LIBREVILLE, Gabon: Cameroon’s security forces were on Thursday accused of torturing hundreds of Boko Haram suspects, leading to dozens of deaths, in what Amnesty International said was a war crime.
The global human rights monitor said US and French military were also seen at one site where the abuses allegedly took place and urged Washington and Paris to investigate.
Boko Haram’s insurgency has devastated northeast Nigeria since it began in 2009, and the violence has spread to neighboring countries, including northern Cameroon.
Cameroonian troops are part of a regional military force that has been successful in forcing them out of captured territory in northeast Nigeria since early 2015.
Amnesty’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Alioune Tine, said Boko Haram had committed atrocities and war crimes in Cameroon.
“But nothing could justify the callous and widespread practice of torture committed by the security forces against ordinary Cameroonians, who are often arrested without any evidence and forced to endure unimaginable pain,” he said.
“These horrific violations amount to war crimes,” he added in a statement, calling for an independent investigation.
Amnesty said it had unearthed 101 cases of secret detention and documented at least 24 different types of torture at more than 20 different sites in Cameroon between 2013 and 2017.
Four of the locations were military bases, two were run by the intelligence services, one was a private residence and another was a school.
But most of the torture happened at the headquarters of the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR), which has led the fight against Boko Haram, and the DGRE intelligence agency.
The majority of victims were men aged between 18 and 45 and from the Far North region, which has been repeatedly attacked by suicide and bomb attacks.
Women, children and people with physical and mental disabilities were also targeted. All were accused of support for the Daesh affiliate, it was alleged.
Torture methods included beating suspects with an electric cable while having water thrown on them, beatings to secure confessions and the use of excruciating stress positions.
Deprivation of food, water and medical treatment was also used; 32 of the 101 victims said they had seen people die because of the torture and ill treatment.
The allegations — similar to those made against the military in Nigeria — are not the first against Cameroon, which has been criticized before for its heavy-handed crackdown.
Last year, more than 100 people were sentenced to death by a military court, while three students were jailed for 10 years for sharing a joke about Boko Haram by text message.
A Radio France Internationale reporter also received a 10-year prison term for allegedly supporting the militants.
The report, “Cameroon’s Secret Torture Chambers: Human Rights Violations and War Crimes in the Fight Against Boko Haram,” said US and French troops were at one of the torture sites.
Washington in 2015 sent some 300 soldiers to northern Cameroon to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations against Boko Haram.
That includes an unnamed drone operation over the restive border region with Nigeria, run from a base in the northern city of Garoua.
France, the former colonial power in Cameroon, runs its counter-terrorism operations against militant groups in the Sahel region from the Chadian capital, N’Djamena.
Amnesty said it had written to the US and French embassies in Cameroon to ask about their military’s presence at the BIR base in Salak, near the Far North region capital, Maroua.
Tine said Washington and other international partners “should investigate the degree to which their personnel were aware of illegal detention and torture at the Salak base.”
They should also establish whether troops reported it to their superiors and the Cameroon authorities, he added.
US Ambassador to Yaounde Michael S. Hoza wrote in response that it took seriously any allegation of human rights abuses by Cameroonian security forces.
Some BIR units in Salak and elsewhere were not receiving US assistance “because of credible information implicating those units in the commission of (gross violation of human rights),” he added.
Amnesty said they had received no immediate response from the French Embassy
Boko Haram suspects killed, tortured in Cameroon custody: Amnesty
Boko Haram suspects killed, tortured in Cameroon custody: Amnesty
Mozambique death toll from Cyclone Chido rises to 120
- The cyclone not only ravaged Mayotte’s fragile infrastructure but also laid bare deep-seated tensions between the island’s residents and its large migrant population
MUPATO: The death toll from Cyclone Chido in Mozambique rose by 26 to at least 120, the southern African country’s disaster risk body said on Monday.
The number of those injured also rose to nearly 900 after the cyclone hit the country on December 15, a day after it had devastated the French Indian Ocean archipelago of Mayotte.
The cyclone not only ravaged Mayotte’s fragile infrastructure but also laid bare deep-seated tensions between the island’s residents and its large migrant population.
Thousands of people who have entered the island illegally bore the brunt of the storm that tore through the Indian Ocean archipelago. Authorities in Mayotte, France’s poorest territory, said many avoided emergency shelters out of fear of deportation, leaving them, and the shantytowns they live in, even more vulnerable to the cyclone’s devastation.
Still, some frustrated legal residents have accused the government of channeling scarce resources to migrants at their expense.
“I can’t take it anymore. Just to have water is complicated,” said Fatima on Saturday, a 46-year-old mother of five whose family has struggled to find clean water since the storm.
Fatima, who only gave her first name because her family is known locally, added that “the island can’t support the people living in it, let alone allow more to come.”
Mayotte, a French department located between Madagascar and mainland Africa, has a population of 320,000, including an estimated 100,000 migrants, most of whom have arrived from the nearby Comoros Islands, just 70 kilometers away.
The archipelago’s fragile public services, designed for a much smaller population, have been overwhelmed.
“The problems of Mayotte cannot be solved without addressing illegal immigration,” French President Emmanuel Macron said during his visit this week, acknowledging the challenges posed by the island’s rapid population growth,
“Despite the state’s investments, migratory pressure has made everything explode,” he added.
The cyclone further exacerbated the island’s issues after destroying homes, schools, and infrastructure.
Though the official death toll remains 35, authorities say that any estimates are likely major undercounts, with hundreds and possibly thousands feared dead. Meanwhile, the number of seriously injured has risen to 78.
Zelensky says North Korea could send more troops, military equipment to Russia
- More than 3,000 North Koreans killed and wounded, Kyiv says
- North Korean soldiers fighting in Russia’s Kursk region
- Zelensky warns of more N.Korean troops, weapons supplies to Russia
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that more than 3,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed and wounded in Russia’s Kursk region and warned that Pyongyang could send more personnel and equipment for Moscow’s army.
“There are risks of North Korea sending additional troops and military equipment to the Russian army,” Zelensky said on X after receiving a report from his top military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi.
“We will have tangible responses to this,” he added.
The estimate of North Korean losses is higher than that provided by Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), which said on Monday at least 1,100 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded.
The assessment was in line with a briefing last week by South Korea’s spy agency, which reported some 100 deaths with another 1,000 wounded in the region.
Zelensky said he cited preliminary data. Reuters could not independently verify reports on combat losses.
Russia has neither confirmed nor denied the presence of North Koreans on its side. Pyongyang initially dismissed reports about the troop deployment as “fake news,” but a North Korean official has said any such deployment would be lawful.
According to Ukrainian and allied assessments, North Korea has sent around 12,000 troops to Russia.
Some of them have been deployed for combat in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine still holds a chunk of land after a major cross-border incursion in August.
JCS added that it has
detected signs
of Pyongyang planning to produce suicide drones to be shipped to Russia, in addition to the already supplied 240mm multiple rocket launchers and 170mm self-propelled howitzers.
Kyiv continues to press allies for a tougher response as it says Moscow’s and Pyongyang’s transfer of warfare experience and military technologies constitute a global threat.
“For the world, the cost of restoring stability is always much higher than the cost of effectively pressuring those who destabilize the situation and destroy lives,” Zelensky said.
Trump says it could be worth keeping TikTok in US ‘for a little while’
- Senate passed law in April requiring TikTok’s parent company to divest the app, citing national security concerns
- TikTok’s owners have sought to have the law struck down and the US Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case
President-elect Donald Trump indicated on Sunday that he favored allowing TikTok to keep operating in the United States for at least “a little while,” saying he had received billions of views on the social media platform during his presidential campaign.
Trump’s comments before a crowd of conservative supporters in Phoenix, Arizona, were one of the strongest signals yet that he opposes a potential exit of TikTok from the US market.
The US Senate passed a law in April requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest the app, citing national security concerns.
TikTok’s owners have sought to have the law struck down, and the US Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case. But if the court does not rule in ByteDance’s favor and no divestment occurs, the app could be effectively banned in the United States on Jan. 19, one day before Trump takes office.
It is unclear how Trump would go about undoing the TikTok divestiture order, which passed overwhelmingly in the Senate.
“I think we’re going to have to start thinking because, you know, we did go on TikTok, and we had a great response with billions of views, billions and billions of views,” Trump told the crowd at AmericaFest, an annual gathering organized by conservative group Turning Point.
“They brought me a chart, and it was a record, and it was so beautiful to see, and as I looked at it, I said, ‘Maybe we gotta keep this sucker around for a little while’,” he said.
Trump met with TikTok’s CEO on Monday. Trump said at a news conference the same day that he had a “warm spot” for TikTok thanks to his campaign’s success on the app.
The Justice Department has argued that Chinese control of TikTok poses a continuing threat to national security, a position supported by most US lawmakers.
TikTok says the Justice Department has misstated the social media app’s ties to China, arguing that its content recommendation engine and user data are stored in the United States on cloud servers operated by Oracle Corp, while content moderation decisions that affect US users are made in the United States.
Indian brothers seek to preserve fading Urdu with app-based learning
- Urdu has faced multiple threats from communal politics, economic issues
- New app seeks to provide a platform for people to explore the language
NEW DELHI: Part-time musician Aniruddha Pratim was always interested in learning Urdu, believing that it was key to better understanding the range of music from the subcontinent.
For the past few weeks, the Delhi-based consultant has been spending his free time and coffee breaks glued to an app called Humzaaban, which allows him to learn the language that was for centuries used prominently in Indian culture and poetry.
“I’ve always been a little keen about Urdu. I feel like it sounds very poetic, sounds very soulful,” Pratim told Arab News.
“I open (the app) whenever I get a chance to … It has got a very interactive user interface with a lot of audio-visual cues and everything, so it’s a fun app to use,” he said. “Maybe someday I can write a poem of my own in Urdu.”
Humzaaban is the brainchild of Tausif and Tanzil Rahman, who set out to preserve and promote the language they grew up with at a time when interest in speaking Urdu was waning among people in India.
Despite Urdu’s prominent role throughout Indian history, the language has been facing multiple threats from communal politics and the quest for economic prosperity in more recent decades.
Urdu has been stigmatized as foreign, the language of India’s archrival Pakistan, while families increasingly choose to enroll their children in schools that teach English or other Indian languages to better equip them for the job market.
While millions still speak Urdu today, they make up less than 5 percent of India’s 1.4 billion population. The language is also no longer taught in the majority of schools across the country.
“There has been a consistent decline in Urdu (following the independence) of India,” Tausif told Arab News, adding that the economic value of learning English has naturally led it to become preferred over Urdu.
“Urdu has lost its economic value; none of the business transactions are being done in Urdu.”
Yet the language still holds significance for many people across India, the wider subcontinent and the diaspora, who grew up humming songs from Bollywood musicals that draw heavily on Urdu poetry.
For Tausif, the motivation to create an app dedicated to learning Urdu stemmed out of his own passion for Urdu poetry.
“We speak Urdu at home, and we were discussing the future of Urdu in India and outside India,” he said.
“We decided to create a beautiful learning app, which will enable you to read and write Urdu, to understand what is happening in the Urdu world … and with this idea and with this vision, we started our journey.”
After five years of research, trial and error, the brothers, whose day jobs are in the corporate world, launched Humzaaban in October to reach a wider audience.
Tanzil said interest in Urdu transcended generations, as he saw diverse participation at an offline Urdu learning program he teaches on the weekends.
“The program participation from across generations, communities and professions gave us confidence that there is a yearning to explore this language,” he said.
The Rahman brothers believe that Urdu has the potential to flourish and made a dedicated app that they claim is more comprehensive than others in the market.
With around 3,000 Humzaaban users and counting, many said they were drawn to the app because of its interactive features and user-friendly design.
“There are very few platforms that focus on Urdu learning … but after looking into the Humzaaban app, I am very impressed,” Mohd. Azam, a Delhi-based marketing professional, told Arab News.
“I am very interested in poetry, (and) Urdu has very beautiful words … which inspire me a lot, so I want to learn from this app and maybe write some poetry.”
For Sahar Rizvi, who is based in London, the app has served as a bridge to reconnect with her roots. After learning Urdu as a child, she lost touch with the language as she grew up and forgot the basics.
“My father mentioned the Humzaaban app, and it has been awesome to catch up again. It teaches right from the beginning! I often play around with it during my time on the train,” Rizvi said.
“I’m re-learning to read Urdu … It’s a beautiful language, and I do want to incorporate it in my daily usage.”
Indian brothers seek to preserve Urdu language with learning app
- Humzaaban is the brainchild of Tausif and Tanzil Rahman, who set out to preserve and promote Urdu
- Urdu has faced multiple threats from communal politics, more families choosing English-medium schools
NEW DELHI: Part-time musician Aniruddha Pratim was always interested in learning Urdu, believing that it was key to better understand the range of music from the subcontinent.
For the past few weeks, the Delhi-based consultant has been spending his free time and coffee breaks glued to an app called Humzaaban, which allows him to learn the language that was for centuries used prominently in Indian culture and poetry.
“I’ve always been a little keen about Urdu, I feel like it sounds very poetic, sounds very soulful,” Pratim told Arab News.
“I open (the app) whenever I get a chance to … It has got a very interactive user interface with a lot of audio visual cues and everything, so it’s a fun app to use,” he said. “Maybe someday I can write a poem of my own in Urdu.”
Humzaaban is the brainchild of Tausif and Tanzil Rahman, who set out to preserve and promote the language they grew up with at a time when interest in speaking Urdu was waning among people in India.
Despite Urdu’s prominent role throughout Indian history, the language has been facing multiple threats from communal politics and the quest for economic prosperity in more recent decades.
Urdu has been stigmatized as foreign, the language of India’s archrival Pakistan, while families increasingly choose to enroll their children in schools that teach English or other Indian languages to better equip them for the job market.
While millions still speak Urdu today, they make up less than 5 percent of India’s 1.4 billion population. The language is also no longer taught in the majority of schools across the country.
“There has been a consistent decline in Urdu post-independence of India and also if you look at the you know (how) English is having all the economic value and it is you know thriving in the world,” Tausif told Arab News.
“Urdu has lost its economic value, none of the business transactions are being done in Urdu language and because of the same reasons there are not enough jobs available, people are not choosing Urdu as a language.”
Yet the language still holds a special place for many people across India, the wider subcontinent and in the diaspora, who grew up humming songs from Bollywood musicals that draw heavily on Urdu poetry.
For Tausif, the motivation to create an app dedicated for learning Urdu stemmed out of his own passion for Urdu poetries.
“We speak Urdu at home and we were discussing about the future of Urdu in India and outside India,” he said.
“We decided to create a beautiful learning app which will enable you to read and write Urdu, which will enable you to understand what is happening in the Urdu world, what are the trends that are going on, and with this idea and with this vision we started our journey.”
After five years of research, trial and error, the brothers whose day jobs are in the corporate world launched Humzaaban in October to reach a wider audience.
Tanzil said interest in Urdu transcended generations, as he saw diverse participation at an offline Urdu learning program he teaches on the weekends.
“The program participation from across generations, communities and professions gave us confidence that there is a yearning to explore this language that is born out of a long process of fusion and yet is essentially Indian,” he said.
The Rahman brothers believe that Urdu has a potential to flourish, and made a dedicated app that they claim is more comprehensive than others in the market.
With around 3,000 Humzaaban users and counting, many said they were drawn to the app because of its interactive features and user-friendly design.
“There are very few platforms that focus on Urdu learning … but after looking into Humzaaban app I am very much impressed that someone is taking the effort to increase the availability of Urdu from end to end and (through a) step-by-step journey,” Mohd. Azam, a Delhi-based marketing professional, told Arab News.
“I am very much interested in poetry and all, (and) Urdu has very beautiful words … which inspire me a lot so I want to learn from this app and maybe write some poetry.”
For Sahar Rizvi, who is based in London, the app has been a bridge to reconnect with her roots. After learning Urdu as a child, she lost touch with the language while growing up and had forgotten the basics.
“My father mentioned about the Humzaaban app and it has been awesome to catch up again. It teaches right from the beginning! I often play around with it during my time on the train,” Rizvi said.
“I’m re-learning to read Urdu … It’s a beautiful language and I do want to incorporate it in my daily usage.”
