At least 4,402 Nigerian refugees still in Cameroon, who had fled the Islamist Boko Haram militants.
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora Abike Dabiri-Erewa said in a statement on Friday that this is the time the West African regional bodyECOWAS and other groups should take an action against its neighbours, state broadcaster NTA reported.
“This unfriendly attitude of the Cameroonian soldiers to Nigerian asylum seekers is really worrisome,” she added in response to the details of the report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday that said the refugees were “forced into trucks like animals”.
Abike Dabiri-Erewa said Cameroon needs to stop breaching international law against the ill treatment of refugees who were reported to have been detained and tortured by Cameroonian soldiers before they were dropped off in neighbouring northeast Nigeria where they are facing attacks by Boko Haram.
Cameroon’s minister of communications declined to comment on the damning report.
HRW said in the report that since early 2015, at least 100,000 refugees were deported and in the first seven and a half months of 2017, 4,402 more were deported including children.
“The forced returns are a flagrant breach of the principle of nonrefoulement, binding on Cameroon under national Cameroonian as well as international law.
“They are also being carried out in defiance of UNHCR’s late 2016 plea to all governments not to return anyone to northeastern Nigeria ‘until the security and human rights situation has improved considerably,’” the 55-page report added.
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