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Cameroon Man Arrested for Baby Trafficking Gives Stunning Details of
Operation

Moki Edwin Kindzeka

   YAOUNDE - Cameroon police said Saturday they have opened investigations
   into a network of traffickers who allegedly buy babies from the central
   African state to sell in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Some members
   of the network, believed to have illegally sold scores of children,
   were arrested Saturday in Cameroon's capital, Yaoundé, with babies
   they had bought and a mother who said she wanted to sell her unborn
   child because she is poor. The mother was also arrested.
   Baudouin Gweha, senior official of the Gendarmerie post at Mimboman, a
   Yaoundé neighborhood, says he arrested 41-year-old Pierre Essola for
   carrying out an activity that violates human dignity.

   Essola tells Cameroon police that all negotiations with potential
   buyers and sellers of babies are by telephone.

   He says he found a Congolese woman on social media who was offering to
   help teenage and single mothers to take care of their newborn babies.
   He says he immediately contacted the Congolese women through WhatsApp
   and told her that many young girls with unwanted pregnancies in
   Cameroon need help. He says he recorded and sent videos of poor teenage
   mothers to the woman in Congo. He says while in Cameroon, the woman
   disclosed to him that she had another partner who helps her to buy
   babies from the coastal Cameroonian city of Douala.

   Essolla said his intention is to help poor mothers, especially
   teenagers who abandon their babies on the streets because there is no
   one to help take care of the babies.

   Cameroonian police report that last year, several hundred children were
   abandoned on the streets by poor mothers. At least two dozen babies
   were either killed or found dead after their mothers abandoned them.

   Gweha says Essolla is part of a network that sells Cameroonian babies
   in the DRC.

   He says among those already arrested is an online trafficker who
   facilitates the buying and selling of newborn babies.

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