At least 20 people died when an overloaded bus and a lorry collided in the southwest of the African country of Cameroon.

Two more people, who were injured in the head-on collision, have been taken to a hospital.

The incident occurred near the town of Muyuka, authorities say, adding that they’re still not sure about the cause of the accident.

Initial investigations indicate that the truck, which was transporting food, may have had mechanical problems shortly before it ran into the bus.

A government school has been razed to the ground in Mutenguene making it the 8th school burned in less than two weeks in Southern Cameroons. The Ambazonia militant groups are currently operating underground and are targeting schools and other public buildings.

These repeated acts of school fires cast doubt on the actual reopening of schools in West Cameroon for the 2017 academic year. Southern Cameroonians with ties to the Francophone regime in Yaoundé have accused the Francophone dominated police forces of engaging in no strategy to stop the burning.

Southern Cameroons counties for the last 11 months have been the theater of angry protest against French Cameroun marginalization. Separatists have attacked police stations including military camps and vandalized high school campuses.

Mutengene is presented as the second most frondeous locality of the Buea Province in Southern Cameroons, after Kumba. But Mutengene owes much more to its reputation hosting the National Police Training and Enforcement Center that is entire French orientated.

By Rita Akana
Cameroon Concord News

Reports from Kumbo, Bui County in Southern Cameroons say Government Primary School Kikaikelaka has been completely burnt down by unknown individuals. Neighbours and witnesses hinted the school may have been razed for accommodating the 2016/2017 Common Entrance and First Schools Leaving Certificate examinations (FSL).

In spite of very tight security, the militant group carried out the act and disappeared before security could be alerted. Notwithstanding the tense and frightening presence of the forces of law and order who are currently spread across the different counties and villages in Southern Cameroons. Cameroon Info.Net reported that the incident occurred during the early hours of Wednesday, around 3 am.

The fire was discovered late and West Cameroonians in that part of the territory could only lament the material damages and the impact on school resumption for this academic year. Parents are now worried about the safety of pupils and students.

French Cameroun colonial security apparatus have as usual opened an investigation. This is not the first fire incident that has consumed a school structure in the North West constituency; several schools have been reduced to ashes, including markets, police stations, Hotel and several private properties.

Source: Cameroon Info.Net

27 soldiers combating the Nigerian Islamic sect, Boko Haram in the Far North region of La Republique du Cameroun have been detained at the Kondengui central prison in Yaoundé. The Biya Francophone regime says the troops expressed their dissatisfaction against the government by blocking a major road in Far-North with barricades in protest against the non-payment of their premiums and deployment allowance.

Cameroon Concord News learned that the incident had displeased the military authorities who ordered the arrest of the 27 soldiers that were involved and taken to Yaoundé. The ministry of defense attempted an explanation and stressed that the Yaoundé regime will not tolerate indiscipline in the ranks, especially in the far north, a region currently facing too many Boko Haram incursions.

Sanctions were imposed on the soldiers concerned, in accordance with instructions from the head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces noted the Minister of Defense, Joseph Beti Assomo.

By Sama Ernest
Cameroon Concord News

A mammoth crowd of Southern Cameroonians converging in the UK have blocked all entrances leading to La Republique du Cameroon’s embassy in London. No car can pass through that road as angry protesters are staging a sit in strike. A serious traffic jam is slowly developing. Residents of the area say that if the protests continue for two more hours, almost a quarter of London will experience a lock down for most of the day.

The entrance into the embassy building has been barricaded by the British Police while the flag of La Republique could still be spotted flying. Some protesters hinted that as the crowd gathers and the day gets older, they will jump the barricade and bring down the doors, get in, remove and burn the flag of La Republique.

It is important to note that the UK remains a very import player in the struggle for the restoration of independence because the Brits failed to complete the independence process as was obliged by the Trusteeship Council of the UN in flagrant violation of international law.

Culled from AKOSON

Hundreds of people from the Akwaya County have staged a demonstration in support of an independent state of Southern Cameroons. Some closed to 900 men and women from Tinta, Big Nyang, Abonadou took to the streets in Akwaya town on Saturday, expressing support for the interim leader of the Southern Cameroons Governing Council and the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium.

The Akawayas waved the Southern Cameroons flag and clamored for the release of Lord Justice Ayah Paul Abine. A representative of the Southern Cameroons Governing Council, who was present at the march, said the event was in solidarity with all prominent Manyu citizens arrested ever since the beginning of the Southern Cameroons revolution including Dr. Felix Agbor Balla and Dr. Fontem Neba.

Our chief political correspondent in the Mamfe County observed that there were plenty of reasons behind the Akwaya rally. “The first is that the people of Southern Cameroons are demanding their own sovereignty. Others are saying they just want to create a fairer society. But a majority says that Ambazonia needs its sovereignty.”

Despite fierce opposition by the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo government, more than 80 percent of Southern Cameroonians have backed independence for Ambazonia, according to officials of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium.

Yaoundé is fiercely opposed to any independence bid by Southern Cameroons and French Cameroun political elites are hoping that the Southern Cameroons revolution would fail due to division among the 4.5 million residents of the territory.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with files from Mpke Tambe in Akawaya

A celebrated Indian nun who rescues Cameroonian women from slavery in the Middle East has called for greater support for victims to help them recover from the horrors of being drugged, raped and abused. Sister Vanaja Jasphine says she has identified more than 200 women who have been trafficked from the central African nation and enslaved in the Middle East in recent years.

The 39-year-old nun last year helped to bring home 14 trafficking victims, whom she refers to as Cameroon’s “children”. A rising number of African women are heading to the Middle East for domestic work, driven abroad by the lack of jobs at home, rights activists say. Yet many have their passports confiscated and end up trapped in modern-day slavery.

“One woman was thrown from the balcony of a two-storey building by her employer after she accidentally burnt her boss’s shirt whilst ironing,” Jasphine said of a victim in Kuwait. Others are drugged and turned into sex slaves – being raped multiple times a day and even forced to have sex with animals.

“They come home with a lot of trauma,” Jasphine, coordinator of the Justice and Peace Commission of Kumbo, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a seminary in the capital Yaounde. “Sometimes, a (woman forced to be a) sex worker can be exploited 15 times a day – physically, mentally, she’s drained … she’s gone,” added the nun, who moved to northwest Cameroon almost a decade ago to work with the country’s poorest.

“In the end, she doesn’t have anything. She comes back in the same dress she left in.” Jasphine was hailed in June as one of eight global heroes in the fight against trafficking at the launch of the United States’ annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, which grades countries on their efforts to stamp out modern-day slavery. But Jasphine has no time for celebrations. She is too busy seeking funding, counselling and support for victims left traumatised by their ordeal abroad.

Jasphine says she identifies trafficking victims by working with activists, community leaders and civil society groups. To raise awareness about their plight, she has helped organise demonstrations, where women have marched with placards reading: ‘Bring back our suffering daughters’. “We got a lot of support from the people,” said Jasphine.

“It touches every heart because they (the people) feel: ‘It’s my own child who is affected, who is exploited’.” She has also lobbied government officials, all the way to the country’s prime minister, to do more to help the women.
Cameroon has made strides towards meeting the U.S. minimum standards to end trafficking, having provided services to some victims and sent a delegation to the Middle East to discuss Cameroonian workers’ rights, the 2017 TIP report said.

Yet the state has not funded repatriation for slavery victims stranded in the Middle East, and continues to rely on civil society groups to bring trafficking cases to its attention and provide most services for victims, the report said.

The government has tried to crack down on Cameroonians travelling to the Middle East, but traffickers have changed tactics, and are instead flying women via Nigeria, Jasphine said. She said the government must now do more to help those coming home.

Although her organisation and other groups try to help victims get back on their feet, take them to hospital and provide counselling, it is simply not enough, the nun warned. “It is very disheartening,” Jasphine said, showing a series of distressed text messages from one of the women she helped to rescue from Kuwait, who is now struggling financially.
“Much more needs to be done.”

Culled from Thomson Reuters Foundation

Amadou Vamoulke, the former general manager of the Cameroon Radio and Television (CRTV), has been questioned at the Special Criminal Court in a new case just three days after the start of his trial in the Gervais Mendo Ze affair. The so-called new case relates to his management of the Cameroon radio and television (CRTV).

Cameroon Concord News sources revealed that this new file which could open comes after an audit report commissioned by Charles Ndongo the current general manager of CRTV on the management of his predecessor. For more than four hours on the 3rd of August, Amadou Vamoulke was interrogated at the Special Criminal Court.

Amadou Vamoulke who is incarcerated in the Kondengui Central prison in Yaoundé, was called to explain the purchase without tender the rights of re transmissions of certain major football competitions. Charles Ndongo alleges that Vamoulke violated the procurement procedure in connection with the purchase of these rights.

We understand the prosecutors at the Special Criminal Court and French Cameroun financial crime experts did not find any evidence against Amadou Vamoulke in the audiovisual (TV tax) scandal estimated at 3.9 billion FCFA. For instance, Amadou Vamoulke could not have been able to falsify an account operated by the treasury department in Yaoundé.

Alice Nkom one of the lawyers of the former GM of CRTV was quoted as saying that “Amadou Vamoulke is a victim of political and judicial fury. In the first case the judges were put under pressure to charge a citizen who did not steal anything. The Special Criminal Court hired experts who in their reports proved that the former General Manager of CRTV did not commit any crime, but in spite of these conclusions from the experts, our client is still in jail.”

By Rita Akana
Cameroon Concord News

The Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium have declared support for the non resumption of schools in Southern Cameroons and extended ghost town operations. In a press release signed by the Deputy Secretary General of the Consortium, Barrister Eyambe Ellias and Tassang Wilfred, the Programme Coordinator, the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium stated that as from August the 14th, ghost towns will be staged from Mondays to Wednesdays.

The Consortium also called for a strict boycott of Francophone businesses operating in Southern Cameroons territory. The leadership of the Consortium further pointed out that the new ghost town policy is to enable the Southern Cameroons people to engage in civil obedience to resist recent anti Anglophone moves adopted by the Biya Francophone government.

The Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium also appealed to the peace loving people of Southern Cameroons to avoid during ghost towns marketplaces, transportation stations, churches and mosques.

The Consortium decision came just days after the interim leader of the Southern Cameroons Governing Council noted that Southern Cameroons was at war with La Republique du Cameroun. The extension of the ghost town operation represents the beginning of the end for the regime that governed the Southern Cameroons by the force of arms destroyed its resources and looted its bounties.

Our senior political commentator opined at the time of filing this report that August the 14th must be the beginning, not the end of resistance and we must organize ourselves at all levels in order to cause a complete paralysis at all La Republque’s facilities. Other Southern Cameroons groups have supported the Consortium and said the call for intensive ghost town comes in line with its efforts to free British Southern Cameroons.

The Southern Cameroons Diaspora communities in South Africa, Nigeria, UK, Ireland, Belgium, France, Germany, the US including Canada have all praised the decision to extend the ghost town and considers it unrivaled success and an initiative worthy of support and have accepted to work with Southern Cameroonians back home to ensure the success of this giant move in order to gain freedom and self determination.

The Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium communiqué described the ghost town as an effective tool to resist the totalitarian Yaounde regime, saying the Southern Cameroons people have used it during the 1953 Eastern Regional Crisis at Enugu, Nigeria.

Since last week French Cameroun government ministers had downplayed the call for ghost town, expecting it would fail and are in missions abroad claiming to explain measures taken by the Biya Francophone regime to resolve the Southern Cameroons crisis.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai
Cameroon Concord News

Another Francophone CPDM delegation is expected in Canada despite stiff opposition demonstrated by Southern Cameroonians against the political move by President Biya.

Since the end of last week, several members of the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo government have been on mission to Europe, Nigeria, the Republic of South Africa and the US claiming to inform West Cameroonians of the Diaspora about the situation in Southern Cameroons.

The Southern Cameroons Diaspora communities have acted angrily against the action to send these Francophone surrogates abroad. The anti-Anglophone Minister for Justice, Laurent Esso and a certain Paul Ghogomu were jeered and booed in Brussels and Washington.

In a press release made public by the High Commissioner of La Republique du Cameroun in Canada, the members of the Francophone CPDM delegation will be meeting the Diaspora on Thursday the 10th of August, 2017.

By Chi Prudence Asong
Cameroon Concord News