Deportation of Cameroon asylum seekers: targeting delinquents or chasing shadows?

In the days ahead, dozens of Cameroonians are expected to arrive the country from the USA. The asylum seekers are being deported by the U.S. immigration services.

They make up a second set of deportees in the last couple of weeks.

With close to a hundred brought home in the first set, their official whereabouts remain unknown. After medical tests at the airport, they were carted off to an undisclosed location.

The government has made no official remark over their whereabouts, what was done with them or what fate is set to befall them.

While some lauded the move, many criticised the gesture, noting that a majority of the asylum seekers were escaping from their own state.

Among bodies fronting the call against the deportations is Amnesty International which stated that the deportation would place hundreds and possibly thousands of Cameroonians seeking safety in the United States at risk upon their return.

Adotei Akwei, Amnesty International’s USA deputy director of Advocacy and Government Relations said “Given the current conditions in the country, it is extremely likely that anyone who is returned to Cameroon will face a high risk of being detained, beaten, disappeared, tortured, or possibly even killed.”

Several others hold that the deportation of asylum seekers escaping from a war and some their government, is chasing the shadow and not the object.

Many key players in the armed conflict in the North West and South West regions remain in foreign countries controlling and funding armed groups causing chaos back home.

In videos on social media, some have even gone as far as calling for the abduction, torture, maiming and even killing of children for going to school. They also advocate for violence towards individuals and businesses with contradicting political opinions from theirs.

Seeking to achieve their aims by hook or by crook, the actions of some of these diaspora activists are largely to blame for a lot of the damage on the ground.

While government cannot be exonerated either, the repatriation of asylum seekers is not making matters any better.

It continues to target and victimise ‘poor’ innocent civilians seeking refuge.

Observers hold that major powers like the US and its European counterparts should rather use their influence to pressurise the Yaounde regime to bring the conflict to an end.

By so doing, they say, they would be saving lives as well as limiting the number of immigrants seeking to get into their countries clandestinely.

Mimi Mefo Info