Editorial

Minority groups are always vulnerable everywhere they are in the world. This is because of the possible persecution they face from the majority. The most common ones that we often hear are race, religion and tribes. Cameroon Concord things that if activists and human rights campaigners fail to do more for the Albinos, an entire community in Africa will be wiped out. This is the sad story of albinos in Africa. According to experts, albinos or albinism occurs when one of the several genetic defects makes the body unable to produce or distribute melanin (a natural substance that gives color to your hair, skin, and iris of the eye). This health defect therefore makes the person skin white with pink hair and iris color, as well as vision problems. It is said defect may be passed down through families. From this small health education, we can see that science has provided an empirical evidence to refute any mythology about albinos. It is a purely health problem. 

But people in many parts of Africa hold a different view of this category of people. In some parts of Africa, kids are told never to greet an albino in the morning which if I violate, will bring them bad luck throughout the day.These conspiracy mysteries about albinos are false but are still being upheld in some African societies. However, the previous believe that albinos belong to the evil world has dramatically been reversed. It has moved from bad to worse. If you want fame, influence, power or money, just get the body parts of albino to a witchdoctor and you get what you want. African witchdoctors have made albinos living in the continent very vulnerable. There is a mad rush for them. Whereas some are kidnapped and later killed, others are hunted for like bush meat. Some are cruelly hacked to death with machete and those who are lucky enough to survive these ordeals live a miserable life. 

Tanzania is said to have the largest population of albinos in Africa. Birth records show that albinos represent one in every 1429 births, a much higher rate than in any other nation in Africa. And it is here that they are persecuted than any other place. In the last three years, over 70 albinos have been killed in Tanzania but only ten convictions have been made. In other parts of Africa, a total of 136 killings and 211 attacks across 25 countries have been reported since 2010. In Burundi, 33 killings have been reported and 29 cases recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In West Africa where, cases have been recorded in the Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Ghana; while there have also been attacks in southern countries like South Africa, Namibia and Mozambique.

The first person to bring this horrendous crime to the attention of various governments in Africa was the Ghanaian investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas. In an undercover work he undertook in Tanzania, he exposed how the killings of Albinos have become like the drug trade in South America and Mexico. How they are hunted and traded like commodities. But since his exposé, little is being done by the governments in Africa to ensure that Albinos are safe to go about their daily routines like everyone else on the continent. The point we of Cameroon Concord are making here is that Albinos are human beings. It is no fault of theirs that they are born that way. Hence, they have the right to live just like any of us. And that is why we are calling on international human rights campaigners to put pressure on African governments to ensure the safety of this community.

 

 

 

 

 

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Ngwa Bertrand

27.Feb.2015

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Minority groups are always vulnerable everywhere they are in the world. This is because of the possible persecution they face from the majority. The most common ones that we often hear are race, religion and tribes. Cameroon Concord things that if activists and human rights campaigners fail to do more for the Albinos, an entire community in Africa will be wiped out. This is the sad story of albinos in Africa. According to experts, albinos or albinism occurs when one of the several genetic defects makes the body unable to produce or distribute melanin (a natural substance that gives color to your hair, skin, and iris of the eye). This health defect therefore makes the person skin white with pink hair and iris color, as well as vision problems. It is said defect may be passed down through families. From this small health education, we can see that science has provided an empirical evidence to refute any mythology about albinos. It is a purely health problem. 

But people in many parts of Africa hold a different view of this category of people. In some parts of Africa, kids are told never to greet an albino in the morning which if I violate, will bring them bad luck throughout the day.These conspiracy mysteries about albinos are false but are still being upheld in some African societies. However, the previous believe that albinos belong to the evil world has dramatically been reversed. It has moved from bad to worse. If you want fame, influence, power or money, just get the body parts of albino to a witchdoctor and you get what you want. African witchdoctors have made albinos living in the continent very vulnerable. There is a mad rush for them. Whereas some are kidnapped and later killed, others are hunted for like bush meat. Some are cruelly hacked to death with machete and those who are lucky enough to survive these ordeals live a miserable life. 

Tanzania is said to have the largest population of albinos in Africa. Birth records show that albinos represent one in every 1429 births, a much higher rate than in any other nation in Africa. And it is here that they are persecuted than any other place. In the last three years, over 70 albinos have been killed in Tanzania but only ten convictions have been made. In other parts of Africa, a total of 136 killings and 211 attacks across 25 countries have been reported since 2010. In Burundi, 33 killings have been reported and 29 cases recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In West Africa where, cases have been recorded in the Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Ghana; while there have also been attacks in southern countries like South Africa, Namibia and Mozambique.

The first person to bring this horrendous crime to the attention of various governments in Africa was the Ghanaian investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas. In an undercover work he undertook in Tanzania, he exposed how the killings of Albinos have become like the drug trade in South America and Mexico. How they are hunted and traded like commodities. But since his exposé, little is being done by the governments in Africa to ensure that Albinos are safe to go about their daily routines like everyone else on the continent. The point we of Cameroon Concord are making here is that Albinos are human beings. It is no fault of theirs that they are born that way. Hence, they have the right to live just like any of us. And that is why we are calling on international human rights campaigners to put pressure on African governments to ensure the safety of this community.

 

 

 

 

 

Details

Ngwa Bertrand

27.Feb.2015

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Minority groups are always vulnerable everywhere they are in the world. This is because of the possible persecution they face from the majority. The most common ones that we often hear are race, religion and tribes. Cameroon Concord things that if activists and human rights campaigners fail to do more for the Albinos, an entire community in Africa will be wiped out. This is the sad story of albinos in Africa. According to experts, albinos or albinism occurs when one of the several genetic defects makes the body unable to produce or distribute melanin (a natural substance that gives color to your hair, skin, and iris of the eye). This health defect therefore makes the person skin white with pink hair and iris color, as well as vision problems. It is said defect may be passed down through families. From this small health education, we can see that science has provided an empirical evidence to refute any mythology about albinos. It is a purely health problem. 

But people in many parts of Africa hold a different view of this category of people. In some parts of Africa, kids are told never to greet an albino in the morning which if I violate, will bring them bad luck throughout the day.These conspiracy mysteries about albinos are false but are still being upheld in some African societies. However, the previous believe that albinos belong to the evil world has dramatically been reversed. It has moved from bad to worse. If you want fame, influence, power or money, just get the body parts of albino to a witchdoctor and you get what you want. African witchdoctors have made albinos living in the continent very vulnerable. There is a mad rush for them. Whereas some are kidnapped and later killed, others are hunted for like bush meat. Some are cruelly hacked to death with machete and those who are lucky enough to survive these ordeals live a miserable life. 

Tanzania is said to have the largest population of albinos in Africa. Birth records show that albinos represent one in every 1429 births, a much higher rate than in any other nation in Africa. And it is here that they are persecuted than any other place. In the last three years, over 70 albinos have been killed in Tanzania but only ten convictions have been made. In other parts of Africa, a total of 136 killings and 211 attacks across 25 countries have been reported since 2010. In Burundi, 33 killings have been reported and 29 cases recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In West Africa where, cases have been recorded in the Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Ghana; while there have also been attacks in southern countries like South Africa, Namibia and Mozambique.

The first person to bring this horrendous crime to the attention of various governments in Africa was the Ghanaian investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas. In an undercover work he undertook in Tanzania, he exposed how the killings of Albinos have become like the drug trade in South America and Mexico. How they are hunted and traded like commodities. But since his exposé, little is being done by the governments in Africa to ensure that Albinos are safe to go about their daily routines like everyone else on the continent. The point we of Cameroon Concord are making here is that Albinos are human beings. It is no fault of theirs that they are born that way. Hence, they have the right to live just like any of us. And that is why we are calling on international human rights campaigners to put pressure on African governments to ensure the safety of this community.

 

 

 

 

 

Details

Ngwa Bertrand

27.Feb.2015

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Ghana discovered its offshore oil and gas Jubilee Field in 2007. By 2010, it had started pumping the first oil – a historic moment. Since then, oil has been produced in commercial quantities, and over the next 20 years it could earn up to US$20 billion in export revenue for the country. It is expected that this will present an opportunity for the growth of the country’s economy, reducing the poverty rate amongst the people living in the coastal towns where the exploration work is carried out. But four years after entry into the oil business, critical issues have begun emerging from communities living close to where the exploration takes place. The sea provides a major source of employment for people living in the coastal towns. They fish to get their daily bread. But recently, their work has virtually halted as a result of the frequent washing ashore of dead whales.

Between August 2013 and December 2014, the carcasses of 23 whales appeared on the beaches of Ghana. Traditionally, in the coastal towns such an occurrence was seen as a sign of a bumper harvest of fish, and the local people celebrated and made merry. They buried the whale and gave it a befitting funeral, just like a human being. This was the practice in the olden days. But the number of dead whales recently has changed people’s ancient beliefs. They are now worried. Whenever a dead whale is washed ashore, they are out of business. They cannot undertake their daily work routines until the mammal has decomposed. In Asanta, a small fishing village of about 2,000 inhabitants located in Ellembele District in the Western Region of the country, more than seven dead whales have appeared. The chief fisherman of the village, Joseph Ebambay, explained in an interview that this development was unusual in the past and blamed it on the oil exploration in the area. “I can say there is a change in the environment, because we are now having oil fields and oil companies running within our deep seas. So, you cannot deny the fact that, as we say, it may be because of the oil find. We may be thinking like that, we may be thinking because of the oil drilling some chemicals fell into the sea and maybe these whales … drink some of the water or whatever it is,” said Mr. Ebambay.

Not only the chief fisherman and his people in the village suspect the oil exploration. At the Department of Marine and Fisheries Sciences at the University of Ghana, Professor P. K. Ofori-Danson, a sea mammal expert, said in an interview that the current rate at which the whales are being washed ashore is something that must be investigated. “The frequency of the occurrence of death is going higher. What new thing have we put there that made it go high? The sound waves inserted into the ocean floor during the exploration are 100 times the sound of a jet plane taking off. So, if you send strange waves to the sea bed, it interferes with [the whales’] echo-location and prevents them from moving, and they are likely to swim to the shallow area of the sea and eventually be washed ashore. So we suspect the oil drilling”, the professor said. The Ghanaian government representative in the area is worried about the rate at which the dead mammals are being found. District Chief Executive, Daniel Eshon said Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is not doing enough to help solve the problem, but declined to comment on whether the oil exploration is responsible for the death of the whales or not. “It will interest you to know that if it happens, the EPA people will call and say try and solve this problem, because they think that as the assembly is there ‒ the assembly is the local government in this particular area ‒ so you have to oversee everything. So in this case, most of the time, they rely on me to solve these kinds of issues. But for them … [to] do this kind of post mortem and proper analysis to determine the cause of death of the whale, they will not come,” he said.

Before oil exploration began, an environmental impact assessment was done for the government by the companies involved. In the assessment, it was identified that the exploration could cause some potential threats to marine mammals. But the mitigation measures that were outlined to reduce these threats have not been properly reviewed by Ghana’s environmental authorities. Friends of the Nation, an environmental issue advocacy group, has kept a close eye on the incidents and said in an interview that people in the area have reason to believe that the oil activities are responsible, since it was predicted that it could happen.But the environmental authorities have denied that the deaths of the mammals could be linked to oil extraction. ‘You must have evidence to say so; there has been speculation as to whether the oil activities might be responsible for this, [that] by generating seismic sounds that could disorientate the whales. But recent studies by the International Union for Conservation of Nature have shown that the evidence does not support it,’ maintains Carl Fiati, the EPA’s deputy director of natural resources, marine and costal environment.

Ghana’s environmental authorities are not making any concerted effort to uncover the mystery behind the deaths of the whales. Meanwhile, the migration period of the whales has just begun this year. From August 2014 till March 2015, they will be traversing Ghana’s waters, and probably more of them will be washed ashore, which will continue to disturb communities living along the coast.

 

Note: This article was first submitted to the Haller Foundation as an unpublished article. It was selected as the 1^st Runner Up in the Haller Prize for Development Journalism held in Nairobi-Kenya.

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Ngwa Bertrand

10.Feb.2015

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The republic of Cameroon will celebrate the 49th edition of the National Youth Day tomorrow Wednesday, February 11, 2015. There seems to be an absence of the excitement that usually comes with this day throughout the national territory. The CPDM think tank has chosen as theme "Youth and preserving peace for an emerging Cameroon". For the first time ever since the Ahmadou Ahidjo government concocted and implemented this so called National Youth Day celebration, the Far North region will not be a part. Reason: nearly 170 schools closed, 150,000 Cameroonian citizens internally displaced, over 300,000 Nigerian refugees now face starvation. The one time beautiful Far North region of Cameroon that occupied more than half of the cabinet positions in the Biya government is under the threat of a humanitarian crisis.

The traditional parade of the Youth Day will not take place in Logone and Chari, Mayo-Sava, Mayo-Tsanaga, Mayo-Danay--to be sure, in 4 of the 6 divisions of the Far North region.  In a country where the ruling party spends hundreds of millions every day all in a bid to stifle the opposition, there are now new signs that the real opposition to the Biya hegemony will come from soldiers returning from Nigeria and the Far North region of the country. Worsening urban violence is placing increasing demands on the Cameroon police force. The Cameroon army, the Gendarmerie including the police force are typically woefully underresourced, inadequately trained, unaccountable and distrusted by the local communities, leaving them ineffective in addressing the security challenges posed regularly by Boko Haram. This is what we of Cameroon Concord see as we cover the war on terror.

The special blood donation campaign announced by the Movement for the Revival of Cameroon on March 2015 to help save, wherever possible, persons injured in the war on terror in the Far North seems to suggest that Etoudi can no longer handle things alone.  John Fru Ndi has criticized the marginalization suffered by the people of the Far North region. However, President Paul Biya will address the Cameroonian people tonight. With age telling on him, a young family and his entire cabinet under a privileged form of “house arrest” due to many interrogations by the Special Criminal Court in Yaoundé, President Biya is expected to focus his speech on the Fotokol massacre. This also will be too little too late as the youth are not happy that nearly a week after the attack by Boko Haram on Fotokol, Biya is yet to issue a statement despite calls from the political class of the country.

Truth is like surgery, it may hurt, but it cures while a lie is like a pain killer, it gives temporal relief but has side effects later. We of Cameroon Concord think President Biya should announce his successor to the Cameroonian people soonest. The ruling CPDM party is no longer in need of grease but a new engine. To be accurate, the leadership of the party now functions like a teenager who has been given a new car and he keeps driving all over the place without having any destination in mind. For the first time in our nation’s history, thousands of our service men and women have come under enemy fire. Once they start returning from the war, they will longer be afraid of bullets!! This ageing regime should be making way for the new generation. A stitch in time saves nine

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Ngwa Bertrand

10.Feb.2015

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Ghana discovered its offshore oil and gas Jubilee Field in 2007. By 2010, it had started pumping the first oil – a historic moment. Since then, oil has been produced in commercial quantities, and over the next 20 years it could earn up to US$20 billion in export revenue for the country. It is expected that this will present an opportunity for the growth of the country’s economy, reducing the poverty rate amongst the people living in the coastal towns where the exploration work is carried out. But four years after entry into the oil business, critical issues have begun emerging from communities living close to where the exploration takes place. The sea provides a major source of employment for people living in the coastal towns. They fish to get their daily bread. But recently, their work has virtually halted as a result of the frequent washing ashore of dead whales.

Between August 2013 and December 2014, the carcasses of 23 whales appeared on the beaches of Ghana. Traditionally, in the coastal towns such an occurrence was seen as a sign of a bumper harvest of fish, and the local people celebrated and made merry. They buried the whale and gave it a befitting funeral, just like a human being. This was the practice in the olden days. But the number of dead whales recently has changed people’s ancient beliefs. They are now worried. Whenever a dead whale is washed ashore, they are out of business. They cannot undertake their daily work routines until the mammal has decomposed. In Asanta, a small fishing village of about 2,000 inhabitants located in Ellembele District in the Western Region of the country, more than seven dead whales have appeared. The chief fisherman of the village, Joseph Ebambay, explained in an interview that this development was unusual in the past and blamed it on the oil exploration in the area. “I can say there is a change in the environment, because we are now having oil fields and oil companies running within our deep seas. So, you cannot deny the fact that, as we say, it may be because of the oil find. We may be thinking like that, we may be thinking because of the oil drilling some chemicals fell into the sea and maybe these whales … drink some of the water or whatever it is,” said Mr. Ebambay.

Not only the chief fisherman and his people in the village suspect the oil exploration. At the Department of Marine and Fisheries Sciences at the University of Ghana, Professor P. K. Ofori-Danson, a sea mammal expert, said in an interview that the current rate at which the whales are being washed ashore is something that must be investigated. “The frequency of the occurrence of death is going higher. What new thing have we put there that made it go high? The sound waves inserted into the ocean floor during the exploration are 100 times the sound of a jet plane taking off. So, if you send strange waves to the sea bed, it interferes with [the whales’] echo-location and prevents them from moving, and they are likely to swim to the shallow area of the sea and eventually be washed ashore. So we suspect the oil drilling”, the professor said. The Ghanaian government representative in the area is worried about the rate at which the dead mammals are being found. District Chief Executive, Daniel Eshon said Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is not doing enough to help solve the problem, but declined to comment on whether the oil exploration is responsible for the death of the whales or not. “It will interest you to know that if it happens, the EPA people will call and say try and solve this problem, because they think that as the assembly is there ‒ the assembly is the local government in this particular area ‒ so you have to oversee everything. So in this case, most of the time, they rely on me to solve these kinds of issues. But for them … [to] do this kind of post mortem and proper analysis to determine the cause of death of the whale, they will not come,” he said.

Before oil exploration began, an environmental impact assessment was done for the government by the companies involved. In the assessment, it was identified that the exploration could cause some potential threats to marine mammals. But the mitigation measures that were outlined to reduce these threats have not been properly reviewed by Ghana’s environmental authorities. Friends of the Nation, an environmental issue advocacy group, has kept a close eye on the incidents and said in an interview that people in the area have reason to believe that the oil activities are responsible, since it was predicted that it could happen.But the environmental authorities have denied that the deaths of the mammals could be linked to oil extraction. ‘You must have evidence to say so; there has been speculation as to whether the oil activities might be responsible for this, [that] by generating seismic sounds that could disorientate the whales. But recent studies by the International Union for Conservation of Nature have shown that the evidence does not support it,’ maintains Carl Fiati, the EPA’s deputy director of natural resources, marine and costal environment.

Ghana’s environmental authorities are not making any concerted effort to uncover the mystery behind the deaths of the whales. Meanwhile, the migration period of the whales has just begun this year. From August 2014 till March 2015, they will be traversing Ghana’s waters, and probably more of them will be washed ashore, which will continue to disturb communities living along the coast.

 

Note: This article was first submitted to the Haller Foundation as an unpublished article. It was selected as the 1^st Runner Up in the Haller Prize for Development Journalism held in Nairobi-Kenya.

Details

Ngwa Bertrand

10.Feb.2015

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