E. Guinea denies building wall along Cameroon border

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MALABO, Equatorial Guinea, Aug 19, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Equatorial Guinea’s
foreign affairs minister has denied that the country is building a wall along
its border with Cameroon.

“Those who talk of a wall lack information,” Oyono Esono Angue said on
Radio Equatorial Guinea on Friday.

The first official response from the government on the subject came during
a visit to Yaounde to deliver a letter from President Teodoro Obiang Nguema
to his Cameroonian counterpart Paul Biya.

People living in Equatorial Guinea earlier said they had been told about
plans to build a wall.

“All along the border, everything is already cleared. We’ve been told it is
the fence where the wall will be built for our border with Cameroon,” one of
them, Gustavo Ondo, told AFP via telephone earlier this month.

At the same time, an army officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told
AFP that Equatorial Guinean soldiers had crossed the Ntem river that forms a
natural border between the two countries, and erected milestones in the town
of Kye-Ossi on the Cameroonian side. The milestones had been placed at points
“between one and two kilometres (0.6-1.2 miles) inside our territory,” the
officer said.

Cameroon’s army chief Rene Claude Meka later visited the spot and warned
that the army would not tolerate “any unlawful intrusion” into its territory.

According to a several sources, Equatorial Guinea accuses Cameroon of
letting West Africans enter its territory illegally.

Malabo is particularly watchful about the border because it is where some
30 foreign armed men from Chad, CAR and Sudan were arrested in what
Equatorial Guinea says was a foiled coup attempt in December 2017.

Equatorial Guinea is awash with oil but mired in poverty and a reputation
for corruption.

It has been ruled with an iron fist by Obiang Nguema since 1979.