Like Joel, there are many young Ghanaians, mostly men, there are some women too, who are gradually succumbing to the lure of sports betting with the hope that one day, they would win big.

Despite Ghana being largely a religious country, and the fact that religious people are known to abhor betting, betting shops have sprung up in sprawling communities around the country. Some can be found in corners, around busy markets and lorry parks, wherever people can be found – betting shops can be seen.

The sports betting companies slid into the country quietly more than 10 years ago but are now taking front seats – with large advertising billboards decorating streets across Ghana. They have become loud with radio and TV commercials and push hard with all forms of marketing strategies including big budget sponsorships, and they are getting Ghanaian youth hooked. Most of them facing unemployment, poverty and hopelessness are finding solace in sports betting.

According to the World Bank’s 6th Ghana Economic Update titled “Preserving the future: rising to the youth employment challenge,” released in July 2022, Ghana’s youth has grown rapidly and now represents 36 per cent of the population. The economy’s strong growth performance of the past 30 years has however not delivered enough jobs for them, it adds

The National Population Census in 2021 found that approximately three-quarters of unemployed adults were ‘young’. The report notes further that while governments have created multiple policies and programmes to address youth unemployment over the years, the many programmes aimed at helping the youth have often fallen short of the massive needs.

While investigating the phenomena of sports betting in Ghana, I found that some of the young people hooked to betting are traders, but most are unemployed, while others have poorly paid jobs.

Joel is a school drop-out from Nigeria. He migrated to Ghana and settled in the Eastern Regional capital of Koforidua. In the betting shop where I met him in the suburb of Adweso, about 12 young men hunched over computer terminals. Like everyone else, they hoped to make fortunes from their wins. They all have recorded more losses than wins, and yet they keep betting, hoping for their lucky day.

Ebenezer is 28 years old. He completed Senior Secondary School and makes a living as a painter, but when he has no painting jobs, he spends some of his time and earnings betting.

“A friend came and told me he has won a bet. Showed me how much he had won. He won almost GH¢4000 after staking GH¢5. I said I’ll also try my luck. That was how I started,” he said. Then he added, “I have won some, but I have lost more. The highest bet I have ever placed was GH¢50. The highest I have won so far was about GH¢3000. I can bet all day, but I don’t stake lots of money,” he says.

“Work is slow. I don’t have work to do now, so I spend most of my time betting, even though I don’t like betting. When I’m low on cash, I bet and hope to get some money from my wins. I bet around GH¢2 or GH¢5 at any time. I’ll never bet every day. You can’t use your hard-earned money to bet,” he says. “If you bet every day, your chances of winning are small. I don’t spend all my time betting. You can’t spend all your money and time betting,” he argues.

Like most of the young people I spoke to, Ebenezer believes betting is not a good thing. But he bets. Like him, most of the young people who agreed to speak to me, expressed awareness of the Ghanaian society’s abhorrence for sports betting, and therefore, weren’t keen in telling me their full names. They were also unwilling to have their photos taken.

“Betting is not a good game. I won’t advise anybody to go into betting, because it is not a good game at all.  I am betting, but I won’t advise anybody to bet at all, because if you become a bet addict, you can’t even work. Every time, you want to bet. You can put all your hope in betting, that you can win big, and use it to do something, but you can’t win.

I intend to stop betting. I’m stopping. It’s little by little. In the past I used to bet about GH¢20 or GH¢50, but these days the highest amount I bet is GH¢5. I want to stop betting because it’s not a good game,” says Ebenezer.

Betting addiction in Ghana

Ghanaian society has for a long time been struggling with various types of addiction. However, in recent times, sports betting has become an obsession to add to Ghana’s list of addictions.

In an interview, Dr Paul Kumi, a Clinical Psychologist at the University of Ghana Medical Centre told Ghana Business News that addiction refers to an inability to stop engaging in a behaviour or using a substance that causes both physical and psychological distress to an individual.

Citing the American Psychological Association, he said an addiction is a state of psychological or physical dependence (or both) on the use of alcohol, other drugs or an activity.

“It sometimes applies to behavioural disorders such as Internet, sexual and gambling addictions. In Ghana, the most common forms of addictions are alcohol, Internet, drug, sex, gambling, for example lottery, and food addiction,” Dr Kumi said.

He explained further that addiction starts when a person, usually unintentionally, engages in an activity which seems to fill a void or helps them cope with an incident, stress and trauma such as loss of a job.

“Addiction starts when there is an over-dependence on the ‘source’ of increased dopamine in the brain. For example; if an individual feels pleasure, satisfaction and motivation from a particular substance, object, activity, he or she begins to depend on the said substance, object, activity,” he said.

The betting companies

The Ghana Gaming Commission has licensed 36 sports betting companies in the country. I made a Right to Information request seeking to know how much Ghanaians spend on betting, the Commission replied that it doesn’t have such information, and promised that should it ever have, it would share.

I made further enquiries seeking to know how it regulates online betting sites and what it does about under-age betting, as well as addiction, but I haven’t received their response yet by the time of publication.

Internet and smart phones make online betting ubiquitous

With the availability of the Internet and smart phones, sports betting and any form of online betting have become ubiquitous. All one needs is a smart phone, Internet, and a betting app. With these, one can bet at anytime, anywhere and as many times as possible.

Betting companies have come up with systems that enable consumers to load their Mobile Money wallets into accounts for easy betting.

Number of Ghanaians involved in sports betting

So far, available data on the number of Ghanaians involved in sports betting is from research on Internet penetration in Ghana published in September 2022 by Hootsuite and We Are Social – two of the globally recognised social media management platforms. The study says Ghana’s Internet population stood at 16.99 million, constituting 53 per cent of the total population as of the first quarter of 2022.

The research also found that about a 11.18 million people in Ghana used the Internet to access sports betting sites, 10.79 million used it to access news sites, 10.68 million for social media sites while only 2.57 million used it to visit informational sites.

With a rough estimate based on this figure even if each person making half of the number which is 5.6 million Ghanaians spend on average GH¢10 weekly to bet, in a four-week month that would amount to GH¢40. In one month therefore, Ghanaians would have spent an amount of GH¢244 million on sports betting, and in a year that would amount to more than GH¢2.9 billion.

Betting companies are making lots of money

While it’s not been possible to obtain information on the finances of betting companies, they are nevertheless making lots of money and they are not hiding it. One of the brands, Betway, part of the global Super Group and managed in Ghana by Sports Betting Group Ghana Limited, has signed a sponsorship deal with the Ghana Football Association (GFA). The amount involved has not been disclosed, but it’s likely to be substantial – in the millions of US dollars. Under the deal the betting company will support the local game and clubs as well as periodic training programmes for sports journalists, administrators of National Women’s League clubs, Division One League clubs and Ghana Premier League (GPL) clubs.

Just days to the opening of the World Cup, Betway announced a promotion for customers to win GH¢3 million to be shared among winners. They would be expected to predict the correct score in games. The correct predictions would win money prizes.

Another sports betting brand, betPawa signed a deal with the GFA to be the headline sponsor of the GPL, in an agreement valued at $6 million for three years.

MyBet.Africa, is sponsoring three winners of its 2022 World Cup promo, called « Play Ghana, Cheer Ghana » to Qatar on an all-expenses paid trip to watch the Black Stars.

The three winners would be given over GH¢100,000 in packages, which include round trip air tickets, accommodation, and match tickets.

The amount of money these companies are putting in sponsorships and give aways, is an indication of how much they are making. In addition to the profits, betting companies are also able to legitimize their products by associating gambling in the public eye with wholesome activities and brands like sports teams.

In jail for stealing to bet

There are records of devastating stories of three young men in jail for stealing large amounts of money from their employers to bet. Two ongoing cases involve the theft of GH¢7000 and a whopping GH¢1 million to bet. In the third case which has been concluded a year ago, the young man is serving a 15-year jail term for stealing GH¢139,000 to bet.

Saddick Amoah is a 23-year-old employed as salesman at a Fan Milk depot located at Ashaiman in Accra. He has been arrested for gambling away GH¢7,000 of his employer’s money.

A 19-year-old man, Nana Nhyira Agyapong, who worked as an Administrative Officer with Kabfam Company Limited, an electronics items company, is standing trial for allegedly stealing over GH¢1 million from his employer. Agyapong told prosecutors that he spent the GH¢1, 079,728 on sports betting. He was found out after an internal audit.

Yussif Abubakar, who was employed by the Hohoe branch of Star Oil Company was given a 15-year jail term for stealing GH¢139,118 belonging to his employer. Abubakar used the money to bet. I made efforts to speak to Abubakar in prison, but he declined.

These three are likely examples of the extreme impacts of betting addiction and its potential to destroy young lives.

Betting for five years, won only GH¢90

He has bright eyes and exudes lots of confidence. For someone who is 25 years old, he looked like someone who has gone through a lot in life already and knows what he was aiming at, but whatever it was, I couldn’t immediately tell. Five years of his life he has been betting. Tells me his name is Golden. Says he bets every Saturday, and sometimes on Sundays. But I was interviewing him on a Wednesday. He however says it’s because there was a mid-week game.

It turns out from his explanation, that he bets four times a week. Golden who also says he is a Nigerian migrant and has been living in Koforidua for three years, makes a living by selling mobile phone accessories and spends between GH¢30 to GH¢40 daily to bet. He has so far won GH¢90. He has no idea how much he has lost in his five years of betting.

“It was a total of GH¢150, but one of the games was voided and so I was left with GH¢90,” he said, adding that he has had more losses than wins. Golden may not keep tabs of his exact losses but using his own estimated daily spend and assuming three bets a week, Golden wastes around GH¢5000 a year on gambling.

For instance, Joel who dropped out of university at Level 100, says he has been betting for three years now, and was drawn to betting for the love of the game. He says he bets every day. He earns some money from selling phone accessories as well.

“I spend not less than GH¢60 to GH¢70 to bet,” he says.

He however believes that no one should gamble all their money and so he ensures that he saves some of his daily sales before he comes to the betting centre.

“You bet and lose GH¢20. You would want to get back that GH¢20 and you bet again, but then you might end up losing again,” he said.

The highest amount Joel says he has ever won was GH¢2000.

Like most of the patrons in the centre that afternoon, Joel, holding a GH¢20 slip in his hand, says he has lost more than he has won.

When asked why he keeps going to the betting centre, he provides an analogy: “Just like someone who is smoking.” While insisting he is not addicted, he says, “it’s become part of me. I’m finding a way to stop because it can’t help me.”

“I want to stop. In the past I would be holding 4 or 5 slips in my hands, but now I have only one to show that gradually I want to get rid of it,” he says.

Joel also believes that betting makes the youth lazy. “They are supposed to go out there and hustle to make money, but they are here spending the little money they have gambling. Gambling won’t make you have money in your pocket. It would make you spend what you have. While you may win, there is always a slim chance of you winning. It’s like when you get into a coma, there is a slim chance of you coming back, that’s how it is,” he says.

Joel, moreover, doesn’t want others, especially his family members to know he is into sports betting. The sense of shame underlines the fact that betting in Ghana has not yet been normalized as a social activity.

In the historical suburb of Teshie in the Greater Accra Region, I met these impressionable young men. One of them, Abdul, argues that betting is better than working for someone. “If I work for someone, I get paid GH¢800 a month. But I can make that money in a day. I placed GH¢1000 and I won almost GH¢2000 yesterday. GH¢1,753, plus this GH¢200, making GH¢1,953. That’s almost GH¢2000. I can’t go and sit in someone’s shop and be paid GH¢800 a month while I can take 10 minutes and win GH¢1000 or GH¢2000,” he says.

Asked if he has considered how much he has gained against how much he has lost, he responded: “It’s a game of chance. It’s a risk.”

Betting has reduced crime here

They told me they are experienced in sports betting, and believe because of betting, crime in their community where they all grew up has gone down.

30-year-old Kpakpo is a graduate of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. He has a degree in construction technology.

“I won’t say betting has disappointed me. I know so many people who bet secretly, they don’t want people to know because of our religiosity,” he says and quickly adds: “Betting has reduced stealing in our community. These days instead of stealing, most young people in the community are betting. If you see a young man sitting quietly in a corner with his phone, he is betting,” Kpakpo said confidently and goes on to narrate his betting experience in the week. “We started with GH¢500. If the GH¢500 gets finished within that week, then we know we have lost. That GH¢500 is gone, so you know you have to get another GH¢500 to get back your money before you get some interest (profit).

For me these days they have destroyed (shut) my account so I go with one, one cedi. They destroyed my account because I was losing too much,” he said.

But his friend and betting partner, 24-year-old Abdul, who started betting 10 years ago when he was 14, believes if he got a job that offered him good pay, he won’t be betting.

“If there was a better job that can pay us good salary, no one would be betting. If I get a job that pays me a minimum of GH¢1,500 a month. I will be fine. All my moves I make as I do other things, in a month I make like GH¢5000. I can’t go and sit in a container for someone and be paid GH¢500 a month.

Now even when you graduate from university you can’t find a job. This one that is here (pointing to his friend Kpakpo), he has a degree. But he is in the house,” says Abdul.

Kpakpo, who at that time was working on a survey for a contractor, said he was supposed to cover 25 households, but he wasn’t done. He however, had come to the betting centre to meet his friends to bet.

He says: “We are working for 17 days, and we are being paid GH¢1,700.”

His friend Abdul chips in, “After the 17 days, you are back to the house. No job, and the government doesn’t give a heck about you,” he snarls.

“The only way we can stop betting is if the economy improves. Look at the way inflation is going?” He asks. “So, for me, the betting is better. While I don’t do betting full-time, for me it’s serious business, it’s an investment,” he adds, and indicates that he also has investments in cryptocurrency.

The young men believe that betting is the only source for their financial freedom, and they are looking to raise money and leave Ghana for another country.

The young men of Tamale betting for a living

When I headed off to the Northern Regional capital of Tamale, I had no idea what to expect. But I wasn’t prepared for what I found.

Rahman (not his real name), a Senior High School graduate is 27 years old and jobless. He has lived all his life in Tamale where he was born.

“I consider betting as my job. Betting is the only thing that gives me money and puts food on my table,” he says. Rahman tells me he bets every day and spends not less than GH¢50 daily.

When I asked him how often he wins, he responds: “Sometimes you can bet for a whole month and not win. Your chances of winning are lower than your chances of losing. You lose more than you win.” His highest win so far was GH¢2,500, he tells me.

He says he spends time betting because he has no job and betting is fun.

“If I have a job, I wouldn’t concentrate much on betting. A job would minimise my time betting, even though I would place more money on betting, but I won’t stop,” he says.

Rahman who has betting apps like Betway and SportyBet on his phone, says he’s never been to a betting shop and bets only on his phone.

He also believes betting is helping the youth; it’s brought them opportunities, and they are earning money they probably wouldn’t be able to earn at their age.

For 25-year-old Ibrahim (not his real name) who also has no job, he bets to survive; and when I asked him how he makes money to bet, he says, he works at construction sites and uses the money he makes to bet.

“I have been betting for more than five years now. I am betting because I have no job and I am looking for money. My view is that if I bet, I can make more money than if I was just sitting down doing nothing. I bet everyday so I can earn something to take care of myself,” he says.

Ibrahim says he saves about 30 per cent of what he makes from construction sites into his betting account and sometimes, his girlfriend supports him with money and prayers so he would win. Ibrahim, however, says his highest win so far was GH¢1000, and adds that even if he gets a regular job, he will continue to bet. “If I earn more, I’ll put in more money than I’m doing now to bet,” he says.

Known by his nickname Gbargbar, he is 32 years and married with two children. He works at a betting shop as a bouncer. He says his salary isn’t enough and therefore tries his luck at betting to supplement his income.

“I’ve more wins than losses”, he says and adds that even if he gets a job that pays him more than he was currently earning, he will still bet, because he doesn’t spend too much money on betting. Gbargbar says he spends as little as GH¢2 or GH¢3 to bet and therefore doesn’t see that as a problem. In the meantime, his wife supports his betting and gives him money to bet whenever he asks her.

Regulation of the Industry

In most countries where gambling is legal, the practise is subject to laws and regulation by an independent body. In Ghana the Gaming Commission issues licenses, monitors gaming operators, and is supposed to ensure compliance with the law. However, illegal facilities reportedly continue to operate, causing high rates of underage gambling. Abdul from Teshie would have been an underage gambler when he first started at 14.

Besides addiction, children betting is another scourge associated with the industry. Sports betting companies in Ghana are required to block minors from using their services. However, unauthorised betting shops abound, circumventing these rules. The Gaming Commission does not appear to have adequate training and government support to carry out its duties.

International best practice also insists that companies who profit off gambling must issue conspicuous gambling-addiction advice. This includes advertising campaigns about the ills of gambling addiction and being able to self-ban, a fact gambling operators are forced to respect.

Ghana’s gambling crisis

It seems, the government and the Gaming Commission have staked a lot on gambling being a net good for society, without enabling effective oversight. This is a dangerous wager.

Ghana is currently in an economic crisis. The country’s debt has spiralled out of control exceeding 80 per cent of GDP. With inflation above 40 per cent, the highest in decades, cost of living and the cost of doing business have gone high. The dire economic situation, worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia-Ukraine war and mismanagement by the government, doesn’t portend well for the country’s teeming youth, who in search of relief and for a living are getting snared by betting.

While the youth are delving deep and getting hooked, the betting companies are smiling all the way to the bank.

By Emmanuel K Dogbevi
Copyright ©2022 by NewsBridge Africa
All rights reserved. This article or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in reviews.

The post Revealed : Young people in Ghana addicted to sports betting appeared first on The Museba Project.

A few pieces of smoked antelope, monkey, deer and porcupine lie strewn across the table. Ahanda has been selling such products for five years, supporting her husband in feeding the family and sending their children to school. But since the arrival of COVID-19, the bushmeat business has been in steady decline.

“COVID-19 has impoverished us!” she exclaims. “There are no clients. There is also no meat coming from the hunters.”

Cameroon’s first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in March 2020. By August 2021, the number of cases exceeded 82,000 with over 1,300 deaths. This devastating disease, whose origin has been linked to wildlife trade in China, has had both positive and negative impacts on efforts to restrict the bushmeat trade in Cameroon. While many people are eating less bushmeat now, for a variety of reasons, others are eating more, as they run out of other options.

Supply and demand

Bushmeat trade — the commercial hunting and selling of wild animals for food — has been rampant in Cameroon in recent years. Vast numbers of monkeys, gorillas, snakes, antelopes, crocodiles, pangolins and other animals have been hunted, smoked and openly sold to be eaten. The trade has thrived, despite laws that prohibit the harvesting and sale of such species. That’s because Cameroonians of all walks of life have bought bushmeat from wildlife markets. COVID-19 has changed the dynamics.

In places like Bertoua, both supply and demand are down. Philbert Takam, a commercial motorbike rider there, says people used to hire him to transport bushmeat from nearby villages to the market. But since the outbreak of COVID-19, such trips have been rare. “This used to be a major revenue stream for me,” he says. “But now I rarely transport bushmeat.”

Several interrelated factors are at play. Customers are going to markets less due to COVID-19 travel restrictions and high transport costs. Job losses and rising costs of staple foods have reduced household budgets. Meanwhile, the price of bushmeat has nearly doubled, according to one trader in Bertoua. With fewer people buying bushmeat, fewer professional hunters are entering the forest. And both hunters and consumers may now be frightened of handling or eating wild meat, having heard that the virus emerged in a wildlife market in China.

Josephine Ahanda confirms that fear is a factor. She says that before the outbreak of COVID-19, the bushmeat market was vibrant, with many women selling huge quantities of game. It was the centre of bushmeat trade in the area, she says. Many traders came from as far as Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé, some 338 kilometres away, to buy bushmeat to sell to people who cook it in restaurants or consume it at home.

“But now, look at my table,” she says. “There is no bushmeat for me to sell. Even when we bring meat to the market, people don’t buy, saying that they are afraid of COVID-19.”

Illegal trade

At a wooden shack a few metres away, Joseph Ndzanga* is drinking a local alcoholic brew with a couple of friends. Ndzanga is a bushmeat hunter. Between sips, he explains how the pandemic has affected his livelihood.

“I used to go to the bush sometimes four days a week,” he says. “But since the outbreak of COVID-19, I go hunting once or twice a week. There are some weeks I don’t even go hunting. Many people are not willing to eat bushmeat because of the COVID-19 scare.”

He adds that wildlife officials have recently stepped up their crackdown on hunters, like him, who do not have permits.

Cameroon’s 1994 wildlife and forestry law forbids the sale and trafficking of endangered species, with penalties ranging from fines of between 3 million francs CFA and 10 million francs CFA, or imprisonment from one to three years, or both. The law respects the rights of indigenous people to hunt wildlife for home consumption, and allows other people to hunt non-endangered species if they have a permit.

This ‘permit de collect’, as it is called in French, costs 25,000 FCFA (US$45) for three months and limits the number of animals a hunter can kill. The permit allows hunters to use the meat however they wish, but getting hold of one is not easy because of cumbersome bureaucracy.

“For years now, we have not been able to have the permit because of the bottlenecks involved in obtaining it,” says Ndzanga. He, like many other hunters, continues to operate illegally.

‘Suppliers are no longer coming’

With illicit trade rife, in 2010, the Minister of Forestry and Wildlife issued an order banning the transport of bushmeat for commercial purposes. Nonetheless, tons of bushmeat continued to reach markets every week. But since the outbreak of COVID-19, this flow has dwindled to a trickle.

“Because of COVID-19, the world was almost at a standstill,” says Eric Kaba Tah, deputy director of wildlife law enforcement organisation, the Last Great Ape Organization (LAGA). “So, it became very difficult to move some of these wildlife products around. However, in a few cases, we could still see people using tricks to circumvent the bushmeat restrictions.”

The effects can be seen in Nyom, a bushmeat trading hub in Yaoundé I sub-division, in the Centre region. A bar called Chez Ma Po, located at Entrée Lycee Nyom, is a popular bushmeat-eating joint. In the afternoon of June 20, 2021, in a kitchen behind the bar, four women are busy roasting bushmeat on an open fire or slicing chunks of it to prepare the bushmeat pepper soup delicacy. People used to come from far to eat bushmeat there. But few do now.

“Meat is no longer available as before,” says the owner, Ma Po. She says she could previously source up to 50 pieces of bushmeat a week, but now the supply has dropped to far below 15. “Hunters scarcely bring the meat as they did before. Bushmeat has also become more expensive. We are now forced to deal with middlemen, unlike before when we got bushmeat directly from hunters.”

Poaching and anti-poaching

The species being hunted and sold are also different these days, according to Ponka Ebénézer Poincaré, a Bertoua-based specialist in conservation and management of natural resources.

“The species available in markets are mostly rodents, which can easily be hunted with traps in close-by farms without going far into the forest,” he says. “Species such as chimpanzees, monkeys, pangolins, deer and gorillas, which hunters need to go far into the forest to harvest, are scarcely found in the markets nowadays.”

To some extent then, the pandemic has been a blessing for Cameroon’s wildlife as it has reduced hunting pressure and disrupted the established trade in bushmeat. But there are also signs that some rural communities are now relying more on bushmeat as COVID-related restrictions have led to job losses, declining incomes and rising food costs.

Ponka says another negative impact of the pandemic is that some wildlife officials at checkpoints on bushmeat routes, fearing COVID-19, are unwilling to approach vehicles they suspect are trafficking animals destined to be consumed as bushmeat.

Anne Ntongho, senior monitoring and evaluation officer of WWF Cameroon also says anti-poaching activities slowed down after the arrival of COVID-19. She says that with fewer people to monitor what is happening — thanks to COVID-19 restrictions and fear of the disease — poaching may have increased in some communities.

Norbert Sonne, the African Wildlife Foundation’s country director for Cameroon, agrees. “When the pandemic initially broke out, people started avoiding bushmeat consumption because COVID-19 was linked to human proximity to wildlife,” he says. “Cases of bushmeat seizures reduced. However, this was short-lived. The rates of bushmeat poaching are rising.”

Food shortages

Sonne says that government-imposed restrictions aimed at containing the virus led to food shortages, and that the resulting food insecurity has increased pressure on wildlife. He mentions anecdotal evidence that people living near Campo Ma’an National Park and Dja Faunal Reserve are increasingly turning to bushmeat to feed their families.

A hunter, who gives his name as Pierre Didier, attests to this. He lives in Lomié, a town in the Upper Nyong division of the East region. The town is in the immediate periphery of the Dja Faunal Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Pierre Didier is sitting on a wooden bench at the back of his house. On the ground in front of him are about ten freshly killed animals. They include deer, porcupines, antelopes, monkeys, and pangolins.

“We eat some smoked and others fresh,” he says, smiling broadly as he points at a nearby grill fashioned out of a metal drum. On the grill, below which firewood glows with a light flame, is an animal that Pierre Didier is smoking.

“I now go to the forest for hunting more than before,” he says. “Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying travel restrictions and preventive measures, there have been slight increases in prices of foodstuffs such as flour, sugar, rice and fish, among others, in our locality. So, my family and I now rely more on bushmeat for our subsistence.”

Alternative livelihoods

Sonne says communities around protected areas need to be self-sufficient in terms of food, or else they will turn to unsustainable exploitation of natural resources to put food on the table. To address this, his organisation is helping communities in Faro, Campo and Dja to adopt alternative sustainable livelihoods, such as beekeeping, agroforestry and adding value to non-timber forest products.

“The integration of cash crops such as cocoa and rubber with food crops with short growing cycles helps to meet household nutritional needs,” he says.

Some hunters are finding out on their own that other livelihoods are possible. In the evening of Saturday June 5, 2021, Pierre Awana* is leaning on the doorframe of his wooden and thatch house in Batouri, in Cameroon’s East region. He has been hunting bushmeat for decades. Some is consumed by his small household and the rest is sold to generate income. But since the outbreak of COVID-19, he rarely enters the forest to hunt.

“Previously, hunting was the mainstay of my family,” he says. “If I go to the bush in search of bushmeat [now], it is mainly for consumption within my household and not for commercialisation. The bushmeat business has dropped.”

“As a means to raise income for my family because I can no longer hunt and commercialise bushmeat, I have resorted to pig and poultry farming,” says Awana. “After doing this for just a couple of months, I have come to realise that it may be more lucrative than hunting and selling bushmeat. What’s more, it prevents me from often coming into trouble with wildlife enforcement officers.”

Uncertain future

While Awana has found an alternative way of making a living, the women in the bushmeat market of Bertoua’s Mokolo II Denier Poteau neighbourhood are in despair.

“You see how we are sitting idle?” says Helene Owono*, breaking from a group of women chatting. “There is no meat to sell.”

“Our livelihoods have greatly been affected,” she says. “We used to make money to save in [social groups] and plan for the future. But we cannot do that now. Our incomes have dropped drastically.”

Owono explains that she recently travelled to Belabo, a town 80 km away, to buy bushmeat but came away with only three pieces, whereas she used to buy as many as 50. “The money I spent for transport to go there was in vain,” she says.

Another woman interjects: “Now if you can have five or six pieces of bushmeat to sell, you just have to thank God. We can’t even pay our children’s school fees anymore. We are praying day and night for things to change.”

Mixed feelings

As Cameroon continues to deal with and recover from COVID-19, the fates of these women and of the country’s beleaguered forest wildlife will depend on various factors, from law enforcement to alternative livelihood development, from hunting rates to rural food security. A big factor will be the tastes and desires of consumers.

“Because COVID-19 was linked also to bushmeat consumption, I want to believe that many people are afraid to eat bushmeat, which is a benefit for wildlife conservation,” says Anne Ntongho of WWF-Cameroon.

But at a bar in the Nsimeyong neighbourhood of Yaoundé, on an afternoon in June 2021, feelings are mixed. Frederick Mvondo, who is drinking a beer at the bar, says he stopped eating bushmeat after COVID-19 was linked to a market in China. James Che, however, is one of a few customers who are eating bushmeat pepper soup.

“I don’t care whatever people say about COVID-19 having originated from animals,” says Che. “I still eat it as much as I did before. Bushmeat, to me, is tastier than beef, pork or chicken.”

*Names changed to protect sources from reprisals

(Text and Pictures by Solomon Tembang)

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Près du cercueil est posé la photo d’un homme serein dans une chemise longue manche noire et un chapeau large bord de même couleur sur la tête. Au bas de l’image, il est inscrit : « en mémoire d’amour de Emmanuel. Levée du soleil 15 novembre 1979 – couchée du soleil 11 octobre 2019 ». Malgré la douleur, certains sortent leurs téléphones portables et captent la scène.

Ce vendredi après midi de janvier 2020, les visages ont commencé à changer  quand le vol OO-SFF de la compagnie belge SN Brussels a déposé la dépouille de Emmanuel Cheo Ngu au fret de l’aéroport international de Douala. Ce migrant camerounais est décédé au cours d’un naufrage au Mexique alors qu’il essayait de se rendre aux Etats-Unis pour demander l’asile. La mauvaise nouvelle a fait grand bruit jusque dans les réseaux sociaux au point que la famille du défunt habituellement discrète s’était sentie gênée. Seules quelques personnes avaient été informées de l’arrivée du corps.

Pour plus de 40 millions de touristes chaque année, le Mexique est une destination de rêve, avec des hôtels de luxe, des vestiges Mayas ou des plages sablonneuses. Mais, pour les migrants camerounais en partance vers le nord, la réalité est autre et triste.

« Je n’arrêterai jamais de pleurer que mon mari a dû traverser ça juste pour assurer un meilleur avenir à ses enfants. Il est regrettable qu’il se soit sacrifié dans un océan pacifique pour donner un meilleur avenir à sa famille », a commenté via Facebook, Antoinette, l’épouse de Emmanuel après la confirmation du décès. « Repose « papa » tu es un vrai héros. Tes enfants grandiront pour être très fiers de toi ».

« Je savais que personne n’allait survivre »

Le drame s’est produit en octobre 2019 dans les eaux mexicaines avec le naufrage d’une pirogue chargée de migrants. Dans un entretien réalisé par un partenaire du projet « Migrants d’un autre Monde », Marcel, l’un des survivants, a déclaré que tout a débuté par des signes de lassitude. Un groupe de migrants africains était retenu depuis trois mois dans un camp à Tapachula, à la frontière sud du Mexique. Les services d’immigration refusaient de leur délivrer des laissez-passer pour qu’ils continuent le chemin, disant que ces migrants, entrés dans le territoire mexicain sans visa, sont considérés comme des apatrides.

« Ils ne voulaient pas nous laisser partir », se souvient Marcel, qui était soudeur à Kumba au sud ouest du Cameroun. Il dit avoir fui les représailles des militaires qui lui reprochaient de faire la propagande du Southern Cameroon National Council(Scnc), un mouvement séparatiste non armé. Au Mexique, ses amis d’infortune et lui avaient déjà passé plus de trois mois dans un camp en attente d’un laissez passer pour pouvoir continuer le voyage jusqu’aux Etats-Unis, leur destination finale.

Ces dernières années, 10.000 migrants ont été détenus ou récemment en détention ou simplement en attente au Mexique, selon Sylvie Bello, fondatrice de Cameroon American Council(CAC), une ONG créée en 2010 qui œuvre pour renforcer les capacités, la visibilité et la pertinence de la communauté camerounaise aux États-Unis. Sylvie Bello dit avoir cumulé les données recueillies auprès de plus de 200 communautés de la diaspora camerounaise.

Un après midi ensoleillé d’Octobre 2019, Marcel a appris d’un migrant congolais qu’un passeur mexicain se proposait d’aider les migrants à sortir de Tapachula moyennant le paiement de la somme de $320 par personne. C’était l’occasion tant rêvée. Aussitôt, seize hommes et une femme ont entamé les préparatifs dans le secret. Marcel n’était pas le seul camerounais de la bande. Emmanuel Cheo Ngu, Atem keng Ebensor, Micheal Atembe Atabong et un autre Emmanuel_ dont le nom de famille n’a pas été retrouvé _ brûlaient aussi d’envie de partir. Malgré une surprenante décision du passeur.

« Le passeur mexicain ne nous avait pas dit que nous allions passer par les eaux », dit Marcel. « Je me disais qu’on devait prendre la route pour aller de Tapachula pour la capitale ». Si les migrants entraient à Mexico, ils auraient fait la moitié des 4400 km qui les séparaient encore des Etats-Unis.

Le 11 octobre 2019, assis les uns près des autres dans une pirogue à moteurs, les migrants ont quitté les rives d’un fleuve près de la côte pacifique de Tonala. Après six heures de navigation, l’hélice d’un des moteurs a accroché un filet sous les eaux. La pirogue, déséquilibrée, a basculé et a pris de l’eau.

« Les gens ont commencé à crier « Jésus », se rappelle Marcel, tout ému.  » Le guide a dit de ne pas crier, que tout allait bien. Il a utilisé l’autre moteur pour nous permettre d’arriver sur la rive. Nous avons réussi à enlever le filet. »

Il était environ quatre heures du matin. La pirogue est repartie sur les eaux agitées. Elle avançait avec dextérité entre les vagues géantes. Soudain, une vague impétueuse a violemment frappé un flanc de l’embarcation qui a coulé après avoir pris l’eau de toutes parts. Au milieu des bruits de vagues, les naufragés en détresse criaient, pleuraient, appelaient au secours. Mais, en vain.

« Je savais que personne n’allait survivre car la vague était forte », raconte Marcel. « Les gens criaient « Jésus aide nous« ; j’ai vu des gens avaler de l’eau au point d’en mourir. Une personne avale de l’eau, pousse quelques cris et tu n’entends plus rien. Quand tu appelles le nom d’une personne et elle ne répond pas, tu sais que  la personne est morte ».

Marcel et sept autres migrants étaient accrochés sur la pirogue qui flottait sur les eaux. Après plus d’une heure entre la vie et la mort, ils ont été projetés sur la rive par les vagues; ils se sont rendus compte que neuf migrants y compris Atem Keng Ebensor, Emmanuel, Atembe Atabong et Emmanuel Cheo Ngu ont péri dans les eaux. Ils ont commencé à pleurer.

 » J’ai transporté le corps d’Atabong jusqu’à la rive. J’ai essayé de le presser mais rien n’est sorti », regrette Marcel.

A l’aéroport international de Douala, je faisais partie des personnes informées de l’arrivée de la dépouille de Emmanuel Cheo Ngu. « On ne peut pas parler au média », a indiqué un homme en boubou traditionnel. Il venait de se concerter avec d’autres membres de la famille sur l’opportunité de donner des témoignages à la presse. Il a dit que si la famille d’Emmanuel s’ouvre, elle redoute que le gouvernement utilise ces informations contre elle.

Plusieurs anglophones vivent dans la crainte depuis novembre 2016 lorsque les forces du maintien de l’ordre ont violemment réprimé, dans les régions du Nord-ouest et du Sud-ouest ,une manifestation d’avocats et enseignants  demandant de meilleures conditions de travail. Depuis lors, la crise a grandi et a changé de phases, explique Micheal Fonsoh, le coordinateur de l’Initiative Communautaire pour le Développement Durable (Cominsud), une organisation non gouvernementale qui travaille dans ces deux régions anglophones du pays depuis 1996.

« Depuis le début, le gouvernement a décidé d’employer la force, de réprimer et pendant quatre années consécutives, le gouvernement n’a pas réussi à utiliser la force pour réprimer », dit-il . « Le problème a commencé par des manifestations pacifiques et s’est poursuivi jusqu’à la phase de refus de reconnaître ».

Les anglophones qui représentent environ 20% des près de 25 millions d’habitants du pays se plaignent d’être traités comme des citoyens de seconde zone par la majorité francophone. Ils disent qu’ils ont peu de représentation politique, d’opportunités économiques et de considération par le régime du président Paul Biya, 87 ans, dont 38 passés au pouvoir.

A partir d’octobre 2017, la crise s’est transformée en conflit armé quand des éléments des forces de sécurité ont, selon des témoignages, tiré sur des personnes qui marchaient sur les artères des régions anglophones pour célébrer l’indépendance de l’ancien Cameroun britannique, rebaptisé république fédérale d’Ambazonie par les séparatistes.

Plus tard, les séparatistes armés ont commencé à tuer les éléments des forces de sécurité, à détruire les édifices publics et à s’en prendre même aux anglophones qui ne pensaient pas comme eux.

Emmanuel avait affiné son cursus académique à l’université de Yaoundé I. Il est devenu un enseignant de lycée puis a servi à la délégation régionale des enseignements secondaires du Nord-Ouest à Bamenda. Marié et père de trois enfants, le jeune homme de 39 ans était hanté par l’idée de l’exil. Avec l’éclatement de la crise, Emmanuel comme la plupart des fonctionnaires travaillant dans les régions anglophones, était régulièrement sous pression. Il devait faire un choix difficile : continuer à collaborer avec le gouvernement et être taxé de traitre par les personnes favorables à l’indépendance de l’ancien Cameroun britannique; ou soutenir les séparatistes au risque de subir les foudres de l’armée et du gouvernement.

Son épouse, Antoinette, dans un entretien accordé à notre collègue El Pais, a déclaré que Emmanuel était contraint de s’enfuir parce qu’il était menacé par l’armée camerounaise et les séparatistes. Sur sa page Facebook, Emmanuel, bien que serviteur de l’Etat, avait affiché le drapeau bleu et blanc de la république imaginaire d’Ambazonie parmi ses préférences.

Déjà, le conflit armé entre les groupes séparatistes et l’armée a fait environ 3000 morts et plus de 60.000 réfugiés au Nigeria voisin, selon les calculs des agences des nations unies; qui indiquent que 600.000 déplacés internes du fait de la guerre au Nord et Sud-ouest vivent dans des conditions difficiles dans les régions du Centre, de l’Ouest et du Littoral.

C’est le cas de Gwendoline Sanga, 32 ans. Cette mère de deux enfants était employée comme temporaire à la Cameroon Développent Corporation(CDC), une entreprise de l’Etat spécialisée notamment dans la production de la banane. Son travail consistait à sélectionner et nettoyer les produits à l’usine de Tiko, l’une des bases des combattants séparatistes dans la région du Sud-ouest. Il y a deux ans, des hommes armés ont surgi dans un champ où se trouvait Gwendoline. Ils ont commencé à attraper puis à sectionner certaines parties du corps des employés.

Histoires tragiques

« A certains de mes collègues, les sécessionnistes ont coupé les doigts, les oreilles, d’autres ne peuvent plus marcher; beaucoup sont morts », raconte Gwendoline, le regard soucieux. »Ils [les sécessionnistes] ont dit qu’ils le font parce que nous travaillons avec l’Etat du Cameroun qui les combat ».

Les employés couraient de toutes parts. Elle dit avoir réussi à s’enfuir dans la brousse où pendant des heures, elle a marché toute affolée jusqu’à la route. Gwendoline gagnait mensuellement 50.000 Fcfa à la CDC. Aujourd’hui, elle vend des gâteaux de farine et vit avec moins de 20.000 Fcfa à Mbonjo, un village situé à 40 km de Douala.

« J’ai remercié mon Dieu de m’avoir sauvé la vie; si la crise cesse, je vais repartir travailler », dit-t-elle, le sourire en coin.

Ces histoires tragiques résonnaient comme une source de motivation pour le candidat à l’immigration. Un matin calme de juillet 2019, Emmanuel Cheo Ngu a quitté Bamenda avec sa petite famille. Ils s’est rendu à Douala, où quelques heures plus tard, il a embarqué à bord d’un vol de la compagnie Turkish Airlines. Il espérait arriver en Amérique latine pour entrer aux Etats-Unis et demander l’asile. Après une escale à Istanbul, le vol a atterri à Quito en Equateur.

Pays deux fois plus petit que le Cameroun, l’Equateur  était un choix bien pensé. A l’époque, les ressortissants de six pays africains y compris le Cameroun n’avaient pas besoin de visa pour entrer en Equateur. Conséquence, ce pays est devenu en peu de temps la principale porte d’entrée de milliers de migrants africains dans la région. Le gouvernement équatorien a revu sa politique et a imposé depuis le 12 Août 2019 l’obtention préalable de visa aux citoyens camerounais désireux de rentrer dans son territoire. Cette mesure a raté in extremis Emmanuel qui a franchi la frontière équatorienne environ deux semaines auparavant.

Selon le ministère équatorien de l’Intérieur, entre janvier et mai 2019, un total de 3054 ressortissants africains, principalement du Cameroun (50%), sont entrés dans le pays; En 2018, ils étaient déjà 776 migrants camerounais entre janvier et juillet.

En Equateur, Emmanuel a poursuivi le voyage par route. Il est entré au Panama et s’est lancé sur les pistes dangereuses de la jungle. Guidés par des habitués de la forêt dense, Emmanuel et d’autres migrants, entendaient les cris des oiseaux au loin et découvraient au sol, par endroit, des cadavres de femmes, hommes et enfants, tantôt coincés entre les lianes, tantôt enfouis dans la boue. Des scènes d’horreur similaires, à quelques exceptions près, aux atrocités de l’armée et des combattants séparatistes dans son nord ouest natal. Quelques jours plus tard, Emmanuel a annoncé à son épouse qu’il venait de traverser l’étape la plus dangereuse du périple et lui a envoyé des photos souvenir.

Après plus de deux mois de voyage par bus, voiture et pirogue à travers l’Equateur, le Panama et la Colombie, Emmanuel est arrivé à Tapachula au Mexique. Il a croisé une foule de migrants qui, comme lui, rêvaient de se rendre aux Etats-Unis. Le 10 octobre, Emmanuel a vécu une coïncidence heureuse: les négociations avec le passeur mexicain ont été bouclées le jour de son dixième anniversaire de mariage. Tout souriant, il a fait sur son compte Facebook un message d’amour émouvant à Antoinette avec des photos de la petite famille.

Le retour a coûté $10.000

« En ce jour il y a 10 ans, nous avons noué le nœud d’une union qui a été bénie avec trois adorables enfants. Nous ne pouvons tout simplement pas compter les nombreuses bénédictions au cours de cette période. Merci Seigneur de nous avoir guidés tout cela », a écrit Emmanuel.

Après ce post, les messages d’encouragements, de bénédictions du couple et de persévérance ont commencé à tomber en cascade. Aux premières heures du 11 octobre, une internaute a glissé un autre message, laconique, dans le fil des commentaires: « Il n’est plus ».

Emmanuel venait de mourir dans les eaux mexicaines à deux mois et quatre jours de son quarantième anniversaire. La triste nouvelle a d’abord été traitée de rumeur sur la toile. Mais deux jours plus tard, une des sœurs de Emmanuel vivant aux Etats-Unis, a confirmé le décès et a tiré les premières leçons.

« Je voudrais que la communauté internationale comprenne qu’il s’agit d’un problème mondial, un problème de gouvernance. Le gouvernement doit chercher une solution à ce problème immédiatement », a déclaré Ngu Koroma dans une vidéo postée sur sa page facebook.

La dépouille de Emmanuel a été inhumée à Bamenda, son village natal, le lendemain de l’arrivée à l’aéroport. Son retour au Cameroun a coûté six millions de F CFA ($10000) à la famille, selon une source familiale.

The post Le migrant camerounais M. Ngu revient du Mexique dans un cercueil appeared first on The Museba Project.

On October 11, 2019, Maxcellus and seven other Cameroonian migrants survived a shipwreck. They were seven men and a pregnant woman who lost her baby.

These are the names of the survivors, as written by the Mexican authorities:

Dee Clinton Ngang.

Tohnyi Constant Djuawoh.

Agbor Aaron Agbor.

Goden Mban Gatibo Werewai John.

Etiondem Gabriel Ajawoh Justine.

Aghot Arron Agbot.

Nchongayi Elvis Fomeken

Echengungap M Asong.

At least three others drowned: 

Emmanuel Ngu Cheo.

Romanus Atem Ebesor.

Michael Atembe.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) records four deaths. Maxcellus and Derrick, two of the survivors, claim that two people named Emmanuel died on the boat. In addition, Derrick said that there is a fifth victim, a Cuban citizen, but he did not provide a name. Mexican authorities only confirmed three, whose remains were identified in funeral homes in Chiapas and Oaxaca. (Maxcellus’ and Derrick’s full names will remain undisclosed for protection).

This time it was not the Mediterranean, that mass grave on the way to Europe. It was the Pacific, a lesser known route but often used by migrants trying to reach the United States. Images of African migrants floating in the water, inert, are sadly common on the coasts of Libya, Morocco or southern Spain. Now it was the sea of Mexico that returned the bodies.

“The boat was full of water, the people were screaming, and in the end we were shipwrecked. I thought we weren’t going to survive. That nobody was going to survive. I thought we were all going to die,” Maxcellus told me, a reporter for Animal Político, one of the members of the cross-border journalistic alliance that created Migrants from Another World*.

“I have to thank God, who saved our lives. I can’t imagine how I got out of there alive. I fought and fought and fought while the waves were pushing us back, but I made it to shore,” Derrick told me when I interviewed him by video call in early May 2020. He was at the home of some family members and had only been released a week earlier after spending several months in a detention center in Houston, Texas.

Sometime between 3am and 5am on October 11^th 2019, a boat carrying Cameroonian migrants along the Pacific coast lost control and sank. Of the handful of men and women who fell, only a few knew how to swim. They were left at the mercy of the currents off the coast of Chiapas.

This is the story of that shipwreck, which took the lives of at least three people. They were all desperate. They had been camping out in front of the Siglo XXI migratory station in Tapachula, Chiapas, for several months and wanted to get to the United States. They paid $320 to a coyote to try to go around the police checkpoints by crossing through the sea. They didn’t make it.

The eight survivors, however, did reach their goal. Four of them are now free on U.S. soil and are waiting for their asylum cases to be litigated before a judge. The other half remain held in detention centers, now hotbeds of contagion for COVID-19.

I had No Choice

Maxcellus was a welder in Kumba, in southwest Cameroon. The English-speaking minority that resides there is at odds with the rest of the state, where people speak French. Since 2016, both communities have been at war, and a part of the population wants secede from the territory. The separatists know the territory as Ambazonia. This confrontation has been called a “conflict of colonial languages”. More than 200 languages are spoken in Cameroon, but the ones that define enemy territories are French and English, the languages used by the empires that colonized them.

Since the beginning of the war, thousands of people have died and many others have escaped, more than 600,000 according to the United Nations. Of these, a small group has managed to cross half the world and reach the United States via Latin America. In 2019, Cameroon was the nation that contributed the most people to this dangerous route. Fleeing violence, they sought to apply for asylum in the United States or Canada. They brought terrible stories of razed villages and massacred families.

“I decided to leave because of the problems in our country. The military was against me. I was a young activist and was arrested in October. My family helped me get out of the place,” says Maxcellus, a burly man who, despite months of hardship, keeps a strong body.

I met Maxcellus on November 27, just as he had arrived in Tijuana, Baja California, along with his friend Evis, another survivor. The two of them were staying at a rundown hotel downtown, a dump for which they paid 800 pesos a night. Inside were migrants from India, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and others from Cameroon. They were all passing through. Everyone wanted to get out of Tijuana as soon as possible.

In 2018, Tijuana was declared “the most violent city in the world”, according to a study by the Citizens’ Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice of Mexico. That year, 2,640 murders were recorded, with a rate of 138 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. Three days before our meeting, Maxcellus and Evis took a bus in Tuxtla-Gutiérrez, Chiapas, and traveled almost 2,500 miles across Mexico from south to north. It is the longest way to the U.S. border, but also the safest. The other route, the Gulf, crosses the states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas, where the kidnapping of migrants is more frequent.

After months of risking their lives, travelling 2,500 miles by bus was easy for these two survivors.

“I had no choice,” Maxcellus says of their escape.

We met in a restaurant next to the Enclave Caracol, a social center where activists from all over the area interact. Among its activities are the workshops held by the lawyers of Al Otro Lado, an organization that provides legal advice to hundreds of people that end up in Tijuana trying to seek asylum in the United States.

The two newcomers are worried about their immediate future, but first comes food. They say they spent their last pesos on bus tickets and they are hungry. They each spent more than US$5,000 to get here and now depend on the support from their families.

Maxcellus says he is the oldest of six siblings. He is followed by four females and one male. He explains that an arrest in October 2018 did not discourage the military, which continued to harass him. His family sold some land so that he could escape, and he left for Nigeria. “Many Cameroonians flee there, but the authorities arrest them and send them back to Cameroon,” he says.

Persecuted by soldiers and afraid of being killed, he says he had no choice but to go far away. They decided the best option was to seek refuge in the United States, and the way there would be through Quito, Ecuador, where Cameroonians like him did not need a visa until Aug. 12, 2019.

This is a thought you often hear: “I had no choice.” The alternative was to die at the hands of the army, or perhaps of an armed separatist group, or to take a chance on the extremely dangerous route to Europe. When you’re on the run, you don’t have much time to evaluate your options. His was to go to Nigeria and from there to Ecuador. It was the easiest thing to do. The only option, in short.

Colombia, Panama, “The Jungle”

“It can’t be explained. It is terrible. When I was inside I thought I had better died in my country, with my family. You see bodies everywhere. Children, pregnant women, men,” he says, recalling the journey through the Darien jungle in Colombia. Another recurring thought: if I’d known, I wouldn’t have tried.

In the Darién he was mugged and he lost some money and a cell phone, says Maxcellus. He claims that anyone who resists is killed right there. In a way, he felt lucky. He had survived. He says that in this transit he met some of the people who would later be with him in the shipwreck. He doesn’t talk much about them. It seems as if there was a pact of keeping to your own story, as if he had no right to speak on behalf of anybody else. He is Maxcellus, the welder with four sisters and one brother, the survivor.

“Panamanian Migration officers took us to Costa Rica. From there we went to Nicaragua, where we were given a pass to Honduras. From there, they sent us to Guatemala. We crossed the river and arrived in Tapachula,” he explains.

On July 1, 2019, Maxcellus entered Mexico through the Suchiate River. It’s just a few meters that are crossed on a cámara, a kind of boat made of big plastic doughnuts and directed by a guy with a wooden stick. These are precarious gondolas that come and go between Mexico and Guatemala every day carrying products without taxes and workers without papers.

When he arrived on Mexican soil, he tells how he was detained by agents of the National Institute of Migration (INM) and transferred to the Siglo XXI migratory station in Tapachula, Chiapas.

Tapachula was his intended destination, as it was for more than 7,000 African migrants who were registered and detained by the INM in 2019. Sources from this institution who spoke on condition of anonymity said that there are international networks that use this town as a base of operations. According to them, there is a network of hotels and lawyers there who take advantage of a legal vacuum to allow migrants to continue their journey. This theory was confirmed by Tonatiuh Guillén, a former INM commissioner.

“I entered the camp in July. I left on July 12. They gave us a document, but it wasn’t good,” explains Maxcellus.

Dates are important; they make the difference between life and death.

If Maxcellus had been released four days earlier, he wouldn’t have been a victim of a shipwreck.

If Emmanuel or any of the people who drowned in Tonalá had left Siglo XXI before July 10, they would not be dead now.

July 10 was the date that Ana Laura Martinez de Lara, then INM’s Director of Immigration Verification and Control, on orders from the government, issued a memo to all detention centers changing the rules of the game.

Previously, non-continental arrivals were released with a document that forced them to regularize their situation or leave the country during the following 20 days. These are nations that have no diplomatic representation in Mexico, and deporting migrants there is expensive. So the Mexican state would label them “stateless” and turn a blind eye when migrants used this document as a safe-conduct to reach the northern border.

The exit permit was not a travel document, but it was used as such.

Everything was different from July 10. The INM modified the application of the rule and gave migrants two alternatives: to regularize their situation or to leave the country the same way they had come, that is, through the southern border with Guatemala.

Martinez, who no longer works for INM, insisted that this was not a major change, that it was in line with previous laws, and that it was a matter of promoting regulated migration. She also said that no one had pressured her to make this decision.

In practice, things did change, but no one informed Maxcellus. He had to find out by force. As soon as he left Siglo XXI, after eleven days of confinement, he took a bus to Tijuana. It passed through the first checkpoint in Tapachula and the next in Huixtla, located 30 miles away. At the third checkpoint, located between Arriaga, Chiapas, and San Pedro Tapanatepec, Oaxaca, he was stopped. He had traveled less than 200 miles and had barely set foot in the second Mexican state on his route.

“They told us we had to go back. That the document only allowed us to be in Tapachula,” he explains.

That was the consequence of the agreement signed a month earlier between the United States and Mexico, in which Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised to reduce the flow of migrants over the border in exchange for Donald Trump not imposing tariffs on his exports.

According to that pact, thousands of National Guard agents were deployed in the south to prevent poor families or victims of violence from reaching the border with the United States.

In addition, asylum seekers were sent back from the US to northern Mexico, to violent cities like Tijuana or Nuevo Laredo, to wait for their case there. This only applied to those who spoke Spanish, so of Maxcellus managed to cross over, he would remain in the United States until a judge decided whether he could stay as a refugee or be returned to where he came from.

The closest point to the border was more than 1,000 miles from Tapachula, where he was trapped. Until then, the countries they had crossed had given them documents to carry on, as in Costa Rica or Panama, or they had looked the other way. That was supposed to be the case in Mexico, but they didn’t take into account the pressure from the United States.

Maxcellus was among the first wave of migrants to get stranded, the first for whom the INM documents did not get them to the United States. They were also the first to fall into the spider’s web of Mexican institutions. From the day he was told at a checkpoint that he could not continue his journey north, he began a pilgrimage from office to office without anyone giving him solutions.

“The day after they returned us we went to Las Vegas (other INM facilities in Tapachula). They told us to go there on July 20 to receive our document. That night we slept out there. But it was no use. We went for months without information,” he complains.

That’s how the African community came to set up a camp in front of the Siglo XXI migrant station. With no work, no money and no possibility of moving, hundreds set up their tents in front of the detention center.

From that moment on, a grueling routine was organized between the makeshift refugee camp and Las Vegas. For weeks, the migrants went back and forth, waiting for someone to give them the good news and a document with which to travel. But it was impossible. One day they were told that their name was misspelled and that the process had to be started all over again. Another, that their documents had been lost. A third, that they had no reason to return the next day.

As in Asterix and the Twelve Tasks, migrants had to face a bureaucracy designed to wear them out and which they did not even understand, since they did not speak the language.

Meanwhile, the money was running out.

“We had no food, we had nothing, they gave us nothing. They told us we were stateless, that we had to go to the first immigration post. We did, and from there, they sent us back to Las Vegas. They were playing with us,” he says, seemingly upset.

Trapped in Tapachula, the migrants began to squander what few resources they had left. They had paid for plane tickets, bus tickets, taxis, hotels and coyotes to go through the jungle. They had paid officials, they had paid for daily food, and they had been robbed.

They were coming close to being left with nothing.

The INM didn’t regulate them. Returning to Guatemala was unthinkable, and they didn’t want to ask for asylum in Mexico because they feared that if they applied to the Mexican Refugee Aid Commission (Comar) for protection, U.S. judges would reject their case when they crossed the border and all their efforts would have been in vain.

“I looked for work in Tapachula. But they told me they couldn’t hire me, that I didn’t know the language. I ended up selling hard-boiled eggs on the street,” Maxcellus explains.

“We had no choice,” he repeats.

Tapachula as a Dead End

With the chaos in the camp, the riffraff and the organization of groups to protest against the authorities, some migrants simply disappeared. Coyotes have always had a strong presence in Chiapas, and Tapachula is one of their main bases.

Until then, Cameroonians, Congolese or Angolans didn’t require the services of polleros, which is the name of the guides who take you north: they could cross the country legally with their exit permits. But when the Mexican government decreed a change of rules, a new market opened.

The choice was presented to Maxcellus by a Congolese man, who told him about a guy who could help them. This is how coyotes work in a camp of desperate people. No need for big advertisement. All it takes is for someone to hear about a way out, as slim as it may be, and they all jump at it. There was nothing to lose.

Someone promised to get them to Mexico City without explaining how. Maxcellus refers to that “someone” as “the agent”, and gives no details. Ana Lorena Delgadillo, a lawyer with the Foundation for Justice, accompanies the family of Emmanuel Ngu Cheo, a victim of the shipwreck in Chiapas, in their legal proceedings in Mexico. According to her, one of the testimonies collected claims that there were police involved in the network that captured the migrants to sail north. There are investigations open in the prosecutor’s offices of Oaxaca and Chiapas, but not even the families of the victims have had access to the investigation file.

So, for now, we only know that “the agent” is a guy who promised a handful of desperate Cameroonian migrants that he would bring them to Mexico City.

The date was Thursday, October 10.

Maxcellus says he almost didn’t make it to the meeting, but finally managed to convince “the agent” to send a car to Siglo XXI to take him to the coast. They picked him up at 7 p.m. and moved him to a house.

He thought the trip was by car to the capital, so he was surprised when they gave him a black plastic bag to cover his belongings.

They went to a small river, where there were two boats.

The first one sailed without incident and reached its goal. They came to a place they did not know and slept in a house full of weapons. They were frightened, but there was no longer a way out. The next day they were driven to Mexico City in cars.

In the second one, a tragedy occurred.

A handful of men and a woman are stuffed into a boat where they barely fit. It’s night time, you can’t see anything. There is a lot of confusion and the coyote in charge of sailing the boat does not seem to know what he is doing.

Maxcellus says he has no idea where they sailed from or how long it was before the water started to come in. Everybody knew something was wrong and started screaming.

In the midst of the chaos, he barely remembers how he struggled for every breath of air. Legs and arms clung to the boat, already capsized, or to his body. “People were pushing, screaming. I fought, but I was tired,” he remembers.

Suddenly, through the spray and the half-light, Maxcellus says he saw two men on the shore. It was a fisherman and his son.

“I shouted at him amigo, because I know what amigo means in Spanish,” he says.

But he didn’t find a friend. The guy just searched the bags with the belongings that were being returned by the sea and stole some of them. Others would wash up on the beach as a testimony to the shipwreck.

“We were confused. We managed to get out. I looked around and saw a body. It was Atabong’s. We moved into the jungle, crying, not knowing what to do. Until we saw an army truck,” he says.

They were alive.

Maxcellus explains that they were all taken to a hospital in Tonalá, Chiapas, and from there, to the State Attorney’s Office (FGE) to take their statements. Finally, they moved them to an immigration station in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the state capital.

The place where they were detained was not the most welcoming for survivors of a shipwreck, as it lacked the most basic conditions for accommodating human beings.

It is a place known as “La Mosca” or “El Cucupape 2”. Until 2013 it had been a plant that produced sterile flies for use in agriculture. As it was owned by the Institute of Appraisals and National Assets (Indaabin), it was reconverted into a detention center for foreigners in June, shortly after Mexico and the United States signed the agreement by which the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador pledged to reduce the flow of migrants. It had previously been used by the Federal Police and National Guard, who complained about its poor conditions.

It was deemed unsuitable for barricading police officers, but it was okay for locking up migrants who had survived shipwrecks.

In Mexico, migration stations are detention centers for foreigners who are caught in an irregular situation. Most of those who enter do not leave unless they are deported. Migration is not a crime, but guys like Maxcellus are detained in jails as if they had robbed or assaulted someone.

The day after the shipwreck, the Tapachula camp exploded. Tired of feeling like puppets in the hands of institutions they didn’t understand, hundreds of migrants tried to walk straight onwards and break through the area of enclosure. They marched for more than twelve hours under extreme weather conditions. First came a suffocating heat and after, torrential rains. By the time those ahead were intercepted in Tuzantán, 25 miles north of Tapachula, they were completely exhausted.

That caravan tried to make its way to the United States on the anniversary of the day when 300 Hondurans had gathered at the San Pedro Sula bus station and marched out together in a group that by October and November 2018 had snowballed into a massive horde. Unlike the Central American exodus, which managed to reach Tijuana after a month and a half of walking, the Africans hit a wall composed of National Guard officers and did not finish their first stage.

The eight survivors heard about the attempt from their compatriots who were also detained in La Mosca 2.

They would not regain their freedom until nearly a month after the accident. As they had been victims of a crime, they were provided with a resident’s card on humanitarian grounds, although Migration also offered them a so-called “assisted return”. This meant to return, now traumatized by the accident and with a lot less money in their pockets, to the place they had escaped from almost a year earlier.

A few weeks after leaving the migration station, the group split up. Maxcellus and Evis opted for Tijuana, which has a border with California. The rest went to Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa, in Tamaulipas, on the other side of Texas. Between Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo there are more than 1,300 miles across Sonora, Chihuahua and Coahuila, desert states on the border and in which organized crime has gained strength.

In Tijuana, as in all the rest of the border, the options are limited for asylum seekers. Either you sign up on a list and follow the process legally, or you jump the fence and ask for asylum, knowing that you begin your struggle for protection with the handicap of having disobeyed U.S. rules.

Every morning, dozens of people gather at the El Chaparral pass, where you can access the United States on foot. There, every day, the American authorities call out ten numbers for passing. Each number is a family. On the other side they will have their first interview in which the credibility of their threat is determined. If you are not there when they call out your number, you miss your turn and have to wait for the stragglers to be called. A website allows you to follow the progress of the list, which is managed by the asylum seekers themselves.

The wait at El Chaparral is a collection of the horrors of the world. There are Hondurans, Salvadorians and Guatemalans who have been threatened to death by gangs, there are Mexicans who have fled when cartels put prices on their heads, and there are Cameroonians who traveled halfway round the world to get to that very place. Usually, asylum seekers wait two or three months until they hear their name and the door to the United States is opened to them, but there are suspicions that if you pay, you can speed up the process.

On the first day they set foot in Tijuana, Maxcellus and Evis had no idea about any of this.

Ten days later their phone stopped working.

They must have done something to get across so quickly.

Political instability

It wasn’t until April that a Cameroonian recently released from the Otay Mesa detention center in California confirmed that Maxcellus, the shipwreck survivor, was there. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) did not respond to requests for information. Later in mid May, I learnt he had been released.

Derrick, 26, was released on April 27, 2020, in Houston, Texas. He had been held for several months after he crossed the international bridge from Nuevo Laredo to the United States in early December.

He was also on the boat and now says he does not know how he managed to get out of the water alive. He just thanks God. He is currently being held with relatives and is awaiting an appointment with the American judge who will hear his request for asylum. We talked by video conference at the beginning of May 2020.

Like the rest of his colleagues, Derrick needs protection. He fled his country when the army killed his cousin, a student like himself at Buea University in southwest Cameroon. Derrick’s is a nomadic family looking for a place to feel safe. His brother is in Dubai. His mother is in Canada. His father is the only one left in Cameroon. “I left because of political instability,” he says.

The story of young Derrick, a political science student and farmer, mirrors that of his peers. Persecution and then a hasty flight halfway round the world to try to reach the United States. Trapped in Mexico, he also got on the damned ship that sank in Chiapas.

He claims he doesn’t know who organized it, only that it was a Mexican man and that he escaped when the crew begged for help and later drowned. Nor does he know the name of the place from which they set sail. But he claims that when he was in the car, he saw they were driving away from Tapachula airport.

As for the treatment provided by the Mexican authorities, he remembers the first immigration station. “I was in very bad condition.”

Being detained was not part of his plans, but freedom also caught him by surprise. From one day to the next, Derrick remembers, they were on the streets. It was early November in Tuxtla-Gutiérrez, the capital of Chiapas. None of the eight Cameroonians had ever been to this place or planned to stay, despite the efforts of the Mexican authorities to keep them from going north.

Being trapped in Tapachula had cost his companions their lives. Now, suddenly, the Mexican government had changed its tune and some members of the camp were receiving their permanent resident cards and were on their way north. All they needed was to raise enough money to get going.

“In the shipwreck we lost everything. Documents, papers, money. But I had some bills in my pocket, so we were able to rent a room while we talked to our families,” he says. They rented a room for four thousand pesos. The following week, they moved to second room where they paid half.

Families are a basic lifeline for those who flee. Abandoned in the middle of nowhere, traumatized and penniless, the eight survivors gathered in that room and planned their trip north. They received some financial support and they recovered from the shock. They had not put themselves through that hell to stay in Chiapas.

At this point, their paths diverged.

Derrick explains that he went with another of his companions to Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. This is a tough town, where organized crime has a large presence, fundamentally from the Cartel del Noreste, a division of Los Zetas. Kidnappings of migrants and assaults are common.

The system is as follows: the pollero or the migrant pay for the right to be there, for stepping on that land. The cartel then gives him a password. It is a kind of permit. If you have it, you can continue. If you don’t, you can be kidnapped or forced to pay for using a crossing run by the cartel. According to information from the Tamaulipas Prosecutor’s Office, since 2016 more than 30 disappearances or kidnappings of foreigners have been reported in the state. Many more, however, go unreported.

NGOs, volunteers, lawyers and migrants tell you about this system, but they all ask for anonymity. No one in Nuevo Laredo wants to expose themselves by talking openly about a system that shows the extent to which criminal groups impose their law in the area.

Africans are not usually targets of crime. They can be lot of trouble when it comes to collecting ransom. Cubans are the preferred target of the mafias, and Central Americans the most common. They may be kidnapped, extorted or enslaved. Some never speak to their families again and their bodies never turn up. In Mexico there are more than 3,000 mass graves and more than 61,000 missing persons. But this doesn’t usually affect Cameroonians like Derrick. They are practically the only ones who move freely in Nuevo Laredo.

However, they can be robbed just as easily. Their money is the same as that of Central Americans or Cubans. There might not be a family to extort, but their pockets can be picked just the same.

Derrick learned this when he’d only been in the area for a week. “I went out to shop and got mugged by men with guns. I was terrified,” he explains.

“People were very afraid”

The scare got him going. A day later he went for the international bridge. He says there was a group and he simply joined them. He explains that he chose Nuevo Laredo because it is the fastest way. The insecurity of its streets makes it a hostile but fast destination. There are families who prefer to go to Matamoros (212 miles to the east), where more than 2,000 people have been sleeping in a camp on the banks of the Rio Bravo for months; Reynosa (158 miles to the east), Piedras Negras (73 miles to the northwest) or Ciudad Acuña (165 miles to the northwest), the route most travelled by migrants from various African countries.

From the moment he crossed into the United States, Derrick was detained in a prison for migrants. This is how the asylum system works on the other side of the Rio Bravo. Men and women with thousands of miles on their backs, after fleeing from horrors and undergoing hellish journeys, must remain locked up for several months.

The government believes that this discourages the arrival of Central Americans, Mexicans, Chinese, Cubans, Bangladeshis, Congolese or Cameroonians.

Derrick accepted his confinement knowing that it was part of the process. What he could not imagine was the world changing so drastically while he was behind closed doors. When he was admitted, Covid-19 had not even been detected in China. By the time he regained his freedom, the virus was a global threat and detention centers were a hotbed of infection.

Derrick was in a Houston detention center when one of the officers became ill with the coronavirus. “People were very afraid,” he explains.

During the first months of 2020 the pandemic spread through the detention centers. President Donald Trump suspended asylum claims and shut down the border, imposing an expedited deportation plan that undermined international law.

Mexico agreed to receive Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans and handle their deportation. However, there were thousands like Derrick, who had been detained for quite a while. They watched as the virus cornered them inside their cells. In early May, when the Cameroonian was already free, a man from El Salvador who had lived in the United States for 40 years and was held shortly before the start of the pandemic was the first victim of Covid-19 in the facilities of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Six months after the accident, Derrick is still waiting for his chance to prove that returning to Cameroon would be a death sentence. “I want to rebuild my life. Maybe I can visit my mother.”

His greatest fear: that a judge will reject his case send him home.

*Migrants from Another World is a collaborative, transnational journalistic investigation by the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP), Occrp, Animal Político (Mexico) and the Mexican regional media Chiapas Paralelo and Voz Alternativa for En el Camino, of the Periodistas de a Pie; Univisión Noticias Digital (United States), Revista Factum (El Salvador); La Voz de Guanacaste (Costa Rica); Profissão Réporter de TV Globo (Brazil); La Prensa (Panama); Revista Semana (Colombia); El Universo (Ecuador); Efecto Cocuyo (Venezuela); and Anfibia/Cosecha Roja (Argentina) in Latin America. Other collaborators in the investigation were: The Confluence (India), Record Nepal (Nepal), The Museba Project (Cameroon) and Bellingcat (United Kingdom). This project received special support from the Avina Foundation and the Seattle International Foundation.

The post #Migrants from another World: A New Battle for the Shipwreck Survivors appeared first on The Museba Project.

Alors, l’Amérique latine, moins exigeante, était leur voie de salut. Ils sont partis seul, avec des amis et même parfois avec femmes et petits enfants. A bord des avions, des bateaux, des bus ou à pied, ils ont parcouru des milliers de kilomètres et ont côtoyé dans la jungle des passeurs sans scrupule et des trafiquants de drogue à la gâchette facile.

Mais, entrer aux Etats-Unis n’est pas facile.

Plusieurs ont succombé en chemin, foudroyés par la fatigue, la maladie, la torture ou la noyade. Plusieurs, traités d’apatrides, ont été retenus dans des camps de réfugiés au Mexique. Plusieurs ont réussi à entrer aux Etats-Unis mais vivent d’autres injustices…

Eux, ce sont les migrants.

Aujourd’hui, le monde a 50 millions de migrants de plus qu’il y a dix ans.

Pendant des mois, les journalistes de 18 organisations de média dans 14 pays _y compris ceux de The Museba Project, unique représentant de l’Afrique_ ont suivi les traces de ces hommes et femmes, qui sont prêts à faire des sacrifices financiers et humains incroyables pour réaliser leur rêve, afin de raconter leurs histoires.

Nous avons appelé cette collaboration journalistique transnationale coordonnée par le Centre latino-américain de journalisme d’investigation (CLIP)  « Migrants d’un autre Monde ».

« «Migrants d’un autre monde» parce qu’il raconte les histoires de personnes qui voyagent entre cinq et dix mille milles de l’autre côté de la planète. Une fois sur le continent américain, ils traversent le continent en bus ou en avion express, en hors-bord ou en radeau, en taxi clandestin ou en voiture privée empruntant des itinéraires cachés et des raccourcis délicats, toujours vers le nord, vers les États-Unis ou le Canada, comme des hirondelles assommées. Souvent, ils traversent des tronçons entiers en s’appuyant uniquement sur leurs jambes, les ailes de l’espoir« , a indiqué María Teresa Ronderos, directrice de CLIP.

Les partenaires de « Migrants d’un autre Monde » incluent le Centre latino-américain de journalisme d’investigation (CLIP), Occrp, Animal Político, Chiapas Paralelo et Voz Alternativa pour En el Camino, Periodistas de une tarte (Mexique); Univisión Noticias Digital (États-Unis), Revista Factum (Salvador); La Voz de Guanacaste (Costa Rica); Profissão Réporter de TV Globo (Brésil); La Prensa (Panama); Revista Semana (Colombie); El Universo (Équateur); Efecto Cocuyo (Venezuela); Anfibia / Cosecha Roja (Argentine) The Confluence (Inde), Record Nepal (Népal), The Museba Project (Cameroun) et Bellingcat (Royaume-Uni). Une communauté de journalistes armés de courage comme ces migrants éparpillés à la quête de pâturages plus verts.

« Ils sont d’un autre monde parce que leur courage et leur conviction sont extraordinaires. Déterminés à se refaire une vie et – souvent – à ouvrir la voie à ceux qu’ils laissent derrière eux, ils s’attaquent à l’exploitation des escrocs sur la route, à l’hostilité des postes de migrants et à la corruption, ils subissent agressions et viols, faim, peur et menaces, emprisonnement et mort, » selon María Teresa Ronderos.

La plupart des migrants africains qui tentent l’aventure américaine viennent du Cameroun, plus précisément du nord et sud ouest, les deux régions anglophones du pays, déchirées par une crise sociopolitique depuis près de quatre ans; où l’armée et les groupes séparatistes, en guerre, commettent de graves violations de droits de l’homme à l’origine de la fuite des civils vers les cieux plus cléments.

The post Projet « #Migrants d’un autre Monde »: Comment nous l’avons fait appeared first on The Museba Project.

« Il a décidé qu’il voulait venir aux États-Unis et il voulait prendre la route qui passe par la Colombie et le Panama. Il est arrivé en Colombie sans problème », explique Aloycius Fru -le cousin qui l’attendait dans le Maryland- à Univision Noticias Digital, partenaire dans l’enquête journalistique « Migrants d’un autre monde » . Les dernières nouvelles que Victor a donné ont été qu’il avait pris le bateau, traversé l’océan, traversé à pied la frontière du Panama et il s’est enfoncé dans la jungle du Darien. « Il ne savait pas à quel point la route était dangereuse, c’était la première fois qu’il quittait le pays », dit Aloycius.

Victor Fru Choeh, originaire de Yaoundé, la capitale du Cameroun, a quitté le pays parce que, dans ce climat de guerre civile sanglante qui dure depuis 2016, il ne pouvait pas trouver de travail pour faire vivre sa famille. Le conflit entre l’armée et les groupes séparatistes armés anglophones a fait plus de 3.000 morts, 700.000 personnes déplacées et quelques 60.000 réfugiés juste dans le Nigeria voisin. Il a également poussé des centaines de Camerounais à entreprendre chaque année un long et dangereux voyage à travers l’Amérique Latine afin de rejoindre les États-Unis ou le Canada et d’y demander l’asile.

Victor a acheté son billet d’avion le 24 avril 2019 auprès d’une agence de voyage appelée IVCA (International Vision Communication Agency). Il a payé 2.994,93 dollars US pour un vol qui a quitté Yaoundé le 10 mai, a fait quatre escales -Adis Abeba, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Lima- et a atterri le 12 mai 2019 à Quito, en Équateur. De là, Victor a mis sept jours pour atteindre la ville de Necoclí, sur la côte caraïbe de la Colombie et communiquer avec son cousin du Maryland.

Sur la dernière photo qu’il a envoyée à son cousin, Victor est debout au bord de la mer à Necocli, tournant le dos à l’eau. Derrière lui on peut voir deux autres personnes portant des gilets de sauvetage. D’une main, il montre l’océan et de l’autre, il tient le téléphone portable. Il a des écouteurs et porte des vêtements de sport, un pantalon Adidas noir et un T-shirt bleu. Dans la main qui tient le téléphone,  on voit briller son alliance. « Il venait de se marier et quand il est parti, sa femme était enceinte d’un bébé qui vient de naître », raconte Aloycius, en faisant défiler sur son téléphone les dernières images et messages qu’il a partagés avec Victor, ainsi que ceux qui lui ont été envoyés plus tard par d’autres migrants camerounais qui l’ont croisé sur le chemin.

Selon les données officielles de différents pays, le plus grand nombre de migrants transcontinentaux traversant les Amériques en 2019, étaient des Camerounais. Ils venaient principalement de zones de guerre ou étaient des anglophones fuyant la discrimination et la crise économique.

La famille de Victor est anglophone et a toujours vécu dans des villes francophones : il est né à Douala, la ville des affaires et a vécu avec sa femme et son fils à Yaoundé, la capitale du Cameroun, une ville majoritairement francophone. Il avait 39 ans et venait d’obtenir un diplôme en réparation et construction navale. Sa famille a dit que, malgré son expérience et sa formation, en tant qu’anglophone, il était victime de discrimination et ne pouvait pas trouver de bonnes opportunités d’emploi. À l’exception de son cousin Aloycius, qui fait carrière dans l’informatique et qui vit aux États-Unis depuis 17 ans avec une femme et cinq enfants, personne dans la famille n’a émigré ou même voyagé à l’extérieur du pays.

« …je peux récupérer ses os et les enterrer, creuser un trou et le mettre là… Je ferais ça.”

La dernière photo sur laquelle on le voit en vie a été prise par l’un des 20 Camerounais qui ont quitté Necocli et ont pénétré dans la forêt avec lui. Ils pensaient la traverser en quatre jours et continuer sa route jusqu’à la capitale. On peut le voir en train de se reposer au bord d’une rivière, portant une chemise noire et le même pantalon Adidas que celui qu’il portait sur les photos qu’il avait partagées avec son cousin.

Selon ce que ces migrants ont dit à la famille de Victor, il a commencé à ralentir de plus en plus, jusqu’à ce qu’ils le perdent de vue. Un second groupe de migrants a trouvé son corps allongé et gonflé sur la berge d’une rivière. Ils ont fait circuler sa photo parmi les autres Camerounais, au cas où quelqu’un aurait pu l’identifier et contacter ainsi sa famille. « Vous voyez le corps ? C’est lui », dit Aloycius avec certitude, le corps a le même visage que Victor et il porte un pantalon noir et une chemise noire. « Nous ne savons pas vraiment ce qui s’est passé. »

La famille au Cameroun a reçu la nouvelle du décès de Victor et les photos le 8 juin 2019, presque un mois après sa dernière communication avec son cousin. Ils ont appelé Aloycius pour l’avertir et il ne sait toujours pas quoi faire : « Le seul de la famille qui est ici, c’est moi. Mais je ne savais pas quoi faire, ni à qui parler. Je ne sais pas si je peux faire quelque chose. Peut-être je peux récupérer ses os et les enterrer, creuser un trou et le mettre là… Je ferais ça.”

Aucun membre de la famille n’a eu de contact avec les autorités panaméennes afin d’obtenir des informations sur la mort de Victor. Ils ont peur d’avoir des ennuis s’ils le font car Victor est entré au Panama sans papiers et ils savent qu’il serait impossible de récupérer le corps dans la jungle. Ils ont considéré que le 23 mai 2019 était la date de décès -le jour où ses compagnons de voyage l’ont vu et photographié vivant pour la dernière fois- et ont organisé des cérémonies sur les deux continents pour lui dire au revoir.

« Nous avons organisé une petite veillée ici. Nous avons fait venir un prêtre qui a dit la messe au sous-sol. Nous avons installé un petit autel et nous avons bu et mangé après la messe. Là-bas (au Cameroun), ils ont fait des cérémonies traditionnelles, quelque chose comme des funérailles, des choses symboliques. C’est très difficile. C’était trop pour nous », dit Aloycius.

Le dernier soupir de Nebane Abienwi

Chaque semaine, Lambert Mbom reçoit trois ou quatre messages provenant du Cameroun, de personnes qui recherchent un membre de leur famille qui était en route vers les Etats-Unis et qui a disparu, ou avec lequel elles ont perdu le contact. « La plupart sont des messages Facebook et Whatsapp. La semaine dernière, j’ai rencontré un ancien étudiant qui cherchait sa sœur. J’ai vérifié et j’ai découvert qu’elle était à Dallas. »

Lambert a enseigné la philosophie et la théologie au Cameroon College of Arts and Science à Kumba, dans le sud-ouest du pays, et était lié à la cause politique qui lutte pour l’autonomie des régions anglophones du Cameroun. Au début de l’année 2000, il a été emprisonné, battu, interrogé. En 2004, il est parti pour les États-Unis ; il avait 33 ans. Il n’avait pas de famille ici, juste un ami qui lui a trouvé un endroit où dormir. En 2009, il a obtenu l’asile. Il a maintenant 47 ans, est marié, et depuis avril 2019 il est devenu américain. Cela fait 16 ans qu’il n’est pas retourné dans son pays. « Mon père est mort en novembre 2018 et je n’ai pas pu aller l’enterrer (…) Les gens me demandent si le Cameroun me manque et je dis oui, ma famille me manque. Mais le Maryland est devenu comme un second Cameroun. Il y a beaucoup de Camerounais ici et beaucoup d’excellente nourriture.”

Les Camerounais arrivent dans le Maryland depuis des décennies et, comme tout exil, ils reconstituent l’univers de leur pays d’origine, en miniature. Il y a des anglophones et des francophones qui ont migré en différentes vagues depuis les années 1960 pour chercher un avenir ou pour échapper à la persécution et il y a aussi des familles mixtes. En commençant par les Bamiléké, francophones, qui ont été les premiers persécutés et sont partis après l’unification du Cameroun, en passant par les Camerounais du nord et sud ouest, anglophones, échappant à la violence du conflit entre l’armée et les séparatistes . On peut y trouver tout le Cameroun.

Maintenant, la solution qui consiste à venir aux États-Unis est pire qu’avant, dit Lambert : « Le Gouvernement fait tout pour éradiquer l’immigration et il devient de plus en plus difficile de se faire une place ici. Avant, il n’y avait pas tant de gens qui venaient en même temps et la communauté pouvait s’occuper des nouveaux arrivants. Mais maintenant,  nous avons trop d’arrivées et ils essaient tous de survivre. Le voyage est aussi de plus en plus traumatisant. Ils essaient de “passer sous le radar” et pendant un moment on les perd de vue. Chacun essaie de dissimuler son identité, de ne pas se faire remarquer jusqu’à ce qu’il puisse se mettre à l’abri et voir s’il peut trouver de l’aide.

En 2018, les États-Unis ont approuvé plus de demandes d’asile de Camerounais que dans les deux décennies précédentes (525), selon les chiffres officiels. Et entre 2016 et 2019, ils ont également recensé plus de migrants venus du Cameroun à la frontière sud avec le Mexique que lors des vagues précédentes. Les migrants qui ont réussi à la traverser se sont souvent rendus aux agents des patrouilles frontalières et ont demandé l’asile, jusqu’à la mise en œuvre du protocole de protection des migrants (MPP par ses sigles en anglais), qui oblige les demandeurs à rester au Mexique pendant que les Autorités d’immigration américaines traitent leur dossier.

Plus d’un tiers des demandes a été rejeté par les tribunaux américains de l’immigration : sur 7.378 demandes d’asile camerounaises reçues entre 2001 et 2020, 4.686 ont été accordées, 2.511 refusées et 181 ont bénéficié d’une autre protection. Ceux qui reçoivent une réponse négative restent en détention dans les centres administrés par l’ICE (Bureau d’immigration) jusqu’à leur expulsion vers le Cameroun.

Le 1er octobre 2019, un migrant camerounais est mort sous la garde de l’ICE en attendant son expulsion : Nebane Abienwi, 37 ans, qui avait six enfants, une femme et a quitté Bafut, au Cameroun, l’été 2019 pour l’Équateur.

Le 5 septembre de la même année, il est arrivé au point de contrôle de San Ysidro, à la frontière entre la Californie et le Mexique, et s’est rendu à la patrouille frontalière. Le 19 septembre, il a été transféré dans un centre de détention pour migrants à Otay Mesa et une semaine plus tard, le 26 septembre, il a été transféré au centre médical de Sharp à Chula Vista, avec le côté gauche paralysé. L’ICE a signalé qu’il a fait un AVC (accident vasculaire cérébral) et avait prévenu sa famille et le Consulat du Cameroun. Il est mort la semaine suivante.

 Peur dans la communauté  

« Le personnel médical a estimé que la mort était due à une hémorragie des ganglions de la base « , a déclaré l’ICE dans un communiqué. À l’époque, Abienwi était le huitième migrant à mourir en détention à l’ICE depuis janvier 2019 et le premier de l’année fiscale 2020, qui a commencé le 1er octobre. Un de ses frères au Cameroun a déclaré, dans une interview accordée en novembre à USA Today, que Nebane Abienwi, maintenu en vie sous assistance artificielle, avait été débranché avant le consentement de sa famille. Il a également déclaré qu’on lui avait refusé à deux reprises un visa pour se rendre aux États-Unis afin de voir et d’emporter le corps, qui a finalement été rapatrié début décembre 2019.

La mort de Nebane Abienwi est survenue au moment d’une crise de l’immigration sans précédent à la frontière sud des États-Unis et dans les centres de rétention qui tournent à plein régime. Au cours des quatre dernières années, le seul centre de rétention d’Otay Mesa, où Nebane a été détenu, a accueilli plus de 22.200 migrants, dont environ 260 Camerounais. Ils y restent en moyenne environ 41 jours et sont parfois transférés dans d’autres centres, ce qui peut augmenter leur séjour de plusieurs années. D’avril 2018 à février 2020, 24 migrants, principalement d’origine mexicaine et centraméricaine, sont morts en détention à l’ICE dans des circonstances diverses.

Lambert regrette que la communauté camerounaise des États-Unis n’ait pas réagi avec plus de force à cette crise qui touche directement leur famille et leurs amis. Il pense qu’il devrait y avoir des associations d’africains qui se rendent à la frontière pour aider ceux qui arrivent et raconter les horreurs qui les ont obligés à fuir l’Afrique. Mais au fond, il comprend les raisons pour lesquelles la plupart des membres de la diaspora évitent de parler de ce qui se passe au Cameroun et de la situation des migrants à leurs familles : « C’est une communauté qui a peur d’être prise pour cible par le gouvernement camerounais et de ne pas pouvoir revenir. C’est aussi un problème de résider aux États-Unis sans avoir les bons papiers ».

Il fait juste sa part, en retrouvant ceux qu’il peut et espère avoir une vie assez longue pour voir le conflit résolu dans son pays et pouvoir revenir : « Je veux rentrer chez moi. Le cordon ombilical de chaque Africain le relie à son village. Nous voulons toujours revenir à nos racines. Même si je suis à l’aise en Amérique, je serai toujours un étranger qui voudra revenir chez lui ».

* « Migrants d’un autre Monde »  est une enquête journalistique, collaborative, transnationale menée par le Centre latino-américain de journalisme d’investigation (CLIP), Occrp, Animal Político (Mexique) et les médias régionaux mexicains Chiapas Paralelo et Voz Alternativa pour En el Camino, des Periodistas de une tarte; Univisión Noticias Digital (États-Unis), Revista Factum (El Salvador); La Voz de Guanacaste (Costa Rica); Profissão Réporter de TV Globo (Brésil); La Prensa (Panama); Revista Semana (Colombie); El Universo (Équateur); Efecto Cocuyo (Venezuela); et Anfibia / Cosecha Roja (Argentine) en Amérique latine. Les autres collaborateurs de l’enquête étaient: The Confluence (Inde), Record Nepal (Népal), The Museba Project (Cameroun) et Bellingcat (Royaume-Uni). Ce projet a reçu un soutien spécial de la Fondation Avina et de la Seattle International Foundation.

The post #Migrants d’un autre Monde: Victor et Nebane, les Camerounais qui ne sont jamais arrivés appeared first on The Museba Project.

Elle a quitté le pays après avoir été enfermée un an chez elle avec ses deux petites filles lorsque les rues de sa ville brûlaient. Elle vivait à Bamenda, dans le nord-ouest, un des territoires anglophones du Cameroun.

« En 2016, la crise a commencé et les enfants ont passé toute l’année 2017, avant notre départ, enfermées à la maison. La guerre, c’était la folie : pas d’école, les meurtres, les fusillades, le nombre de personnes que nous avons perdues… », se souvient Colette lors d’un entretien en février 2020, avec Univision, membre de l’alliance journalistique qui a mené l’enquête « Migrants d’un autre monde »*; entretien qu’elle a accordé à condition de rester anonyme.

Selon les organisations de défense des droits de l’homme, la guerre actuellement menée par l’armée contre les groupes séparatistes armés anglophones a fait plus de 3.000 morts, environ 60.000 réfugiés au Nigeria voisin et 700.000 personnes déplacées à l’intérieur du pays. La guerre a également poussé des milliers de Camerounais, comme Colette, à entreprendre un long et dangereux voyage à travers l’Amérique Latine, dans l’espoir d’atteindre les États-Unis ou le Canada pour demander l’asile.

La violence a commencé en novembre 2016. Lorsque des enseignants et des avocats anglophones ont protesté dans le nord-ouest du pays afin d’exiger de meilleures conditions de travail, ils ont été brutalement réprimés. En octobre 2017, les mouvements sécessionnistes ont autoproclamé l’indépendance de ce territoire, qu’ils appellent Ambazonie. Suite à cette déclaration, l’armée leur a déclaré la guerre. C’est alors que Colette est partie avec ses filles pour les États-Unis afin de demander l’asile et rejoindre sa sœur aînée dans le Maryland.

Aujourd’hui, confinée à cause du coronavirus depuis début mars, elle vit à Odenton dans une maison de deux pièces qu’elle partage avec sa sœur, son beau-frère, deux neveux et ses deux filles, qui ont déjà 4 et 6 ans.

La route sinueuse

Le voyage de Colette a duré près d’un an et a été si traumatisant qu’elle ne se souvient plus quand il a commencé : « J’ai des problèmes avec les dates. J’ai du mal à me souvenir de cette période. Comme quand une année passe sans que tu t’en rendes compte. C’est un souvenir très douloureux à conserver ». Cependant, elle a eu plus de chance que la plupart des Africains qui font le même voyage. Certains n’atteignent jamais les États-Unis, d’autres sont détenus et renvoyés dès leur arrivée.

Colette et ses filles ont traversé 11 pays – Nigeria, Brésil, Pérou, Équateur, Colombie, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala et Mexique -en avion, en bus, en bateau et à pied- pour rejoindre les États-Unis. Les filles avaient deux et quatre ans lorsque le voyage a commencé.

Selon les données officielles de différents pays, recueillies par cette alliance journalistique transfrontalière pour l’enquête « Migrants d’un autre monde », la majorité des migrants Africains qui ont traversé le Continent Américain en 2019 étaient des Camerounais.

Beaucoup venaient de zones de guerre ou, comme Colette, étaient des anglophones fuyant la discrimination et la faillite économique. Depuis l’unification des territoires anglophones et francophones dans les années 1960, les anglophones, qui représentent 20 % d’une population de 25 millions d’habitants, se plaignent d’être traités par la majorité francophone comme des citoyens de second rang. Ils ont actuellement une faible représentation politique, moins d’opportunités économiques et aucune considération de la part du régime de Paul Biya, âgé de 87 ans et au pouvoir depuis 38 ans.

De nombreux migrants camerounais ont des liens avec les États-Unis, par des membres de leur famille, des personnes de leur village ou de leur tribu. Les plus grandes communautés Camerounaises du pays se trouvent dans la région de Washington DC et dans les comtés de Prince George et de Montgomery au Maryland. Il en existe également d’importantes dans les villes texanes de Houston et Dallas et dans certaines villes du Minnesota. Pour la plupart, ce sont des populations d’un niveau d’éducation élevé, possédant souvent plusieurs diplômes universitaires. Elles sont composées d’étudiants boursiers ou d’actifs ayant émigré depuis les années 1960, en plusieurs vagues, cherchant un avenir dans un pays anglophone.

La sœur de Colette est partie aux États-Unis il y a 18 ans, après avoir épousé un Camerounais habitant à Washington. Malgré une maîtrise en comptabilité, elle ne pouvait pas trouver au Cameroun un travail correspondant à son niveau d’études. « Elle est titulaire d’une maîtrise en comptabilité et ne pouvait pas trouver du travail. Elle était la quatrième meilleure élève de sa classe. Les emplois sont pour les francophones ; ils ont les meilleurs postes ».

Colette a fait des études de décoration d’intérieur. Avant que les manifestations des enseignants et des avocats ne commencent, elle avait sa propre entreprise de décoration et de traiteur dans la ville de Douala dans le territoire francophone. Quand les affaires ont commencé à ralentir, selon elle en raison de la diminution de la demande des francophones, qui ne voulaient pas travailler avec une anglophone, elle a dû retourner à Bamenda chez ses parents. Ils lui apportaient un soutien financier et assuraient la garde de ses filles, pendant qu’elle s’occupait de vente par internet de vêtements de bébé.

Tout d’abord, elle est allée avec ses filles jusqu’au Nigeria avec l’intention de prendre un vol pour le Mexique, puis rejoindre les États-Unis. « Nous sommes allées au Nigeria en vue d’obtenir un visa pour le Mexique, mais nous avons eu des contretemps. Nous n’avons pas pu avoir le visa. On nous a dit qu’il serait plus facile de l’avoir en Bolivie. Pour y arriver, il fallait d’abord aller au Brésil et demander l’asile là-bas. Mais ce n’était que des mensonges », se souvient-elle. À l’époque, elle n’aurait même pas pu localiser un seul de ces pays sur une carte.

Durant cette première partie du chemin, elle était accompagnée d’une autre de ses sœurs et de deux de ses neveux. Ils avaient payé 15.000 dollars à une agence de voyages, qui les a arnaqués. Sans argent, sa sœur et ses neveux sont rentrés au Cameroun et Colette a continué son voyage seule avec ses filles.

Une fois arrivée au Brésil, Colette a demandé l’asile, comme on lui avait dit de faire, à l’agence de voyages du Nigeria où elle avait pris son billet. « Je ne suis restée que trois jours à l’aéroport. Comme j’étais avec mes filles, on m’a très bien traitée. J’ai rencontré des personnes qui ont dû attendre au moins une semaine à l’aéroport. Puis j’ai découvert que nous étions coincées au Brésil. Pendant ce temps, j’ai cherché un autre moyen pour continuer», dit elle. Durant le mois et demi qu’a duré cet asile au Brésil, elle a rencontré d’autres migrants Africains de plusieurs nationalités, principalement des Congolais.

Payer les droits de passage

Du Brésil, elle est allée au Pérou. Un voyage en bus qui a  duré quatre jours avec de nombreux arrêts, au cours desquels elle devait payer des « droits de passage ». « Le Pérou est si dangereux, les gens que nous avons croisés étaient si malhonnêtes. » Elles ont ensuite traversé l’Équateur et la Colombie jusqu’au port de Turbo, où elles ont pris un bateau pour la ville de Capurgana, à la frontière du Panama, et continué leur voyage à travers la jungle du Darien. « A Turbo, j’ai rencontré de nombreux Camerounais. Ils ne cessaient pas d’arriver. Personne ne voulait voyager avec moi parce que j’avais les filles (…) Jusqu’à ce qu’un de mes voisins au Cameroun arrive. Dieu l’a envoyé ce jour-là ».

Colette, ses filles, le voisin et 25 autres migrants sont partis en bateau, puis à pied en direction du Panama et ils sont entrés dans la forêt du Darien. « C’est la pire partie du voyage, je ne veux même plus y penser (…). Le Panama, c’est l’enfer sur terre », dit-elle. Ils ont marché quatre jours à travers la forêt et la rivière. Quand celle-ci est montée soudainement, elle a failli emporter Colette et ses filles. Pour s’en sortir, elles ont dû lâcher leurs sacs qui contenaient leurs passeports et leur argent.

Une fois la forêt traversée, elles ont passé un jour au Panama. Elles ont traversé la frontière au Costa Rica, où elles sont restées deux jours, puis elles ont continué à braver des obstacles durant toute leur traversée du Nicaragua et du Honduras. La plupart du temps, elle n’a eu aucun contact avec sa famille au Cameroun.

« Au départ, je ne voulais pas leur dire comment allait se dérouler le voyage parce que personne n’aurait accepté que je prenne de tels risques. Dès que je suis arrivée au Guatemala, hors du danger, je leur ai dit que j’étais déjà au Mexique. Je ne leur ai pas dit où se situait le Guatemala, sachant que peu de gens savent où ça se trouve. J’ai dit que j’allais traverser la frontière. Je ne voulais pas qu’on me pose trop de questions », se souvient Colette.

Au Mexique, elles ont passé douze jours dans un centre de rétention pour migrants à Tapachula dans l’état de Chiapas à la frontière du Guatemala. Une fois arrivée, elle a appelé une amie qu’elle avait rencontrée en Colombie. Son amie lui a recommandé de traverser la frontière du Texas et non pas celle de Californie et elle l’a mis en lien avec une organisation des droits de l’homme qui l’a hébergée à Ciudad Juarez pendant trois jours.

Après plusieurs essais ratés pour traverser la frontière entre le Mexique et les États-Unis, un jour, à l’aube, elles y sont arrivées. Elles ont marché pendant 10 heures avant de pouvoir se rendre aux autorités et demander la protection. « Nous sommes tombées sur la police alors que nous étions déjà aux États-Unis. Les officiers de police nous ont demandé : « D’où venez-vous ? » Je leur ai dit que nous venions du Cameroun et que nous voulions demander l’asile ».

Colette et ses filles sont restées trois jours dans un centre de rétention à El Paso au Texas pendant que les autorités étudiaient leur dossier et les documents qu’elle avait apportés. « Après trois jours on nous a laissées sortir. Je savais que cela demandait trois jours. Nous avons pris nos affaires et on nous a amenées à un endroit où ils m’ont mis un bracelet électronique à la jambe ». Une fois en liberté, elles ont pris un bus, payé à l’avance par sa sœur, pour aller du Texas au Maryland.

Le 4 septembre 2019, les Autorités Américaines ont admis la demande d’asile de Colette et quelques mois plus tard lui ont accordé un permis de travail en attendant que les tribunaux d’immigration se prononcent sur son statut, procédure qui peut prendre jusqu’à trois ans. Le nombre de demandes d’asile en attente de résolution a dépassé le million en août 2019, selon les données du TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse) de l’université de Syracuse.

« Vivre aux États-Unis est si dur ! C’est comme si tu n’avais pas de vie. Toutes ces souffrances que nous avons vécues … pour ça ? »

D’abord Colette a travaillé dans la boulangerie d’un supermarché à Odenton dans le Maryland. C’était à coté de chez sa sœur et elle pouvait s’y rendre à pied. Puis, elle a trouvé un travail dans un entrepôt de stockage d’Amazon pour un salaire entre 1.000 et 1.100 dollars net toutes les deux semaines.

« Si tu fais des heures supplémentaires, tu peux faire des économies, mais ce n’est pas un travail facile » expliquait Colette pendant un entretien en février 2020. Elle travaillait 36 heures par semaine en trois jours de 12 heures. Elle travaillait la nuit pour pouvoir s’occuper de ses filles pendant la journée. Son objectif à moyen terme était d’ouvrir une petite crèche dans la maison de sa sœur, mais début mars la pandémie du Covid 19 est arrivée aux États Unis et a stoppé ses projets.

« J’ai arrêté de travailler dès que le virus est devenu une affaire sérieuse» dit Colette dans un message Whatsapp en avril. A la différence des autres sociétés, qui ont cessé leurs activités à cause de la pandémie, chez Amazon la charge de travail a redoublé. Les employés qui ne travaillent pas ne touchent pas de chômage. Elle a cependant décidé qu’il était plus sûr de ne pas retourner à l’entrepôt pour ne pas mettre la santé de ses filles et de ses neveux en danger.

Toute sa famille au Cameroun, ses parents et les trois sœurs qui y sont encore, a quitté le côté francophone. Ils sont allés à Douala fuyant la violence de la guerre. La crise sécuritaire continue à impacter le système d’éducation dans le territoire anglophone. En novembre 2019, un mois après la rentrée des classes, plus de 855.000 enfants n’avaient pas accès à l’école et environ 5.000 écoles étaient détruites ou fermées dans le nord-ouest et le sud-ouest du pays selon l’UNICEF. Avec la fermeture officielle des écoles afin de faire face au Covid 19, la situation est encore pire.

Quand elle fait le bilan de son voyage, Colette ne peut s’empêcher de se demander si cette nouvelle vie valait tous ces sacrifices et tous les risques qu’elle a pris pendant son long trajet. Bien avant que la pandémie ne frappe les États-Unis, quand sa vie était encore normale, quand elle avait du travail et que ses filles allaient à l’école, Colette pensait déjà que sa nouvelle vie n’en valait pas la peine. « Vivre aux États-Unis est si dur ! C’est comme si tu n’avais pas de vie. Toutes ces souffrances que nous avons vécues … pour ça ? »

* « Migrants d’un autre Monde »  est une enquête journalistique, collaborative, transnationale menée par le Centre latino-américain de journalisme d’investigation (CLIP), Occrp, Animal Político (Mexique) et les médias régionaux mexicains Chiapas Paralelo et Voz Alternativa pour En el Camino, des Periodistas de une tarte; Univisión Noticias Digital (États-Unis), Revista Factum (El Salvador); La Voz de Guanacaste (Costa Rica); Profissão Réporter de TV Globo (Brésil); La Prensa (Panama); Revista Semana (Colombie); El Universo (Équateur); Efecto Cocuyo (Venezuela); et Anfibia / Cosecha Roja (Argentine) en Amérique latine. Les autres collaborateurs de l’enquête étaient: The Confluence (Inde), Record Nepal (Népal), The Museba Project (Cameroun) et Bellingcat (Royaume-Uni). Ce projet a reçu un soutien spécial de la Fondation Avina et de la Seattle International Foundation.

The post #Migrants d’un autre Monde: L’histoire pas si heureuse de Colette appeared first on The Museba Project.

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Dans un rapport de 132 pages publié le 23 juillet 2018 sur la situation sécuritaire en République centrafricaine, pays en crise depuis 2013, le Groupe d’experts de l’ONU pointe  un doigt accusateur sur la mission de paix onusienne en Centrafricaine, Minusca, et son contractant l’entreprise Ecolog International spécialisée dans  la fourniture des services d’entretien, de restauration, de blanchisserie, de nettoyage et de gestion des déchets notamment à la Minusca, à l’ambassade des Etats-Unis à Bangui et à la représentation locale de l’Union Européenne.

Dans ce rapport ayant permis au Groupe d’experts de dresser son bilan à mi-parcours, il est fait état de ce que les trafics illicites d’armes sont organisés par des individus basés à Bangui, capitale de la République centrafricaine, à l’aide de véhicules escortés par la Minusca.

« Le 29 janvier 2018, des membres de l’UPC(Union pour la Paix en Centrafrique, un groupe armé) ont informé le Groupe d’experts qu’ils avaient arrêté et fouillé des véhicules d’Ecolog International escortés par la MINUSCA devant le camp de la Mission à Ippy 90 et qu’ils y avaient trouvé 1 727 cartouches de chasse de la manufacture d’armes et de cartouches du Congo(MACC), 602 paquets de Tramadol et 1,5 kg de marijuana. Six chauffeurs et chauffeurs assistants avaient été arrêtés, dont quatre avaient été condamnés pour possession illicite de munitions et de marchandises prohibées ou pour complicité», a indiqué le rapport.

Dynamiques et itinéraires du trafic des armes

Selon des témoins cités dans le rapport, l’un des condamnés, Didier Zala, utilisait régulièrement les camions d’Ecolog International, le contractant de la Minusca, pour faire transiter en contrebande des munitions de chasse jusqu’aux villes de Bria, de Bambari et d’Ippy.

« Zala aurait acheté à Lopola (Congo) ces munitions qu’il vendait à des chasseurs et à des combattants anti-balaka », rapporte le groupe d’expert.

Le Groupe d’experts poursuit son enquête pour déterminer si des convois escortés par la Minusca sont utilisés par des trafiquants se livrant à la contrebande d’armes, de munitions et de ressources naturelles.

A cet effet, le Congo a pris des mesures pour lutter contre les exportations illégales de munitions de la manufacture d’armes et de cartouches du Congo vers la République centrafricaine.

« Les munitions de chasse MACC, qui sont utilisées par les combattants antibalaka au cours d’opérations comme celle qu’ils ont menée à Tagbara, continuent d’être importées illégalement dans le pays à partir du Congo et de la République démocratique du Congo et d’être vendues dans tout le pays », lit-on dans le rapport.

Le Groupe d’experts s’est rendu à Brazzaville et à Pointe-Noire, au Congo pour sensibiliser le gouvernement et le fabricant de ces munitions au problème de l’importation et de l’utilisation illicites des cartouches MACC par les combattants Anti-balaka en République centrafricaine et au fait qu’il n’y a pas suffisamment d’informations sur les boîtes de munitions pour permettre le traçage prescrit par la Convention de l’Afrique centrale pour le contrôle des armes légères et de petit calibre, de leurs munitions et de toutes pièces et composantes pouvant servir à leur fabrication, réparation et assemblage ou Convention de Kinshasa.

À l’issue de cette visite, rapportent les experts de l’ONU, les autorités congolaises ont adopté certaines mesures visant à mieux réguler la vente des munitions en question.

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The 33-year-old miner struggles every month to harvest at least 80 carats of raw diamonds, a stock that earns him enough to support his wife and 4-year-old daughter. “It’s difficult, but when I manage to get this quantity, I sell it immediately, and I can earn up to 200,000 CFA francs,” he said with a smile.

It’s equivalent to roughly $360 — a goal Mr. Gounou  said he sets for himself each month.

He and other artisanal miners in a few cities across the Central African Republic are beginning to legally sell diamonds again — some two years after international arbiters partially lifted a ban on such sales amid a period of increased stability.

But even as miners in the world’s most impoverished nation revel in the prospect of renewed prosperity, a fresh uptick in fighting in CAR’s south and east is stoking fears that mines once again will fall into the hands of militias who will use “blood diamonds” to fund conflict.

“Smugglers and traders are thriving in the parallel black market,” said a report by the London-based watchdog group Global Witness, which took stock of evolving circumstances across several African nations, including CAR.

“Violent armed groups that still control large diamond-rich areas in the east, and the strongmen that retain influence in parts of the west, may still be profiting from diamonds that reach international markets with ease,” said the report.

Easing the ban

Diamonds were once CAR’s largest export, with an annual production capacity estimated at 840,000 carats. That haul made the nation the world’s 10th-largest diamond producer by value in 2012.

But the diamond trade came to halt in 2013 when the Kimberley Process, an international licensing body that seeks to prevent the sale of diamonds in war zones, banned exports from CAR after the violent overthrow of President Francois Bozize.

A civil war that gripped CAR from 2012 through 2014 left tens of thousands dead. Many say the circumstances were exacerbated by the Kimberly Process diamond ban, which shrunk CAR’s legitimate economy by some 37 percent in 2013 alone, according to the International Monetary Fund.

While the ban blocked the legal export of diamonds, analysts say, crooked collectors and armed groups seized on the situation by continuing to sell raw diamonds in cross-border smuggling rings that added to the nation’s economic and political turmoil.

Figures from the United Nations show the illegal trade cost the CAR government some $24 million — about 2 percent of its total budget — in 2014. The U.N. Human Development index for 2016 ranked CAR as the world’s poorest nation.

Despite the economic strife, outside powers determined in 2015 that stability had returned to enough localities across the nation’s west to allow for a partial lifting of the Kimberley Process ban.

By May 2016, certain diamond-rich regions had begun legally exporting again, albeit timidly, said Ernest Mbiroa, a diamond collector in Nola, one of the municipalities affected by the ban.

“Diamond compliance procedures are strict but accelerated,” Mr. Mbiroa said. “After a few weeks of verification, the buyer can export his products. This facilitates work in the supply chain of craftsmen, collectors and purchasing offices, and increases the revenue of these main links.”

Regulating the market

The market is growing, but the pace is slow. In the past two years, CAR has exported roughly 37,000 carats of rough diamonds annually, a far cry from the 840,000 carats a year that were exported before violence broke out in 2012.

Although mining operators hope the easement of the Kimberly Process ban will increase prosperity, authorities fear it has opened a new door for blood diamond activity in regions still affected by the ban.

A Central African Republic collector was arrested in August in neighboring Cameroon with more than 500 carats of rough diamonds. The diamonds had been extracted from restricted areas of CAR’s east, but authorities said the collector managed to falsely certify the gems in Berberati — a zone no longer affected by the Kimberley Process ban.

Francois Alain Ngbokoto, a point person for the Kimberley Process in CAR, said the seized diamonds had come from Bria, a locality about 250 miles from CAR’s capital of Bangui that remains entrenched in conflict and controlled by armed militias.

“In Bria, there is no prefecture, no gendarmerie, no tax office, no town hall,” said Mr. Ngbokoto. “Illegal mining activities conducted by armed gangs [there] are beyond the control of the state.”

He said Kimberley Process authorities have sought to implement a storage and marking system to address difficulty that officials are having in preventing blood diamonds from blending with legal gems.

A green slip denotes transactions in CAR’s western provinces that are no longer under the Kimberley Process ban, while a red slip denotes diamonds from conflict-ridden zones in the east.

Stockpiling ‘blood diamonds’

The regulation measures have a downside, said Mr. Ngbokoto, who pointed to Kimberley Process estimates that militias in CAR have stockpiled more than 60,000 carats of rough diamonds mined in areas the militias still control.

The Central African Peace Unit (UPC) is one armed group accused of controlling mines and selling diamonds to bolster its arsenals. Local authorities say the UPC employs about 2,000 men who control about a dozen localities in the eastern part of the country.

Representatives from UPC deny that the group is dealing in diamonds. “We do not have a collector or a mining artisan at the UPC. I have never seen gold or the diamonds with my own eyes,” said Souleymane Daouda, a spokesman for the group.

Mr. Daouda was quick to assign blame to bandits who he said plague the local market of independent artisans. “The bandits often come to attack these craftsmen in order to steal their products, and these craftsmen call us for help,” he said. “So we send our fighters to secure them.”

In Bangui, meanwhile, Mr. Gounou said he has continued to work often in mines — both in CAR’s east and the west — despite the increasing intensity of conflict and the presence of armed militias in some areas.

“Initially, I was afraid of finding myself in the middle of armed men,” the miner said. “But I had no choice. We had to find [diamonds] in order to survive. I prayed to God every day.”

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