Video shows Cameroonian soldiers execute women and children, Amnesty says



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A grainy video broadcast on social media this week shows two women – one with a baby on the back and another holding hands with a young child – walking on a beaten earth. Armed men walk behind them, and one of them screams in French "You are B.H., you are going to die."

Men blindfold them and force them to kneel. Then they raise their rifles and shoot them down.

Since the video began to be widely broadcast this week, questions have arisen as to who the perpetrators are and where and when it was recorded. The Washington Post was unable to verify where the video was filmed or appears on it.

But Amnesty International issued a statement this week that its experts "have gathered credible evidence that they are Cameroonian soldiers represented in a video. The human rights group says the video was probably shot in the far north of Cameroon, where Cameroonian forces have been fighting to repel Boko Haram extremists for several years. [19659006] The Post was unable to travel to the Cameroon Embbady in Washington to comment, but Issa Tchiroma Bakary, a spokesman for the Cameroonian government, told reporters this week that "the video … is an unfortunate attempt to distort the facts and intoxicate the public. "

" His sincerity can be easily questioned, "he said of the video calling "false news." Reuters reported that Bakary also said that the weapons and uniforms did not match those worn by soldiers in the far north region of Cameroon.

The Cameroonian government has declared that it will conduct an investigation, but Amnesty International has expressed its fears of not being impartial. already rejected the video as not representing their soldiers. In his statement this week, Amnesty also said that "the weapons and uniforms of the soldiers in the video are indicative of the Cameroonian army".

Ilaria Allegrozzi, Amnesty International's researcher on Lake Chad, telephoned The Washington Post. which covers Cameroon, said that there are a number of key details that make the human rights group think that the video was recorded in Cameroon and presents the Cameroonian soldiers as the perpetrators . She added that in addition to their badysis of uniforms and weapons, "the landscape is really tangled" with the scrubland in northern Cameroon, and gunmen are heard speaking French with a Cameroonian accent. She said that they accuse women in the video of belonging to BH, a common nickname in the region for the extremist Boko Haram group.

"It 's one of the worst videos I've ever watched, and I've watched a lot of videos from the authors of the Boko Haram conflict, but that' s one of the worst videos I've ever seen. is really shocking, "she said. "Two children are killed – a little boy and a girl maybe 6 or 7 years old."

A presidential election is scheduled in Cameroon for October, and this week President Paul Biya has announced that he will run for a seventh term. Biya, 85, has been in power since 1982. Recently, the army has fought extremists in the far north and separatists in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon.

Amnesty International has also accused the Cameroonian authorities of abusing civilians in its fight against Boko Haram extremists. Last year, the group released a report documenting the arbitrary arrests and torture of civilians by the authorities of northern Cameroon.

Allegrozzi said that in relation to the video of execution, "this dismissal by the Cameroonian authorities is quite worrying.

" They said that they would open an investigation and have it already rejected as false news without proving anything, "she said. " What we have seen in Cameroon is a climate of total impunity where any crime can be committed and no one will be held to responsible. "

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