
© Air Force Master Sgt. Larry W. Carpenter Jr.US military training BIR in Cameroon in 2013.
In mid-July 2018
a short video of an ad hoc execution in northern Cameroon of two young women and their children-one clasping the mother's hand, the other wrapped securely on the mother's back-circulated on social media sites. Armed soldiers in military fatigues escorted the two women and their children to their roadside death, taunting and striking them as they stumbled along. "Lift up your calabash so that we can see your face. You, B[oko] H[aram], you are going to die." As they blindfolded the women and made them kneel, one soldier said softly, "Little one, this hurts, but you know what your parents did." Stepping back, the soldiers took aim and fired 29 shots into the backs of their four victims. The bodies fell lifeless and silent. "This one is still living," stated one of the soldiers before shooting more rounds into the limp body of the little girl.
Following the video's circulation on Facebook and Twitter,
Amnesty International issued a press release authenticating it. Cameroon's officialdom, with its singular focus on maintaining power since 1982, quickly refuted Amnesty's report, calling the video a "fake." But using a crowdsourcing approach and Google Earth mapping, a frame by frame analysis revealed the Mandara Mountains region of northern Cameroon to be the location of the crime and estimated that it likely took place around December 2014. The perpetrators are now reported to have been arrested although it is not known where they are held or what, if any, disciplinary sanctions they will face. A Commission of Enquiry-in Cameroon, the phrase a euphemism for an official cover-up-is apparently forming.
The video from northern Cameroon provides shocking visual evidence of Cameroonian security forces' abuse and torture of civilian populations in the Lake Chad basin region where Boko Haram operates. It forces viewers to bear witness to the everyday crimes committed with impunity by state forces in the name of fighting terrorism. Several days after authenticating the viral video,
Amnesty International released a report revealing that the
Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR) of Cameroon, with the assistance of the US military, routinely commits war crimes, including torture, has converted a primary school in Fotokol into a military base, making schoolchildren a military target, and has established unofficial detention sites for those alleged-with little or no evidence-to follow Boko Haram.
Comment: See also: Italy interferes (again) in Libyan politics, calls to postpone election, wants land for military base