Cameroon’s deportation of desperate Nigerians was illegal, says Human Rights Watch
Abuja/Yaounde — Cameroon’s army has forcibly deported at least 100,000 Nigerians who have fled an insurgency by Islamist militant group Boko Haram since early 2015 and subjected some to torture, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Wednesday. The deportations violate international and Cameroonian law and constitute one of the world’s largest recent cases of illegal forced repatriation, the rights group said in a report. They could also have intensified one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises by sending people in dire need of aid back to northeast Nigeria, it said. Cameroon’s minister of communications declined to comment on HRW’s report. Nigeria is struggling to cope with millions of people dependent on emergency relief for food, shelter and medicine, victims of an eight-year conflict in which at least 20,000 have been killed. At least 10.7-million people are in need of assistance in the region, mainly in Nigeria but also in Chad, Niger and Cameroon, according to the UN. The forc...
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