Cameroon deports 100,000 Nigerian refugees: HRW

By Felix Nkambeh Tih

ANKARA (AA) - Cameroon has deported 100,000 refugees who had fled violence by Boko Haram to Nigeria, since early 2015, the Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

“In carrying out these deportations the Cameroonian soldiers have used extreme physical violence,” the New York-based rights group said in its latest report.

More than 4,000 refugees have been deported in the first seven and a half month of this year, the report said.

The group added that 70,000 refugees who had reached Cameroon’s Minawao refugee camp have limited access to food and water, and are not allowed to move freely.

Minawao camp was opened in July 2013 in northern Cameroon close to Nigeria. It is Cameroon’s only designated camp for Nigerian refugees.

The report added that refugees who have returned to Nigeria are at a risk of attack by Boko Haram militants.

''In April and May 2017, 13,000 returned from the camp to Nigeria, some of whom were killed in early September after Boko Haram attacked the Banki displacement camp where many had ended up,'' the report said.

''Cameroon’s army has been aggressively screening newly arriving Nigerians at the border, subjecting some to torture and other forms of abuse, and containing them in far-flung and under-serviced border villages and informal refugee settlements,'' it said.

In the last eight years Boko Haram's violence has left 10.7 million people across the Lake Chad region in need of emergency assistance, according to the UN.

Cameroon is part of a regional task force that aims to eradicate the militant group that has so far killed more than 2,000 people in the country, according to government officials.

Boko Haram seized some areas in Nigeria and declared a ‘caliphate’ in 2013 until the military recaptured the districts in early 2015.

Around 26 million people in the Lake Chad region have been affected by Boko Haram violence and more than 2.6 million displaced, according to the UN.