The Cameroonian military has forced unarmed and untrained civilians to do night guard duty to shield their communities from attacks by Boko Haram militants and threatened those who refuse with death and beatings, a prominent international rights group said on Friday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th July, 2020) The Cameroonian military has forced unarmed and untrained civilians to do night guard duty to shield their communities from attacks by Boko Haram militants and threatened those who refuse with death and beatings, a prominent international rights group said on Friday.
Boko Haram has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist organization (banned in Russia).
"Soldiers in Mozogo, in the Far North region of Cameroon, have forced civilians to perform local night guard duty to protect against attacks by the armed Islamist group Boko Haram," Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.
According to the watchdog, the practice of forcible mobilization of civilians in the Far North Region began after Boko Haram militants burnt some 40 homes in the community of Mozogo and killed two civilians on February 4.
A list of civilians forced into night guard duty is usually displayed publicly at a market, and those who refuse to perform the task are subjected to punishment. At initial stages, such people were beaten, but now the practice seems to have ended, the rights watchdog noted. Local residents, HRW went on, still complain that they "live in fear of beatings resuming, and that the forced labor and threats continue."
"The Cameroon authorities should immediately stop forcing civilians to perform night guard duty and instead protect civilians through lawful means," Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director at HRW, said, urging the authorities to probe "the reported beatings, threats, and forced labor."
The watchdog noted that civilians receive no compensation for performing the dangerous duty. Moreover, being unarmed and lacking any supervision or means of communication, such people are put in harm's way. They are basically "told to run back to town to alert the army if they saw Boko Haram fighters approaching," according to the NGO.
