Cameroon like Nigeria denies Amnesty report

Authorities have denied claims by Amnesty International that Cameroon security forces were indiscriminately killing, arresting and torturing people in the English speaking area.

Amnesty International alleged in its recent report similar to that of Nigeria that Cameroon forces were committing the crimes in the strife-hit English speaking Northwest and Southwest regions.

AI has similarly accused Nigeria’s security operatives of raping women in camps of Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) as well as killings, illegal arrests and unwholesome practices in the fight against Boko Haram.

Nigeria had also warned AI against spreading false reports and which were capable of jeopardising the war against terrorism.

Cameroon has also strongly refuted the report by Amnesty International.

Communication minister and government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary told a press conference in Yaoundé that the “report is tainted with filthy lies, hasty inference, unacceptable defamatory tactics that are part of a strategy to harass and destabilise our country [Cameroon] in its fight against the terrorist threat.”

In the report published on June 11, the London-based rights group accused the Cameroon military of “arbitrary arrests, torture, unlawful killings and destruction of property,” in the two English speaking regions of the Central African state that has been gripped by an escalating violence for close to two years now.

“The government of Cameroon strongly refutes this so-called report which, under the pretext of the protection of human rights, is nothing but a bunch of approximations and false allegations,” the Communication minister said in the presence of military spokesperson, Colonel Didier Badjeck.

“Cameroon is calling on the national and international community to bear witness to the fact that these manoeuvres to misinform, certainly in a bid to destabilise our country cannot prosper in the face of a people that is united, and standing behind its leader,” Mr Bakary said.

Amnesty said its conclusions were based on in-depth interviews with over 150 victims and eye-witnesses to violence perpetrated in the restive regions, either by security forces or separatists.