Source: CNN- Wednesday February 6th, 2019
The US government has decided to cut millions in security and military aid to Cameroon amid growing concerns over the Cameroonian government’s human rights record, US officials tell CNN.
The officials said the US intends to “terminate” over $17 million in security aid, including funds for radars, four defender-class patrol boats, nine armored vehicles, training programs for C-130 airplanes and helicopters and the withdrawal of an offer for Cameroon to be a candidate for the State Partnership Program.
A planned US funded upgrade to a Cessna aircraft belonging to Cameroon’s elite Rapid Intervention Battalion has also been terminated. The battalion, which has been previously advised by US troops, has been accused of engaging in human rights abuses.
Some of the security assistance money had been put on hold by Congress due to those concerns.
Last May, the US Ambassador to Cameroon, Peter Henry Barlerin, gave a speech that accused pro-government Cameroonian security forces of conducting “targeted killings, detentions without access to legal support, family, or the Red Cross, and burning and looting of villages.”
Barlerin also accused Anglophone separatists of committing “murders of gendarmes, kidnapping of government officials, and burning of schools.”
Another State Department official emphasized that “it is in Cameroon’s interest to show greater transparency in investigating credible allegations of gross violations of human rights abuses by security forces, particularly in the Northwest, Southwest, and Far North Regions.”
The US has had hundreds of troops in Cameroon tasked with training, advising and assisting local forces in their fight against ISIS West Africa, Boko Haram and other violent extremist organizations in the Lake Chad Basin region.
US Africa Command launched an investigation last August to determine if US personnel were aware of allegations of torture of suspected terrorists being carried out by US-trained Cameroonian troops from the Rapid Intervention Battalion at a base that was also frequently used by US military advisers.
The results of that investigation were not made public but a US defense official tells CNN that the investigation “found that US military forces in Cameroon were not involved in or aware of human rights violations committed by Cameroonian forces.”the results of that investigation were not made public but a US defense official tells CNN that the investigation “found that US military forces in Cameroon were not involved in or aware of human rights violations committed by Cameroonian forces.”
