79 school pupils abducted in restive anglophone Cameroon
Yanound, Nov 5 : Seventy-nine school students were kidnapped on Monday in an English-speaking region of Cameroon where separatists are fighting an armed campaign for independence, a government source said.
The students were abducted along with their principal, a teacher and a driver, the official said, as a source at the school confirmed the kidnapping of the pupils.
They were enrolled at the Presbyterian Secondary School in Bamenda, capital of Cameroon's Northwest Region -- one of two regions hit by attacks by anglophone militants that have met with a brutal crackdown by the authorities.
"The search for the hostages has been launched -- every man has been called in," the government source said, speaking after a crisis meeting.
The kidnapping -- the gravest incident so far in 13 months of unrest -- coincides with an upsurge of political tensions in the majority French-speaking country.
It comes after elections on October 7 that saw President Paul Biya, 85, who has ruled the country with an iron fist for 35 years, secure a seventh term in office.
Biya was credited with 71.3 per cent of the vote, although the ballot was marred by allegations of widespread fraud, low voter turnout and violence.
He takes his oath of office on Tuesday.
Around a fifth of Cameroon's 22 million people are English-speaking -- a minority whose presence dates back to the colonial period.
Cameroon, once a German colony, was divided between Britain and France after World War I.
The French colony gained independence in 1960, becoming Cameroon. The following year, the British-ruled Southern Cameroons was amalgamated into it, giving rise to the Northwest and Southwest regions.
But resentment at perceived discrimination at the hands of the francophone majority, especially in education and the judiciary, began to build.
In 2016, demands for greater autonomy grew but met with a rebuff by Biya.
As radicals took ascendancy, the anglophone movement declared the creation of the "Republic of Ambazonia" in the Northwest and neighbouring Southwest Region on October 1, 2017.
No country has recognised the self-declared state.
The separatists have gunned down troops and police, boycotted and torched schools and attacked other perceived symbols of the Cameroonian state.
The authorities have responded with a massive crackdown by police and troops.
At least 400 civilians have been killed this year as well as more than 175 members of the security forces, according to a toll compiled by non-governmental organisations.
According to UN figures, 246,000 people in the Southwest Region have fled their homes, and 25,000 have sought shelter in neighbouring Nigeria, many of them living hand-to-mouth in the forests.
Estimates of displaced people in the Northwest Region are not available.
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After poll debacle, defeated MVA candidates to seek verification of EVM-VVPAT units
Mumbai(PTI): The Maha Vikas Aghadi candidates who faced defeat in the recent Maharashtra assembly polls have decided to seek verification of the EVM-Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs) units in their segments, a leader of the opposition alliance said.
Many losing candidates of the opposition Shiv Sena (UBT) pointed fingers at the functioning of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during their interaction with party head Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday.
Thackeray took stock of the lacklustre performance of his party at a meeting held at his residence in Mumbai.
The poll verdict last week saw the Mahayuti coalition, comprising the Shiv Sena, BJP, and NCP, retaining power with a massive mandate, pushing the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) to margins.
The Mahayuti won 230 seats and MVA only 46 in the 288-member House.
The Thackeray-led Sena (UBT) emerged as the largest party in the opposition camp by winning 20 seats, followed by Congress which bagged 16 constituencies, while the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) sits at the bottom with a tally of 10 seats.
Talking to PTI on Tuesday, Congress leader Arif Naseem Khan, who lost the election from Chandivali assembly constituency in Mumbai, said he held a discussion with Thackeray, who also said he has got complaints from his party workers that EVMs could have been tampered.
"We are getting complaints from different parts of the state expressing doubts over the results. In a democracy, complaints need to be verified and many of us, including myself, (who faced defeat) are in the process of applying for the verification," Khan said.
As per the Supreme Court's judgement on April 26 this year, the burnt memory/microcontroller in 5 per cent of the EVMs - the control unit, ballot unit and the VVPAT - per assembly constituency shall be checked and verified by a team of engineers from manufacturers of the EVMs, after the announcement of results, for any tampering or modification, he said.
A written request for this has to be made by candidates who are in the second or third position behind the highest polled candidate.
Such a request has to be made within seven days of declaration of the result, Khan said.
A candidate making the request will have to pay the expenses of Rs 41,000 which will be refunded in case the machine is found to be tampered with, he said.
The microcontroller is a one-time programmable chip embedded into the three units of EVM-Ballot Unit, Control Unit and the VVPAT - at the time of manufacturing, as per the SC.
A Sena (UBT) MLA from Mumbai has claimed there were discrepancies between the votes polled and the votes counted in the EVMs.
"Almost all candidates raised doubts over the EVMs," the legislator said.
