It has now been established that of the over 250 Cameroonians returnees from Libya on Tuesday November 21 2017, fifty of them are from Southern Cameroons. According to the Chief of Mission from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), Seybou Boubacar, the 50 Southern Cameroonians comprised of 40 men and 9 women and a child. He indicated that three women were heavily pregnant when they arrived Cameroon.
The psycho-emotionally petrified men and women in their quest to seek greener pasture in Europe, attempted to use Libya as a transit point. Unfortunately, they fell in the wrong zone of the largely stateless country and underwent excruciating torments from some barbarians.
The visibly exhausted men and women narrated their bitter tales conjugated in horror, pain and suffering. They told of how they have been sexually, emotionally and even physically abused while they were jailed by unknown men in Libya.
According to Berinyuy Immaculate, a six month old pregnant woman, she was raped on several occasions, sold like vegetables, and lived in all sought of deplorable condition.
“I was tortured and raped,” she murmurs in tears, “I wanted to go to Italy but I fell into the most horrible trap. In Libya, we were sold like vegetables, we were raped like whores. In 2015, I passed through Ekok to Nigeria, then Niger. I was kidnapped in the Nigerian desert by some six men who stripped off my clothes, my two cell phones and and my 925,000 CFA francs (1,406 euros). While in abduction, I successfully crossed into the Libyan town of Sebha. There I was jailed alongside, 300 other migrants.”
Like Immaculate, Ebai Tokoh Richard shared a similar tale of misery hardship and depression.
“I was beaten, raped in turn by my jailers and tortured. They told me: “To liberate you, you need money. Call your family. “When my brother heard my tears, he sold his bike to send them 500,000 CFA (760 euros),” says the young woman. I was released the next morning, but arrested in the evening by some soldiers who told me I was safe and will return home. Unfortunately, I found myself in the hands of another group of kidnappers. They transferred me to Sabratha, a town west of Tripoli, the capital of Libya. Then I was sold for 1,000 euros to a family,” Richard Tokoh painfully narrated.
Another man, Ndelle Solomon Eko, said he was imprisoned and raped by some unknown men. Fortunate for him, his family back in Cameroon successfully paid a ransom to his abductors who intern, free him in August. Since then, he has been living a nomadic life until he successfully got in contact with IOM.
“I spent four months in an unknown prison in Tripoli. I was served bread and spaghetti half cooked. I drank salt water. I did weeks without stool. I thought I was going to die. I was forced to call my family back home for them to raise a ransom so I could be freed. My mother brought the family together, everyone contributed. We paid the ransom. I left prison in August, 2017 and I left for a desert in Tripoli where I lived a nomadic life until my return,” Ndelle Solomon narrated.
On November 14, the American television channel CNN broadcast images of a slave market in Libya where sub-Saharan migrants were sold, provoking a public outcry in Africa and beyond. According to Roger Charles Evina, head of the programme of Protection and reintegration of migrants returning to Cameroon at the IOM, about 1,700 Cameroonian migrants are in Libya. He indicated the programme will progressively repatriate the rest of Cameroonians still in Libya.
Meantime, Charles Evina indicated that the programme has sought new means of reintegrating the returnees taking into consideration their psychology.
“When they arrive, we registered their details and asked them what pushed them to leave. Then we find out what they would like to do in Cameroon. It is based on their response that we offer subsidies to start activities. The amounts vary between F CFA 500,000 CFA and F CFA 1,000,000 CFA,” he said.
The International Organisation for Migration is European Union funded project. It is aimed at promoting the voluntary return of Migrants across Africa who are held in Libya. Its general goal is to abort the illegal migration into Europe especially using Libya as a transit.
By Lucas Muma,
Managing Editor – BaretaNews
4 comments
These are victims of the system. We must no relent on this struggle until we achieve our goal.
If not imagine victims who perished in the desert,sea forest and in the hands of arab men etc.
Only when we Africans develop power, we will always be treated as trash, disposable products. Any other thing like Praying, begging, looking for pity, being honest and nice alone are just mere escapism and pure waste of time. We have been thought by religious institutions to glorify weakness and accept abuse of holly. These are the consequences.
There is no thing in existence that comes for nothing, Weakness in the physical world comes for weakness in the mental and spiritual world no matter how much and how hard one prays. Some of us think because we go to church, pray, … then we are automatically not weak, I wish it was really like that. If that was the case, then European and Chinese must be praying a billion time more and harder that Africans.
Religion tells us to go out of the physical world into our minds and pray for greatness and this same religion tell us again that when we finish our praying inside that private mental world and come out in to the physical world, we should accept every evil others do to us.
Only mad people pray alone and expect thing they want to happen. Europeans don’t pray to build a road, build plains, … they work their ass to death.
For more that 2000 years ever since we make contact with some people, our whole being has never even been what is was.
This is not the first and it’s not going to be the last. The only thing we got is our selves, the world is not a friendly place.
No race in existence ever, tolerated such animal, inhuman treatment like we Africans do. Instead of us putting things in place ahead of time so that such evil don’t happen, we do absolutely nothing and then run to pretest in front of the whole world when we are treated like animals. All we are doing is fooling ourselves. We do the incorrect thing at the incorrect time.
Everything that is happening to us is partly because of us. If we do not remove the slave and weakness program code in our mind and replace these with freedom and power code, the physical action of our physical body in the physical world will always reflect the slave and weakness in us.
We don’t need any rocket science, all we need to do is look at what other race are doing and copy it, it’s that simple. The question is what kind of spirit are hiding inside of us and fooling us to do the incorrect thing over and over and over and over.
To our brother Malis, you cannot be speaking in generality for if that is the case, then we should not be talking about restoring the independence of Ambazonia from LRC.
What is at play here is the double standard of the Europeans for which a lot of Africans are falling for that nonsense. We should not forget how late President Mandela and a few African leaders vehemently argued against attempts to remove Muammar Gadhafi from power. This argument was because these few sensible African leader realize the vacuum that will be created in Libya after Gadhafi.
Well well well, guess what? The French leeches once more did what they know best. Hilary Clinton was manipulated by the pompous french Nicolas Sarkozy and before long Gadhafi was killed. Now see the mess that this has created and today no one is talking about the culpability of the french leeches.
Most in the world today know why Sarkozy wanted Gadhafi killed. But did we see any African country recalling its ambassador from france. NO!!!
Yes, Libyans have done bad things to Africans. However, we should not forget that although they are Arabs, they are equally victims just like us.
Until we get rid of traitors like Paul Biya, Denis Sassou Nguesso (the skin beecher), Faure Gnassindbe, Pierre Nkurunziza, Ouattara, etc. nobody anywhere in the world will ever take us serious. Our destiny is in our hands and we should stop making excuses and to start taking actions.
At least the army in Zimbabwe has shown the world that Africans are not simply docile for someone who is mentally incompetent to think he can just play around with the presidency as he thinks fit. Ambazonians are fighting to restore what was mischievously stolen from them by the French leeches with the complicity of Ahidjo.
Ambazonians we should not relent for ours is a fight to liberate ourselves from mental slavery. Over fifty six years of disrespect from LRC is too much. History will judge us harshly if we let Biya and the cpdm gangsters get away with their criminality in our land.
samuel eto’o is giving 1.5 million cfa to each and every one of those our bothers and sister from lybia to rebuilt their lives –
not Bad no great 9