Yaounde, Cameroon – Last October, Fred Assam watched from his hiding place as government soldiers spoon-fed acid to the village chief’s son.

The 24-year-old knew it was time to flee his homeland.

He escaped his village of Mbenyan in southwest Cameroon with a small bag of clothes, abandoning the life he knew behind to the safety of neighbouring Nigeria.

“The soldiers were shooting everyone they saw,” he says from Agbokim, in southern Nigeria. “They killed so many young people in Mbenyan and other villages across the Anglophone regions.”

Assam is one of over 30,000 Cameroonians – including his parents with whom he reunited three months ago – from the English-speaking northwest and southwest regions of the country who now live in refugee camps and settlements in southern Nigeria.

Discrepancies between the French and English academic, legal and administrative systems which have always existed concurrently, as well as cries of political and economic marginalisation, crystallised into a series of protests and riots in 2016.

That soon turned bloody as the government, in a bid to quell dissent, first ordered a three-month internet shutdown and deployed soldiers.

In January, separatists including Julius Tabe, the leader of the interim government of “Ambazonia” – the self-declared state consisting of the Anglophone regions – were arrested in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, on charges of terrorism.

Back in Cameroon, young untrained fighters are embroiled in a battle with government soldiers, countering sophisticated weaponry with homemade guns, machetes and charms called odeshi to make them invisible and invincible.

Trapped in the middle of all this are the estimated 17 million Anglophone Cameroonians who form roughly one-fifth of the population.

I was detained alongside suspected Boko Haram insurgents. There was this lady who was only released recently – she gave birth to her baby in prison.

Agbor Nkongho, director of Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa

Local groups say the number of people displaced from both regions has doubled to around 200,000 people over the last month and there are about 50,000 refugees in Nigeria.

The International Crisis Group, which says international reaction has been muted, estimates that at least 2,000 people have died in the conflict, with another 170,000 displaced.

An unknown number of people are also sleeping in open forests in the absence of formal camps. There is a shortage of toilets and proper hygienic conditions for menstruating girls and women in the informal host communities.

Still the country is pressing on towards an election on Sunday, as incumbent President Paul Biya seeks a seventh term in office.

Meanwhile, the government is headstrong about hosting a continental football competition next January despite the Anglophone crisis.

Observers and civil society leaders are worried about the government’s preoccupation with holding the elections and believe it is an attempt to paper over the cracks and present a united front to the international community.

“The reason I’m not contesting in this election is because of the current security situation,” says Kah Wallah, leader of the Cameroon People’s Party (CPP) which is not presenting a presidential candidate.

“You have people sleeping in the open forests. There is conflict in six of the 10 regions in Cameroon. There is intense conflict in the northwest and southwest, then in the Far North, you have about 300,000 people displaced by Boko Haram.

“In the East, there is a spillover from the insecurity in Central African Republic. In Adamawa and the North, there is spillover of the crisis in the East and Far North. There were over 71 kidnappings in Adamawa last year alone. I can’t contest an election with all this happening.”

Along with the secessionists are innocent citizens who have been arrested, detained and in the cases of some jailed for 15-year sentences or longer, on trumped-up charges of terrorism, says Agbor Nkongho, director of Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (CHRDA) in Buea.

Nkongho himself was detained for eight months last year at the Kondengui prison in Yaounde and his trial was adjourned six times before a military tribunal acquitted him last August.

“I was detained alongside suspected Boko Haram insurgents,” he says. “There was this lady who was only released recently – she gave birth to her baby in prison.”

Mental health concerns

Beyond the detentions and displacements, there are concerns about the lingering trauma that could significantly hamper the healing and reintegration process for survivors.

Widows who have lost their spouses to flying bullets, children separated from their parents and citizens who have lost their incomes could have no life to return to.

For secessionist fighters, the option of an amnesty programme and “de-radicalisation” therapies are not on the table, as the government has reportedly backed a shoot-at-sight order with them as the targets.

“Election is overshadowing the crisis especially in the Francophone regions,” concurs Nkongho. “It is a non-issue in the south given the threat by the Ambazonia boys … We’ve not seen any plans to properly take care of the displaced people and the government is not admitting that there are refugees outside the country.”

Many are going through some torture, losing properties and going through serious psychological distress. They don’t know what will happen because things are so unpredictable. Parents watching their children get killed and children watching their parents murdered.

Dr Eric Gola, mental health specialist

The government’s humanitarian response has been underwhelming, say civil society leaders who point out that its relief programme factored in just 160,000 people, a number likely picked up from a UNOCHA report released earlier this year. The plan does not also address the urgent need for psychosocial support for the displaced population.

“The plan didn’t acknowledge refugees and so made no provision for those in Nigeria,” says Nkongho.

“Also, those who were to manage it are some of those seen as the enemy by the displaced and have no moral authority to implement things and distribute relief. We asked them to include civil society and the clergy who are neutral, but this wasn’t done. It has failed and it’s just a political scheme to show that President Biya cares.”

The CHRDA, which already provides legal aid and relief items to the vulnerable, is in discussions to get immediate psychological help for all those affected by the conflict. 

Local churches are also gradually stepping in to fill the void by organising small-scale trauma healing workshops, but there are few seasoned professionals to join in the process.

Abuse of substances like cannabis and tramadol is also common across both regions, warns Dr Eric Gola, a mental health specialist in Kumbo, in the northwest region.

Since the conflict began in 2016, he has been working with Berikids, one of the few rehabilitation centres nationwide.

“Many are going through some torture, losing properties and going through serious psychological distress. They don’t know what will happen because things are so unpredictable. Parents watching their children get killed and children watching their parents murdered. Soldiers raping.

“The Ambazonia boys are now taking up arms and getting involved in substance abuse to get courage to fight since they are untrained. It is affecting them mentally and rehabilitation centres will face a deluge in the post-war future because most families will have serious psychiatric cases because of the trauma of war.”

Gola was contacted a few months ago by some Catholic priests who wanted to establish centres for managing psychosocial disorders and post-traumatic stress conditions pending the outcome of the conflict. It’s a drive that he wishes the government had.

“The president declared war on Southern Cameroons,” he laments. “He has the yam and the knife to stop the war, release those in detention in connection to the crisis, demilitarise both regions and organise a dialogue with all parties concerned.”

This weekend, the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) meets in Glasgow for its fall conference. 

After more than a decade in power at Holyrood – Scotland‘s devolved parliament in Edinburgh – the party continues to defy all the established rules of mainstream politics. 

It is still riding high in the polls; its leader, Nicola Sturgeon, remains Scotland’s most commanding politician; and, in the event of a snap Westminster election, it would stand a good chance of reversing the losses it suffered last year at the hands of Labour and the Tories.

However, in recent months, the remarkable durability of Scottish nationalism has come under increasing strain. The SNP faces two significant, even potentially critical, challenges.

The first relates to independence: Sturgeon has to decide whether or not to stage a second referendum on separation from the UK. The first, in September 2014, returned a close-run victory for the union.

For a while, her plan was to hold “indyref2” shortly before Britain leaves the EU in the spring of next year, with the aim of rescuing Scotland’s membership of the European bloc. 

But the rapid shift in favour of independence that Brexit was expected to provoke among Scotland’s staunchly europhile electorate simply never materialised. 

As a result, Sturgeon has been forced to reassess her strategy, leaving many nationalist campaigners waiting anxiously for a poll that could be delayed for years – or, indeed, called at a moment’s notice.

The second – and arguably more acute – problem for the SNP is the #MeToo controversy that currently surrounds Sturgeon’s predecessor, Alex Salmond.

Over the summer, it emerged that two separate allegations of sexual misconduct had been made against Salmond by Scottish government staff members dating back to his time as SNP leader and Scottish first minister.

Unhappy with the way the claims had been handled internally by civil servants, Salmond launched a dramatic legal action against his successor’s government. He then abruptly quit the SNP and set up a crowd-funder to cover his legal costs which directly, and perhaps cynically, linked his fate to that of the Scottish independence movement as a whole.

The fallout from this decision has, to put it mildly, divided nationalist opinion. Some activists believe Salmond is trying to leverage his political clout in an attempt to intimidate his accusers, while others – including senior party figures – see him as the victim of an opaque anti-nationalist conspiracy; the crowd-funder raised $131,200 in three days before Salmond closed off donations.

Sturgeon, whose working relationship with Salmond stretches back to the 1990s, has dealt with the issue as sensitively as possible. The complaints should not be “swept aside because of the identity of the person involved,” she said at the outset of the crisis, in reference to her ex-boss, and the ongoing police investigation into Salmond’s conduct must be fair to “all parties concerned”.

Nonetheless, the SNP now finds itself in a deeply uncomfortable position: just as the UK government’s Brexit negotiations with the EU reach the breaking point and grassroots demands for a second independence referendum escalate, the party has been plunged into a bitter dispute over the behaviour of its “talismanic” former leader.

Sturgeon is grappling with obstacles on the domestic policy front, too. 

Last month, one of her administration’s flagship education reforms – standardised testing for pupils in their first year of primary school – was defeated in parliament. 

And a recent report into the economics of independence commissioned by the SNP and led by Andrew Wilson, a private sector lobbyist with close ties to the party leadership, came under heavy fire from the left for its putative commitment to spending constraints and fiscal discipline.

All these factors have contributed to a growing sense of restlessness and inertia among supporters of Scottish independence.

In the absence of a clear roadmap to national sovereignty, the so-called “Yes” coalition that brought Scotland within touching distance of independence four years ago has retreated back into its respective ideological subgroups.

In particular, the gap between traditional nationalists who view independence as key to the survival of Scottish cultural identity and left-wing activists who see it in more practical terms – as a constitutional mechanism for social and economic change – has never been more obvious or entrenched. 

This matters because, until now, unity had been the cornerstone of nationalist success. 

In the face of concerted attacks by the British political and media establishments, SNP campaigners remained rigidly focused on one thing: independence, even as other major UK parties – notably, the Conservatives over Brexit and Labour over Jeremy Corbyn‘s leadership – collapsed into acrimony. 

It would be an exaggeration to say that unity had vanished completely: dozens of autonomous “Yes” groups are still active across Scotland and the SNP is conducting a series of member-led “national assemblies” in a bid to coordinate planning for the next referendum, if and when it arrives.

But the adhesive is visibly beginning to wear off. And if the independence movement splinters apart now, no one, not even Nicola Sturgeon, will find it easy to piece back together again. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. 

The Chinese government has remained tight-lipped on the disappearance of International Criminal Political Investigation (Interpol) Chief Meng Hongwei on a trip to China.

His disappearance was made public on Friday, when French authorities said they were opening an investigation to find out what happened to Meng, a Chinese national who served a lengthy term as the vice minister for public security.

According to a report by the South China Morning Post newspaper, Meng was taken in for questioning by Chinese authorities. The paper, which based its reporting on an unnamed source, said the reason for Meng’s questioning was unknown.

Interpol said in a tweet that the case was “a matter for the relevant authorities in both France and China”.

#NEWS – Media statement concerning INTERPOL President Meng Hongwei. pic.twitter.com/P46AeXsGiS

— INTERPOL (@INTERPOL_HQ) October 5, 2018

Meng’s disappearance was originally reported by his wife, who told French police in the city of Lyon she had not heard from him since he travelled to China.

Meng was last seen in Lyon, Interpol’s home base, late September.

Al Jazeera’s Adrian Brow, reporting from Beijing, said China’s silence is a “reflection of how sensitive this case is”.

“So far China has said absolutely nothing about the disappearance of Meng Hongwei. State-controlled media is so far not reporting this story either and any mention of his name on social media is being deleted,” he said.

“That is I think a reflection of how sensitive this case is.”

According to Interpol’s website, Meng has nearly 40 years of experience in criminal justice and policing, and has overseen matters related to legal institutions, narcotics control and counterterrorism. 

Following the appointment, critics suggested that Meng’s appointment gave Beijing a chance to enlist more international help in tracking down alleged economic criminals, including corrupt officials, targeted by President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign. 

But Interpol has, in the past, denied this, saying its head does not intervene in day-to-day operations, which are handled by secretary-general Juergen Stock who is German.

Operation Fox Hunt

Al Jazeera’s Brown added that Meng was vice minister of the Public Security Bureau prior to his Interpol appointment and that made him a very powerful man.

“For some context, [Meng’s] boss is a man who was jailed for corruption. Zhou Yongkang was the J Edgar Hoover of Chinese politics, he was the security tzar of China,” he said.

“Then, in 2016, another vice minister of public security was jailed for corruption, so there is a pattern emerging. It is quite possible that Meng found himself on the wrong side of the political divide in China, at a time when President Xi Jinping is intensifying his crackdown on corruption.”

The Chinese clampdown on corruption, known as Operation Fox Hunt, has led to claims in some countries that Chinese law enforcement agents have been operating covertly on their soil without the approval or consent of local authorities.

Some critics also view the campaign as a way for President Xi to purge the party of political foes. Since it began, several top officials have been detained and charged with crimes including “severe disciplinary violations”, a phrase that usually refers to corruption.

Was the nuclear deal a mistake? Why has Iran continued to back Syria’s Bashar al-Assad more than six years into the war?

This week, in New York, UpFront‘s Mehdi Hasan spoke to Mohammad Javad Zarif, foreign minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran, about the United States exiting the nuclear deal, his country’s involvement in the war in Syria, and democracy in Iran, the future of the nuclear deal and its relationship with the US under Donald Trump.

Asked about the US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Zarif said: “The nuclear deal is the best the United States can get, and it’s the best Iran can get, and it’s the best the international community can get.”

“We’re not actually eager to meet with [US President Trump] because the United States is not a reliable negotiating partner,” Zarif told UpFront host Mehdi Hasan.

“They were always saying that we want a treaty with Iran. Now they just withdrew from the [1955 Treaty of Amity] that we have with the United States because the International Court of Justice ruled against them,” Zarif added. “That tells you that whatever you negotiate with this president and with this administration, they’re not going to be bound by it.”

Asked if Iran will ever meet with President Trump or members of his administration, Zarif responded, “In politics, never say never. But I believe that there is need for a serious change in the administration”.

Speaking about the Iran nuclear deal, which the US pulled out of in May 2018, Zarif reaffirmed his support for the JCPOA.

“We believe it’s a deal that is in the interest of the international community,” he said.

“Iran has given the Europeans some time, because they asked us for some time to try to compensate for US departure from the nuclear deal,” he added. “That means that Iran needs to receive the economic dividends of the deal.”

Zarif was also asked to comment on Bashar Al-Assad’s alleged war crimes and use of chemical weapons in Syria’s ongoing civil war.

“I condemn anybody using chemical weapons,” he said.

“We condemn any attacks against civilians no matter who does it.”

On domestic affairs, Zarif was asked whether Iran should be considered a democracy if it’s ultimately been ruled by a Supreme Leader for twenty-nine years.

“Some people lead countries, democratic countries for longer than that,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean that they’re not a democracy”.

“[The Supreme Leader] can be removed any day by a body that elected him. And that body was elected by the people,” he added.

Follow UpFront on Twitter @AJUpFront and Facebook.

Source: Al Jazeera

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – Sitting in a small and airless living room on the edge of northern Rio de Janeiro’s winding Acari favela, Christian Lucas Fonseca’s mother says she is worried.

“There’s no opportunity for young people,” Paula Lucas Fonseca, 45, says.

“It’s very difficult … and a lot of mothers have lost hope because they can’t control it [their children’s future].”

Christian left school prematurely nearly a year ago after missing too many classes. He has since faced the daunting prospect of trying to find work amid the sparse opportunities in Brazil’s stuttering economy.

For now, like millions of other young Brazilians, 18-year-old Christian is unemployed in a country suffering from an economic hangover that followed its worst recession in recorded history.

Unemployment within the general population stands at above 12 percent, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), but among those aged 18-24 the jobless rate leaps to 26.6 percent.

“I’m trying to find work but I’m feeling very unmotivated. I keep going after it but it doesn’t work out,” Christian says, adding that he aspires to go into the army and “move up through the ranks”.

And with elections looming, one of the pressing issues concerning young voters regardless of who wins is ensuring there are more jobs and other opportunities.

‘Youth lost the most’

Brazil’s recession, which began in mid-2014, saw the economy contract sharply from 2015-2016, shrinking by nearly eight percent.

Economists speculate the downturn was linked to a variety of factors, including a fall in the global commodity prices, which had previously fuelled an economic boom in Brazil from 2000-2012, domestic fiscal decision-making and several high-level corruption scandals that prompted market uncertainty.

What is clear, however, is that the biggest losers during the slump were young people, according to Macelo Cortes Neri, head of the Center for Social Research at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) higher education institute.

“The youth lost the most right from the beginning of the crisis,” Neri says, pointing to significant falls in income rates among people aged 15-24 in the four years after 2014 compared to the overall population.

“[And] this crisis is deep and long and has a very long and shy recovery process.”

Despite growing modestly again last year, the Brazilian economy remains in fragile health and weak growth is prompting little optimism from young Brazilians about theire future prospects.

According to the National Confederation of Brazilian Industry, fear of unemployment peaks at 68.6 percent among those aged 16-24 and falls through every older age group until 55 and above.

Since September 2017, around the time Brazil officially exited recession, the number has risen by three percent.

Educational divides

Inextricable from prospects for employment is education.

More than 21 percent of Brazilians who fail to finish high school are jobless, according to IBGE.

Unemployment among those who complete university studies, by comparison, is 6.3 percent 

Wellington Costa, 19, from underprivileged northern Rio’s Iraja neighbourhood is hoping to transition from the former group into the latter.

He’s trying to finish high school and plans to go proceed on to university to study engineering.

But he’s currently having to balance his schooling with odd jobs, commonly known in Brazil as “be cools”, in order to make money to support his family.

“I feel unsatisfied, it sucks, but I need to keep doing what I must to survive,” Wellington, who’s dreamed of making submarines since the age of five, says.

“My financial situation has always been like this, independent of whatever the government is or whether there’s a recession or not,” he adds.

“The people writing about unemployment and putting together the data are all in good financial condition and don’t really think about how things are affecting the poorer, working classes.”

According to Neri, Brazilian officials could do more to support young people like Wellington through school and in finding jobs. 

“In terms of education policy, everything after high school is about going to unviersity, but only a few go to university,” Neri says.

“We don’t have an agenda for the young in terms of professional education … [and] youth becomes a problem when it should be the solution [for the economy].”

Squeezed middle class

Even those who have undertaken higher education, however, have not been immune from Brazil’s economic crisis.

About 30km south of Acari, in the tree-lined avenues of the largely middle class Botafogo neighbourhood, sisters Aline and Leticia Domingues da Rosa, both graduates of the Rio-based prestigious, private Pontifical Catholic University, are also feeling the effects of the downturn and a subsequent slow and stuttering recovery.

Leticia, 27, was laid-off from her job at a radio station last year as part of severe cutbacks.

Along with Aline, 28, she now runs a home-made baking business producing cookies, cakes and other confectionary.

The enterprise has leaned on financial support from the wider family and the sisters’ own savings.

Neither express any confidence they will be able to find work if the business fails to get off the ground.

“The end of the recession won’t be felt yet, in the long run things might get better but at the moment I don’t see anything getting better,” Leticia says.

“If I had the money I would leave Brazil in a heartbeat.”

Half of all Brazilians aged between 25-34 would like to change countries if they could, according to a survey published by polling institute Datafolha in June.

Among those 16 to 24 years old, the number rises 62 percent.

Election approaching

The disenchantment that has seemingly gripped many young Brazilians comes as the country is set to vote on Sunday as part of national and state-level elections.

At stake are more than 1,650 positions, including the presidency.

Presidential frontrunner candidates far-right Jair Bolsonaro and leftist Workers’ Party contender Fernando Haddad, who replaced former widely popular former president Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva last month after he was barred from running in the vote, have presented widely different proposals for kick-starting Brazil’s economy. 

Bolsonaro, a former army captain, has pledged to cut red tape and minimise the size of the state via privatisation.

Haddad, a former mayor of metropolis Sao Paulo and minister of education under Lula, has vowed to cut taxes for Brazil’s lowest earners and boost employment.

Despite leading opinion polls in the run-up to Sunday’s vote, both also have high rejection rates among the electorate.

Costa is one of a number of Brazilians not convinced by either candidate.

“The election doesn’t have much of an impact on me, things are bad and difficult regardless of who wins, so I’m going to vote null,” he says.

For Leticia, meanwhile, “none of the candidates present a solution” for the economy.

But in Acari, where a light flickers momentarily and then sparks into life following a power cut, Christian speaks with aspiration about the future.

“I don’t know much about politics, and I don’t know who would be the best politician … [But] I hope things will get better after the election,” Christian, who didn’t register to vote, says.

“I want a permanent, fixed job. That’s how I will be able to go up in life.”