The US recently cut off all aid to Cameroon citing “human rights” abuses and torture.
President Donald Trump has stripped trade benefits from Cameroon over accusations that its military has committed human rights abuses against civilians and separatists in the West African country’s two civil war-ridden Anglophone regions.
In a letter to U.S. Congress last week, President Donald Trump blasted the Cameroonian government’s “persistent gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”
The president said the French-speaking central government has failed to address concerns related to reports of extrajudicial killings, unlawful detentions, torture and other abuses said to have been committed by security forces against civilians and rebels.
“I am taking this step because I have determined that the Government of Cameroon currently engages in gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, contravening the eligibility requirements of section 104 of the (African Growth and Opportunity Act),” the president wrote in his letter.
Trump’s decision effectively removes Cameroon as a beneficiary of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, legislation passed in 2000 with the aim of assisting countries in Subsaharan Africa by giving them privileged access to the U.S. market.
Under AGOA, countries are able to export goods to the U.S. duty-free. But countries must maintain eligibility. One requirement is that countries not engage in gross violations of human rights. Partner countries must also demonstrate progress in areas such as establishing the rule of law, political pluralism, and workers’ rights.
As a result, Cameroon’s AGOA beneficiary status will expire on Jan. 1, 2020.
Since Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis began in 2016, thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced from their homes.
The civil conflict grew out of longstanding grievances of people in the two English-speaking regions of the country who felt they were being underrepresented by the French-speaking central government.
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In February, the State Department cut $17 million in security aid to Cameroon that was used to fight terrorist groups in the region such as Boko Haram. At the time, the U.S. had called on the Cameroonian government to take all allegations of human rights violations seriously and hold perpetrators to account.
“Despite intensive engagement between the United States and the Government of Cameroon, Cameroon has failed to address concerns regarding persistent human rights violations being committed by Cameroonian security forces,” Trump stressed in his letter to lawmakers.
The president assured that he would continue to assess whether the Cameroonian security forces continue to engage in violations of international human rights law.
In some cases, the Cameroonian government has been accused of encouraging and arming radicals from the predominantly Muslim Fulani herding community to carry out attacks against communities in separatist-supporting communities. (source)
Cameroon is not a good place in terms of how the nation treats her people. She has been defined by war and tribal conflict. However, the US also does not care about human rights as neither does any major nation- the Russians are just bad liars, and the Chinese attempts to lie are a complete joke.
Why would the US care about Cameroon?
Shoebat.com has explained that right now, we believe that we are witnessing a modern day “scramble for Africa” over resources on the dark continent that will be used in a future war. This includes “traditional” resources such as petroleum and gas, but also rare earth metals for use in supercomputers and advanced electronics.
Right now, there is a silent war between the US and Europe as a unit, China, and to a lesser extent Russia (as while Russia claims to be an ally of China, she is only this in name, and will not help her at all if the Japanese should invade because Russia knows that China is a threat to her political situation in Siberia).
For the most part, the Chinese have simply exploited already developed petroleum lines and mines for minerals in West and parts of Central or Southern Africa. The US and EU have allowed this because they appear to be working on the development of new mines and petroleum sources in Africa with the intention of exploiting them and in time, taking back the old sources as well.
Cameroon is a former German and later, French African colony sitting between Nigeria, Central African Republic, Gabon, and the Congo. It is geostrategically important, as she ties Western Africa to Central Africa to the Sahel and while not necessarily being a center of production for materials herself (although the potential seems to be there), she is a crossing ground between the oil-rich jungles of West Africa and the mineral-heavy lands of Central Africa as well as the politically strategic Sahel region between the jungles and the Sahara that stretches from Senegal to Sudan.
In February 2019, the Chinese government wrote down all of Cameroon’s loans in a secret deal. Many Chinese citizens were furious at the Chinese government for doing this, and which the Chinese government responded by censoring all criticism immediately of the deal. It is clear that it was a political move attempting to divide US and European possessions in the area, and if not to get a material hold in the region, to attempt to break up European control.
Interestingly, Cameroon has recently seen a surge of violence between her French-speaking and English-speaking regions. Most people in Cameroon speak neither language, but one of several hundred tribal languages, with approximately 46% having a comprehension of French and English at 20%, with most of the English speakers concentrated near Nigeria.
It is interesting that the conflict should begin over language, as given the geographic isolation of the languages within the country, it could potentially spill over into Nigeria, a nation that is considered the strongest supporter of China outside of China herself and which Shoebat.com warned needs to be carefully watched because of the geopolitical conflict with the US.
Note that the conflict with Cameroon over language began in 2016, and also that the US criticized Cameroon for not doing enough to stop “Boko Haram”, a group that as Shoebat.com has noted seems to have ties to US stay-behind operations in Africa, mostly in Nigeria, over geopolitical conflict to keep control over Chinese influence in the area.
There is violence in Cameroon, but the problem is not per se the violence itself, but the political manipulation that caused violence in order to use it as a way to destabilize the nation in order to eventually bring in more US and European influence as part of a strategy against Chinese attempts to assert herself or stir controversy there.
The Chinese in this sense are behind the US and Europe, who have been planning for decades to foment or exploit global conflicts to re-assert themselves in the world. She can write down debt for other nations or try to make agreements, but the US and Europe- the UK, France, and Germany -have already planned how they will respond, and at this point, it is just a matter of calling up the groups they left to “stay behind” to work on their behalf and have them start conflict in order to get rid of Chinese influence.
This conflict is not about stopping persecution or “helping” Christians, but about creating the conditions for suffering and then using the suffering of others for one’s own benefit.