Eyes on Cameroon: Videos capture human rights violations by the security forces in the fight against Boko Haram
By Christoph Koettl and Haley Willis.
A shaky video that emerged in January 2017 shows members of Cameroon’s special forces beating detained men in the courtyard of a house in the country’s remote Far North region. The scene is emblematic of the widespread human rights violations committed by Cameroon’s armed forces in their fight against Boko Haram, an armed group that has wreaked havoc across north-east Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad. The army’s violations are detailed in a new report released today.
The video, and others like it, provide powerful — and highly disturbing — evidence that complements testimonies of several former detainees. The footage — captured by the perpetrators themselves — is starkly reminiscent of videos from north-east Nigeria that show Nigerian forces committing horrific violations against suspected Boko Haram supporters. As in Amnesty International’s previous Nigeria research, we had to deploy rigorous methods to assess the veracity of the video content. The difference to previous research is that now an emerging global network of trained students collaborating with Amnesty International helps with assessing digital evidence to strengthen our human rights documentation. The Digital Verification Corps (DVC) is a game changer for Amnesty International’s sleuthing of digital networks. This case study provides insights from a DVC volunteer into the discovery and verification work that becomes increasingly important for human rights organizations.
Digging deeper
On January 16, 2017, the DVC received a request to analyze the above-mentioned video. The social media narrative surrounding the video, posted January 13, 2017, connected it to the protests and crackdown in the English-speaking regions of the country. Our analysis concluded that the video was in fact related to the conflict involving the Cameroonian forces and Boko Haram in the Far North region of the country.
WHEN was this footage captured?
Our research always begins with determining the relevance of the content, ensuring that this video has not appeared online previously. We did this by running key thumbnail images through reverse image searches, using tools such as Keep and Amnesty International’s own YouTube Data Viewer.
The video that we received was originally posted onto Twitter in the evening of January 13, 2017. Reverse image search of thumbnails suggested that this version was the earliest available online. Furthermore, we discovered through social media profiles that the poster is based in Cameroon.
WHO is pictured in the footage, and WHY are they involved?
Our next step was to identify the primary actors. Throughout the footage, there are several instances where the acronym “B.I.R.” is visible on the T-shirts of the perpetrators. BIR stands for Bataillon d’Intervention Rapide — the elite unit of the Cameroonian Army tasked with fighting Boko Haram.
Descriptions of torture from a 2016 Amnesty International report are consistent with the crimes seen in the video, where victims are kicked and hit with wooden planks. Victim accounts from the report claim “the men in plain clothes kicked them and slapped them violently, and hit them with wooden sticks.” It is worth noting that the perpetrators in the video are dressed in T-shirts and shorts rather than full military uniforms or riot gear.
After reviewing previous reports of BIR misconduct, we found that the men in the video were being tortured based on suspicion that they are Boko Haram supporters. This information points to a very different motive for torture than that which was being circulated on social media.
WHERE was this footage captured?
One of the men being beaten in this video is speaking Foulfoulde, which is a commonly spoken language in the Far North region of Cameroon. Additionally, we learned that the woman seen sitting in the background of the video is wearing her clothes and hair in the traditional Kanuri way. The Kanuri are an ethnic group living in the Far North region of Cameroon, and around the Lake Chad basin.
All this information points to events in the video occurring in the Far North rather than Cameroon’s western Anglophone regions, as was falsely claimed in multiple social media posts. BIR soldiers are stationed at several permanent and temporary, fortified bases in the Far North, including in the border town of Kolofata located 70 km from Maroua. Some of the bases, like the one in Waza, display BIR in large letters on the roofs of their barracks, which is easy to spot in publicly available satellite imagery.
After some research on Google Earth, we identified a house that matched the features visible in the video within a fortified area in Kolofata. Using only a short, shaky video, we pinpointed the exact location of a torture site under the control of the BIR. Drawings and descriptions of a former detainee, which matched satellite imagery of the location, confirmed our findings. The video shows several soldiers filming the incident. In addition to the video from Kolofata, we analyzed other videos with similar content, including the one filmed in a school that was turned into a temporary BIR base in the town of Fotokol.
A widespread problem with an international dimension
Since 2014, Boko Haram has killed over 1,500 civilians in the Far North region of Cameroon, in a series of brutal and often indiscriminate attacks. It has also abducted civilians and carried out widespread looting and destruction of property. In seeking to protect civilians from these attacks, Cameroon’s authorities and security forces, including the Direction Générale de la Recherche Extérieure (DGRE, one of the several Cameroonian intelligence services) and the BIR have committed systematic human rights violations and crimes under international law. Both the BIR and the DGRE fall under the direct command of the country’s president.
A number of countries provide military assistance to Cameroon, and some, including the USA, have military personnel based in the country. This includes the BIR headquarters and military base in Salak, one of the sites where, according to Amnesty International research, incommunicado detention and torture of suspected Boko Haram members has been routinely carried out between 2014 and 2017. US and French military personnel, as well as private Israeli contractors, have been present in the BIR base in Salak to provide training and assistance, while the US military also both assigns personnel on an ongoing basis and stores military equipment on the base. Questions should be raised about the extent to which soldiers and agents of some international partners may have been aware of the existence of such practices.
Haley Willis is a student at the University of California, Berkeley and a member of the Amnesty International’s Digital Verification Corps. Christoph Koettl is a member of Amnesty International’s crisis response team.
