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It was on May 30 when Agatha Ikefuna, a nurse who lives in Onitsha, a city in southeastern Nigeria, was trapped by a series of military roadblocks.
That's when the chaos erupted.
"I was trying to drop my child in school. There was no movement. They said people were being killed," she told VOA.
Pro-Biafran demonstrators had gathered to mark the 30th anniversary of the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Biafra War, when shots rang out nearby.
Some witnesses said it was the police firing on protesters, while others claimed the exact opposite. Ikefuna believed it was thieves who had infiltrated the protest.
Whoever pulled the trigger left dozens of civilians and at least two policemen dead. According to a report released Thursday by Amnesty International, Ikefuna had witnessed only a portion of an estimated 60 killings at various Biafra remembrance events that had taken place in the region that day.
Between August 2015 and August 2016, the London-based human rights organization says, Nigeria's military has killed at least 150 peaceful protesters in a "chilling campaign" to repress renewed demands for a breakaway state of Biafra in the West African country's southeastern corner.
Analysis of 87 videos, 122 photographs and testimony from 146 witnesses show that Nigerian troops routinely "fired live ammunition with little or no warning'' into crowds of protesters, and that hundreds of people have been arbitrarily detained and sometimes tortured.
Responding to questions about the mass killing that occurred on May 30, Nigerian army spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman denied any "killing of defenseless agitators," insisting that security forces "exercised maximum restraint" in response to violent protesters who had already killed five police officers and wounded several soldiers.
Usman also accuses the secessionists of targeting other tribes in "a reign of hate, terror and ethno-religious controversies ... [that threaten] national security."
A high-level Nigerian military official who asked not to be named told VOA that Amnesty International’s report is not accurate and grossly exaggerates misrepresents events as they unfolded. She also said the Nigerian army investigated the May 30 events and concluded that the Biafra activists were at fault. She said the army plans to hold a hearing to present its findings.
Makmid Kamara, interim director of Amnesty International Nigeria, says the army’s response to the report is to be expected.
"This is a copy and paste response to our allegations," he told VOA. "It’s the same thing that they have been saying for years, because we have been calling on them repeatedly to conduct independent, impartial and thorough investigations into allegations of serious human rights abuses."
Kamara, who personally interviewed witnesses of the violence that broke out at the secessionist rallies, said he is still haunted by some of the eye-witness accounts.
"I remember interviewing one protester who was shot on his leg and, while [attempting to] run away, fell into gutter and tried to hide himself, and then a particular soldier came to him," Kamara said. The soldier "dragged him out of the gutter and poured acid on him and that man is still recovering from those injuries."
Other witnesses, he added, have reported seeing Nigerian soldiers taking dead bodies to local army barracks.
In one account published by Amnesty researchers, a woman in Onitsha city said her husband called her May 30 to say a soldier had shot him in the stomach and that he was in a military truck with six others, four already dead. He then began whispering that the vehicle had stopped. She heard gunshots, then nothing.
The woman later found her husband's body at a mortuary with three gunshot wounds: one to the stomach and two in the chest, the report said.
Biafra declared independence in 1967 but was absorbed back into Nigeria after a three-year war that claimed an estimated one million lives.
The leader of the current pro-Biafran movement, Nnamdi Kanu, was arrested last year on charges of treason. He is still in custody in the Nigerian capital on orders of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Since Kanu's 2015 arrest, protests have increased seemingly in lockstep with military violence.
Amnesty says President Buhari has promised to investigate but done nothing about previous reports documenting the December 2015 military killings of more than 300 Shiites, and the deaths in military detention of some 8,000 people in the war on Boko Haram's radicals in the north.
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- Rita Akana
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The Governor of the South West Region of Cameroon has detained the Principal of GBHS Muea-Buea, Mr Mbeke Richard Nji for parcipating in the strike action by Teachers and Lawyers of the English speaking region of Cameroon. The Principal insisted that the Francophone section of the school be shut down as the strike goes on . Francophones who run the French section of the school made reports to the Ggovernor of that region- Mr Bernard Okalia who subsequently detained the principal.
Mark Bareta, a Cameroonin activist who has been monitoring the situation in Cameroon , wrote this on his Facebook page;
We are calling on the teachers and lawyers delegation in Bamenda meeting the PM to halt any meeting and request the PM to order the release of the Principal. It is one for all and all for one.
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- Rita Akana
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The President of Cameroon Paul Biya has partially granted some of the demands of Common law Lawyers in Cameroon. While presiding at a meeting in Yaoundé Tuesday, the minister of Justice and keeper of the seals, Lauren Esso announced that the Head of state has decide to redeploy all Francophone Magistrates exercising in Anglophone zones without a common mastery of English, back to Francophone zones.
He also said the Head of State has instructed his close collaborators to prepare an eminent holding of a National Judicial Conference which will group stake holders in the sector to seek for lasting solutions to series of problems posed by lawyers of the Anglophone Extraction.
Earlier the minister lambasted Common law lawyers for protesting on streets of Buea and Bamenda, to him the action was illegal and perpetrators need to be punished. The minister asked the lawyers to respect the wigs and gowns they wear.
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- Prince Nfor Hanson
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1. Our children who pass the GCE with quality grades cannot enter professional schools of their choice, while those who perform poorly fill all the spaces.
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2. Francophones outnumber Anglophones in the professional schools in Anglophone Universities of Buea and Bamenda by a ratio of up to 90:10% in HTTTC Kumba, 90:10% in Medical School in Buea, 80:20% in HTTTC Bamenda whereas there are no Anglophones in these schools in Francophone Universities.
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3. Anglophones who apply to read medicine are usually sent to Francophone universities, where operating becomes a serious challenge, and since they cannot cope, they give up.
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4. As a result of this policy of discrimination and marginalization, government does not train Anglophone technical teachers, and even the few Anglophones who are trained are sent to work in Francophone areas.
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5. Government continues to send Francophones who do not master English to teach in Anglophone schools. The teachers teach in broken English, thereby confusing the students. As a result, many do not perform well in their final examinations.
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6. The Universities of Buea and Bamenda have been francophonized and admissions into key faculties have been taken to Yaounde so that admission lists can be doctored.
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7. Our children are compelled to write CAP, Probatoire and Baccalaureate in technical schools, with a tradition of poorly translated questions and massive failures on their part. Qualifications into professional schools and the universities, what a mockery to our certificates!
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8. Our children who graduate from the university cannot get jobs; they have become bike riders and call-box operators and sim card vendors.
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9. Lay private and confessional schools are doing so much to educative our children, but receive little or no subvention from Government. Even Religious Studies is mocked as a requirement for admission.
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10. That the election and appointment of authorities of the Anglo-Saxon Universities of Bamenda and Buea should be in strict compliance of Anglo-Saxon norms.
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11. The 1998 Law on the Orientation of education in Cameroon provides for the creation of an Education Board, but we are asking for separate boards which can address the needs of each subsystem.
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- Cameroontoday
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Cameroon military storms the residence of the main opposition party leader, John Fru Ndi, and gasses his family and friends in broad daylight.
The charismatic leader was secretly recorded on phone calling the governor of his opposition stronghold of Bamenda and warning of repercussions.
"My children and CRTV journalists were with me in my compound when your soldiers broke into my house and tear gassed all of us for nothing," Fri Ndi shouts at the governor on phone.
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- Tapang Ivo
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One month after the train crash in Cameroon that killed 79 people and injured hundreds, victims are still waiting for an inquirey into what went wrong. However, FRANCE 24 has obtained documents showing that the train exceeded weight regulations.
The train tragically derailed on October 21 as it sped between the capital of Yaounde and the central African country’s port city of Douala.
Authorities and rail company officials have determined that the train was travelling at least 40 kph (kilometres per hour) too fast when it came off the tracks.
However, company documents obtained by FRANCE 24 reveal that the express train also clearly exceeded the weight limit by approximately 25 tonnes.
Another document suggests the driver received special permission from management to travel with a dangerously overloaded train.
The victims of this horrific derailment have filed a lawsuit against the rail company Camrail and its French owner Bollore Group, accusing them of negligence and involuntary manslaughter.
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- Rita Akana
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