and burning cars. After they left, people found a decapitated head left on the pavement. The victim has so far not been identified.

A disturbing video being shared on social media shows a woman in her 30s being disfigured by separatists who accuse her of being an informant for the army.

On Tuesday, the EU issued a statement warning about Cameroon’s political and security situation, pointing especially to the two restive anglophone regions, where there were “persistent violence and violations of human rights”.

– Fear –

One civil servant, who asked not to be identified, told AFP he had been living in his office for five months out of fear of being attacked.

“I spend the night at the office to avoid the trip home,” he said. “Informants could see that I was disobeying the Amba Boys’ ban on working for the government.”

Nearby, his camp bed was folded in one corner, just beside his suitcase. Two jackets were hung up nearby while the remains of the previous day’s meal sat on a hotplate.

The town, once known as a peaceful haven nestled at the foot of Mount Cameroon, has been transformed by the conflict.

“Buea is suffering,” one local radio presenter recently lamented on air.

Some businesses say they are struggling to survive. Fearing reprisals, they do not dare defy the shutdowns regularly declared by the Ambazonian Restoration Forces.

The cost of living is mounting. One woman selling mangoes at a crossroads for 1,000 francs (about 1.8 euros, $2) apiece said the price of the fruit was rising “because there are few people to go and harvest them.”

– Exodus –

The authorities in the Cameroonian capital Yaounde have responded to the rebellion by stepping up the security presence in the region.

Troops and Ambazonia Forces alike have been accused of targeting civilians.

At least 500 civilians and more than 200 members of the security forces have died in clashes, attacks and a government crackdown, the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank says.

At least 437,000 people have fled the two regions, according to UN estimates, with another 32,000 fleeing across the border to Nigeria.

Many people in Buea have fled to the port of Limbe, around 30 kilometres (19 miles) away. The road between the two towns is littered with the burnt-out remains of cars.

As night falls on Down Beach, the view over the bay comes with an incessant roar of armoured vehicles carrying troops.

In the local schools, teachers have got used to pupils turning up wearing uniforms from other establishments. “They come from nearby villages,” said a teacher at one secondary school. “We put up with it.”

– Colonial legacy –

Around a fifth of Cameroon’s population of 24 million are English speakers.

The roots of the conflict today date back a century, when post-World War I Germany surrendered Kamerun, its principal colony in West Africa, which was then taken over by Britain and France.

France was given the greater part of the territory, which became independent in 1960.

A year later, the British colony also gained independence.

Some of the English-speaking areas opted to join newly-formed Nigeria, while others chose to join the federation of Cameroon.

In 2017, anglophone resentment at perceived discrimination by the francophone majority came to a head, leading to the declaration of the ” Federal Republic of Ambazonia” in the two regions, named after the local Ambas Bay.

AFP with additional editing from CIR

Cameroon says three months after creating a commission to reintegrate separatist fighters who agree to disarm, only 20 rebels have surrendered. Separatists fear the commission may be a trap by the military to arrest and punish them.

Thirty-nine-year-old Julius, who for security reasons gives only his first name, is a motorcycle taxi driver in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde — but only since November.

That is when he says he escaped from a village in the English-speaking northwest, after the military raided his rebel camp.

Julius says the military killed 13 of his fellow separatist fighters.

He has since given up on violence to fight for an independent, English-speaking state within Francophone Cameroon.

But Julius refuses to hand himself over to Cameroon’s commission to reintegrate rebel fighters because he does not trust authorities.

“What happens on the ground is that if one military man is killed, in vengeance they burn down villages,” he said. “They have gone to the level of committing such atrocities to turn down now and blame it on the fighters on the ground. How do you imagine that those same fighters will trust that they will lay their arms and walk up to them. When they suspect, they shoot and kill.”

Julius returned from Nigeria in 2017, he says, after studying at a university. He had no intention of becoming a separatist until the military, he claims, torched his house.

Cameroon’s military denies abuses against civilians in battling the rebels and accuses the separatists of committing atrocities.

Rights groups say both the military and separatists are guilty of brutalities in the three-year conflict, with noncombatants bearing the brunt of the violence.

But authorities admit thousands of young Cameroonians have become separatists.

In December, Cameroon created the committee to reintegrate Boko Haram terrorists and rebel fighters and who agreed to disarm.

But less than 20 separatists have handed themselves over to Cameroon’s two reintegration centers.

Sixtus Gabsa, manager of the reintegration center in the northwestern town of Bamenda, says rebels who want to disarm have nothing to fear.

“Those who want to think negatively think that it is a trap. There is no trap in it,” he said. “I am giving you a guarantee, the head of state has given us a mandate to give our children the opportunity to come meet us so that they can stay in peace, live in peace so that we can take care of them and reinsert them in the society. We are even going to give them means to see how they can start a new life in a free and safe society.”

Gabsa says the centers offer rebels treatment for injuries, job training, schooling, and resources to resettle them back into mainstream society.

But Counselor Denise Mbarga at the Center for the Peaceful Resolution of Conflicts in Yaoundé says the government needs to create trust. He says asking the separatists to disarm while carrying out military raids sends the wrong signal.

Mbarga says nothing much can be expected from the commission if the government does not change its strategy. He says authorities need to show political will to end the war by carrying out sincere dialogue with the people and rebels because the military solution is failing.

The separatists, who claim discrimination against the English-speaking minority in majority French-speaking Cameroon, have been fighting for an independent state since 2016.

The government says more than 1,200 people have been killed in the fighting but has dismissed the thought of giving up any sovereignty.

VOA