Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

{Controversial plan aims to screen asylum seekers in North Africa and return “economic migrants” to their home countries.}

EU interior ministers have pushed ahead with plans to finance camps in Africa, where the UN refugee agency and aid groups would process people to prevent them from trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.

Thomas de Maiziere, German interior minister, said on Thursday that the idea was to send the people to a safe place without bringing them into Europe.

“The people taken up by the smugglers need to be saved and brought to a safe place, but then from this safe place outside Europe we would bring into Europe only those who require protection,” he said in the Maltese capital Valletta where the EU ministers were debating the possible ways to end the crisis.

The sea crossing from Libya to Italy, operated by people smugglers, is the main route for those seeking better lives in Europe, but the EU wants to shut it down and admit only those they consider to be “genuine refugees”.

Most of those taking the Libya-Italy route are regarded as “economic migrants” – those looking for jobs and not shelter from prosecution – with no chance of winning asylum in the EU.

The camps in Libya or its neighbours would be run by the UN refugee agency UNHCR or the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which would screen the people and help return those not eligible for asylum to their home countries.

More than 4,500 people are known to have drowned last year alone trying to make the crossing.

{{Criticism}}

The idea of financing camps in Africa enjoys wide political backing in the EU, but poses legal and security challenges.

Libya sank into chaos following the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, and the new UN-backed government in Tripoli exercises no control over its territory.

Such lawlessness means returning people to Libya would likely violate international law, which prohibits sending people back to a place where their lives could be in danger.

A group of leftist European lawmakers criticised the plan, saying it was inhumane, cynical and unacceptable.

“Even more refugees will be locked up in North Africa under high risk of torture, rape and other forms of ill treatment,” said German MEP Cornelia Ernst.

{Government orders internet blackout after protests against what activists call marginalisation of English-speakers.}

English-speaking regions of Cameroon have now been without the internet for more than a week after Anglophone teachers, lawyers and students went on strike over alleged bias in favour of Francophones.

Wednesday marks the eighth day since the authorities ordered the country’s telecommunications providers to shut off internet connections to the regions of Northwest and Southwest.

Al Jazeera contacted Communications Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary, the country’s minister of communications, who pledged to comment on the situation but he has yet to do so.

The internet blackout came after the government outlawed at least two Anglophone groups – Southern Cameroons National Council and the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium – and arrested some of their leaders.

The groups had been pushing for so-called Ghost Town actions, in which they urge members of the public to stay at home and shops and businesses to shut.

The aim is to peacefully protest against what activists call the marginalisation of the English-speaking regions by government imposing the French language on their schools and courts.

The towns of Bamenda, Yuku, Nkambe and Buea came to a standstill on January 9, according to pictures and videos posted online.

Using hashtag Bring-Back-Our-Internet, many on social media expressed their outrage at the government’s response to the protest.

Protests in the Anglophone regions have been going on for years, but intensified late last year when protests turned violent.

Anglophone teachers, lawyers and students have been on strike since early December with many urging peaceful protests to call for the establishment of a two-state federation.

On Monday, Cameroonian President Paul Biya reportedly signed a decree establishing the National Commission of Bilingualism and Multiculturalism in the country.

Activists, however, rejected the measure saying their strikes and protests are about more than language.

The discontent

Areas controlled by Britain and France joined to form Cameroon after the colonial powers withdrew in the 1960s.

As a result, the country now has 10 semi-autonomous administrative regions; eight are Francophone, while the Northwest and Southwest regions are home to approximately five million English-speakers.

Anglophones in the country have long complained that they face discrimination, saying that they are excluded from state jobs as a result of their limited French language skills.

They also complain that official documents are often only published in French, even though English is also an official language.

There are issues in the judicial sector as well.

The country’s legal system is largely based on French civil law, but English-speaking regions still operate under the English common law.

Cameroonian lawyers say that the government is sending French-educated civil law judges who do not understand English common law to their courts.

Anglophone Cameroonians believe that only a complete overhaul of the administrative departments in the country and an inclusive federal constitution can end their woes.

Cameroon had adopted a federal government system in the 1960s but this system was later dropped after a referendum.

{Nigerian author Buchi Emecheta, whose works included The Joys of Motherhood, Second-Class Citizen and The Bride Price, has died at her home in London at the age of 72.}

Emecheta’s books were on the national curricula of several African countries.
She was known for championing women and girls in her writing, though famously rejected description as a feminist.

“I work toward the liberation of women but I’m not feminist. I’m just a woman,” she said.

The topics she covered in her writing included child marriage, life as a single mother, abuse of women and racism in the UK and elsewhere.

“Black women all over the world should re-unite and re-examine the way history has portrayed us,” she said.

The president of the Association of Nigerian Authors, Denja Abdullahi, said: “We have lost a rare gem in this field. Her works would forever live to speak for her.

“It is a sad loss to our circle. She was known for championing the female gender and we would forever miss her.”

Lagos-born Emecheta had moved to the UK in 1960, working as a librarian and becoming a student at London University, where she read sociology. She later worked as a community worker in London for several years.

She left her husband when he refused to read her first novel and burnt the manuscript, a World Service series on women writers reported.

The book, In the Ditch, was eventually published in 1972. That and Second-Class Citizen, which followed in 1974, were fictionalised portraits of a young Nigerian woman struggling to bring up children in London.

Later, she wrote about civil conflict in Nigeria and the experience of motherhood in a changing Ibo society.

An assessment of her writing, published by the British Council, says: “The female protagonists of Emecheta’s fiction challenge the masculinist assumption that they should be defined as domestic properties whose value resides in their ability to bear children and in their willingness to remain confined at home.

“Initiative and determination become the distinguishing marks of Emecheta’s women. They are resourceful and turn adverse conditions into their triumph.”