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Heartless France: Pensioner goes on trial for helping African migrants

31, May 2018

Heartless France: Pensioner goes on trial for helping African migrants 0

A 73-year-old Amnesty International volunteer appeared in court in France on Wednesday charged with helping two underage Africans illegally enter the country, the latest case involving activists assisting migrants on the move through Europe.

The trial of pensioner Martine Landry is the first of its kind in France involving a member of Amnesty.

It comes a day before three activists — two Swiss and one Italian — appear in court for helping a group of migrants cross from Italy to France through a pass in the Alps in April.

Landry is the coordinator of Amnesty’s refugee response in southeast France. She risks up to five years in prison and a fine of 30,000 euros ($34,700) if convicted of illegally assisting two Guinean youths in July 2017.

She is accused of helping the pair, both aged 15 according to Amnesty, cross back into France after they were arrested and returned to Italy during a raid on the home of olive farmer and activist Cedric Herrou, where they had been sheltering.

Landry claims that she did not help the teens re-enter France after they were turned back at the border by Italian police.

The white-haired campaigner said she stepped in only after they crossed onto French soil and took them to the police to register for asylum.

‘Solidarity is not a crime’

Her case, like that of the Alps campaigners, has become a cause celebre among critics of President Emmanuel Macron’s tough stance on migration.

Several dozen activists gathered outside the courthouse in the city of Nice holding banners reading “Solidarity is not a crime”.

In April, MPs voted to soften laws criminalising acts of solidarity with illegal migrants, to exempt those who provide them with free food, shelter or medical care.

Helping migrants illegally cross the border remains a crime, however.

Amnesty condemned the case against Landry.

“Dragging a compassionate pensioner before the court on these surreal charges makes a mockery of justice. Acts of solidarity should be promoted, not punished,” its senior campaigner on migration, Maria Serrano, said in a statement.

The three activists on trial Thursday in the Alpine town of Gap are accused of helping a group of migrants reach France after dozens of anti-immigrant campaigners blocked another pass on the trans-alpine migrant trail.

They face up to 10 years in prison and fines of 750,000 euros each as well being banned from France if convicted.

NGOs have contrasted the treatment of the campaigners with that of “Spiderman” Mamoudou Gassama, the illegal Malian migrant who was fast-tracked for French citizenship this week after rescuing a young boy hanging from a balcony in Paris.

“A few symbolic gestures mask a policy of repression and expulsion,” said migrant support campaigner Michel Rousseau.

(AFP)


French Cameroun tyrant nears day of reckoning

31, May 2018

French Cameroun tyrant nears day of reckoning 0

The French Cameroun despot sent army soldiers to burn down villages and towns in Southern Cameroons and to kill hundreds of Ambazonian civilians as his hated regime looked increasingly likely to fall.  Biya is resorting to sorties by his still ill-equipped ground forces to resist what appears to be the final gambit of a senseless war he orchestrated against the people of Southern Cameroons.

After two years of fighting to crush the Southern Cameroons resistance and a death toll of nearly 2000, a combination of political errors, international isolation from the Trump administration and a well-organized Ambazonia Self-Defense Council Restoration Force, we of the Cameroon Concord News Group can now say Biya’s days look numbered. Only reticence in France about the prospect of an Anglophone taking over in Yaoundé appears to be holding back a CIA-French intervention as witnessed in places such as Libya and Zaire.

The genocide currently going on in Southern Cameroons has enabled the opponents of the Biya regime in Yaoundé to secure US support for regime change.  Earlier last week, it was rumored that the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia has recorded a major diplomatic breakthrough deep within the US Congress for the restoration of the state of Ambazonia.

There are fears in some capitals within the Sub Saharan and CEMAC region that without a regime change in Yaoundé thousands more will die. Yet the Biya Francophone Minister of Communication and so-called Cameroon government spokesman, Issa Tchiroma Bakary continues to blame the killings and sufferings of Southern Cameroonians on the Interim Government and the Southern Cameroons Diaspora.

Signs of a stranglehold being tightened on the Biya regime could be seen recently with the US ambassador Peter Barlerin stating that the two US warplanes handed over to the Francophone dominated army should be used only to counter Boko Haram insurgency.

A number of Nigerians have been killed on Southern Cameroons soil since the revolution started and Abuja is slowly but surely moving away from Biya, but Nigerian ailing President Buhari maintains the strategy is not a step towards intervention in Cameroon’s domestic affairs.  Cameroon government forces have continued to kill innocent Southern Cameroonian citizens in both the Northern and Southern Zones. The army also fired bullets at several villagers in nearby Bamenda suburb of Santa.

As well as the growing Southern Cameroons challenge, Biya faces an alliance of young Western-backed militants of his ruling CPDM crime syndicate who have openly stated that he should step aside.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai


Nigeria: A study of Boko Haram’s public communications offers hints on its strategy

31, May 2018

Nigeria: A study of Boko Haram’s public communications offers hints on its strategy 0

In July 2011, the Nigerian government unveiled plans to make telecommunications companies dedicate toll-free phone lines so civilians could report Boko Haram activity. Months later, insurgent spokesman Abu Qaqa threatened to attack service providers and Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC) offices.

“We have realized that the mobile phone operators and the NCC have been assisting security agencies in tracking and arresting our members by bugging their lines and enabling the security agents to locate the position of our members,” Qaqa announced, according to a 2013 article by Freedom Onuoha on the E-International Relations website.

Eight months later, Boko Haram made good on Qaqa’s threat. The militant group launched a two-day attack on telecommunications towers belonging to several providers in five cities: Bauchi, Gombe, Kano, Maiduguri and Potiskum. Qaqa announced that Boko Haram launched the tower attacks “as a result of the assistance they offer security agents.” Of the 530 telecommunications base stations damaged in Nigeria in 2012, Boko Haram was responsible for 150.

The attack on telecommunications providers illustrates an important aspect of Boko Haram messaging. The group often has used its public messaging as a harbinger of things to come. Although it might sound foolish to telegraph likely attack targets, Institute for Security Studies (ISS) researcher Omar S. Mahmood told Africa Defense Forum the gambit could help Boko Haram achieve two important goals. First, it can help gain a concession through intimidation, such as the release of detainees.

“The other is I think it’s a pretty powerful message if Boko Haram comes out and says, ‘I’m going to attack X because of this,’ and then they go out and they do it,” Mahmood said. “It just serves to make their next warning even more intimidating and effective.”

MESSAGES PORTEND ATTACKS

Mahmood, in his March 2017 paper for the ISS titled “More than propaganda: A review of Boko Haram’s public messages,” showed that a significant number of Boko Haram messages between 2010 and 2016 issued warnings and threatened violence. In fact, warnings and threats constitute the second-most-common theme of the group’s messaging out of the 145 messages studied.

“Given the proliferation of warnings in Boko Haram messaging, especially during [leader Abubakar] Shekau’s extended rants in which he accuses essentially all opposed to him, it can be difficult to discern between a legitimate threat and bluster,” Mahmood wrote. “But a careful reading of the situation may determine what Boko Haram’s next target could be, which is more likely to result in action when linked to a specific and articulated grievance.”

Boko Haram demonstrated this tendency further in its threat against schools. In January 2012, Shekau complained publicly about alleged mistreatment of Islamic schools and students, and he threatened to launch attacks.

Again, Boko Haram followed through. From January to early March 2012, militants destroyed at least a dozen schools in the Maiduguri region of Borno State. About February 20, 2012, the first three schools were set ablaze. Six days later, Boko Haram said the attacks were in retaliation for state raids on Islamic schools, according to Human Rights Watch. From February 26 to 29, militants burned at least four schools, and on March 1 torched another five.

Ties between messaging and attacks also can be seen in Boko Haram’s assault on Nigerian media and the nation’s oil industry. As Qaqa complained that the media misrepresented Boko Haram, insurgents bombed This Day newspaper offices in Abuja and Kaduna in April 2012. Boko Haram’s anger at This Day stemmed from a 10-year-old column on the Miss World pageant published in the paper, which some Muslims found to be blasphemous. Peaceful protests already had taken place in the runup to the pageant, but the column sparked violent clashes between Christians and Muslims that resulted in about 250 deaths, according to Human Rights Watch.

The 2002 pageant, originally scheduled to be held in Nigeria, eventually was moved to London, but Boko Haram’s anger culminated in the attack years later.

A month after the This Day attack, Boko Haram issued an 18-minute video that sorted Nigerian media into three groups based on its perception of their transgressions. This Day stood alone in the first tier because of the Miss World incident and other perceived offenses. The second tier included several newspapers and a radio station. These outlets would be attacked soon, the narrator stated. The third category included media organizations that faced attack if they were not careful, listing more newspapers, an international radio service and a website.

In June 2014, a suicide bomber detonated a bomb outside a Lagos oil refinery. Mahmood wrote that the decision to attack the refinery so far from Boko Haram’s home base likely was an assault on government wealth sources rather than evidence of a grievance with the oil industry. Similar attacks did not follow, and oil interest messaging rarely has been repeated. “Rather than emerging out of nowhere, the assault was foreshadowed in Boko Haram messages in February, March and May that year [2014], indicating its commitment and ability to follow through even on pledges considered to be unrealistic at the time,” Mahmood wrote.

HOSTAGES AND PRISONERS

Boko Haram’s highest-profile action is the kidnapping of 276 Chibok schoolgirls in 2014. On April 14, militants attacked a boarding school in Chibok, Borno State, in the middle of the night. Insurgents raided dormitories, loaded girls into trucks and drove away. Some girls jumped into bushes as trucks rushed away, leaving 219 children held captive. The atrocity drew worldwide condemnation and parallels a long-standing grievance of Boko Haram: the desire for the release of incarcerated members.

Negotiations and conditions comprise the third- most-frequent theme appearing in messages Mahmood studied. “Specifically, the demand for all incarcerated Boko Haram members to be set free has been a recurrent refrain in messaging,” he wrote.

In the rampup to the Chibok abductions, Shekau referenced the wives and children of insurgent detainees no less than seven times in 2012 and 2013, and accused federal officials of kidnapping insurgents’ family members. In 2012, spokesman Qaqa stated: “We would soon start kidnapping the wives and children of all the people that have had hands in the arrest of our wives and children.”

In October 2016, after months of negotiations, Boko Haram released 21 of the Chibok girls in exchange for a monetary ransom, Daily Trust reported. In May 2017, insurgents swapped another 82 of the girls for five militant leaders.

EXPANDING VIOLENCE, JOINING ISIS

Boko Haram grew as a local insurgency from 2009 to 2012. In 2013, a willingness to expand into regional operations emerged with the kidnapping of a French family in Cameroon, the insurgent group’s first foray across the border of Nigeria’s neighbor. The kidnapping, the group said, was a response to the arrest of Boko Haram members in Cameroon. From there, operations increased in Cameroon in 2014, and by early 2015, Shekau was openly taunting the presidents of Chad and Niger as well.

“This coincided with the first violent Boko Haram operations in both countries in February 2015, again demonstrating the close convergence between messaging and group action, and confirming the extension of its struggle to the Lake Chad region,” Mahmood wrote.

It was about this time that the insurgent group pledged its allegiance to ISIS. A new Arabic-language Twitter account claiming to be the official outlet for a new Boko Haram media group launched, called Al-Urwah al-Wuthqa, the BBC reported.

The ISIS alignment was the beginning of big changes in messaging for Boko Haram. Until then, messaging was closely associated with what the group was going through or accomplishing. Ernest Ogbozor, a Nigerian doctoral student at George Mason University in the United States, said his research points to three distinct phases of Boko Haram messaging, culminating with the ISIS alignment.

The first phase, roughly from 2009 to 2012, focused on grievances, recruitment and revenge. In 2009, Nigerian forces killed founder Mohammed Yusuf, destroyed mosques and disrupted a micro-credit lending scheme. “Now the group was left with nothing,” Ogbozor said, adding that messaging sought to parlay these grievances into popular support.

Boko Haram’s most powerful period was from 2013 to 2015, when it was capturing and holding territory, and dealing setbacks to military forces. Messages at this time focused on praise for territorial and military achievements.

By late 2015 and through 2017, Nigerian and regional military assaults began to take their toll on Boko Haram. “So instead of praising itself, the message changed to seeking relevance,” Ogbozor said. “This is when Boko Haram pledged allegiance to Islamic State.”

GROUP, MESSAGING SPLIT

In August 2016, Boko Haram split into two factions: One is led by pugnacious spokesman Shekau; the other by Abu Musab al-Barnawi, ISIS’ choice for leader. Although Shekau pledged allegiance to ISIS in 2015, the group soon grew tired of his management of the war against regional forces and his propensity for targeting civilians, Mahmood said. The al-Barnawi faction broke off, and with this change came differences in messaging.

Shekau had been featured prominently in Boko Haram messages. Soon after pledging allegiance to ISIS, that ended. Al-Barnawi’s faction started releasing themed batches of photos through social media that highlight nonmilitary aspects of the group’s struggle, such as governance, justice and services that Boko Haram can provide as part of ISIS.

The split also has left al-Barnawi’s ISIS-aligned faction the clear winner in terms of potential longevity and lethality, Mahmood said. Shekau’s wing is just trying to survive, but it still uses ISIS logos in messages.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ACTION

Mahmood said more research is needed to see how Boko Haram messaging resonates with local populations. It’s possible, he said, that Boko Haram messaging might not be particularly effective locally. If so, then countermessaging efforts may not work either. However, he writes: “Boko Haram messaging provides a window into a group that otherwise remains largely enigmatic and obscure. … Messaging can thus expose important insights beyond simply serving as a propaganda tool, and thus should be closely monitored.” He suggests that observers:
Continue researching the effects of Boko Haram messaging on local populations, focusing on recruitment. Doing so will lead to more effective programs to reduce this influence.
Analyze Boko Haram messages to see changes in group divisions or the identification of new targets.
Continue frustrating Boko Haram messaging by detaining media operatives or removing social medial posts. Such tactics can reduce messaging or discontinue certain practices, such as social media use.
Reduce penalties and stigmatization for those who watch Boko Haram messages to keep from enhancing its appeal. Long-winded rants may actually present the group as negative and volatile.
Balance factual press coverage of Boko Haram messages with the need to limit its outreach. Careful reporting guidelines can keep the media from becoming a propaganda tool.

“The messaging says a lot about their strategy,” Mahmood said. “It goes hand in hand, so it’s important to really look at these aspects because they can tell you a lot about the movement.”

 

Culled from Defenseweb


Zimbabwe: Mixed reactions greet July 30 polls

31, May 2018

Zimbabwe: Mixed reactions greet July 30 polls 0

Mixed reactions have greeted news of a July 30 date for Zimbabweans first general elections after Robert Mugabe was forced out of power.

On Wednesday, Emmerson Mnangagwa announced that a general election will be held on July 30, seen as crucial to securing foreign investments.

“I think he has got the final say, he has got the powers to put on a date, we have been ready to vote”, said Harare resident, Aston Matava.

Frank Nemayire ’‘looks forward to any changes in employment, or lack of liquidity, from the one who will be elected.“

However some are disgruntled. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which relies on voters who have fled the Mugabe regime, has suffered a setback as the Constitutional Court has decided that Zimbabweans in the diaspora could only vote by moving to the country.

‘‘First of all we have been clamoring for diaspora vote, we wanted the demilitarization of Zimbabwe’s Electoral Commission and the army, the state security agents should not be involved in the electoral process”, said Albert Chidhakwa.

Lyne tte Biti thinks the announcement is rather too soon. ‘‘In my opinion our party’s demands for electoral reforms have not been heard, so it makes no sense”, she added.

Missing from July’s election, for the first time in 20 years, will be Zimbabwe’s foremost political gladiators, Mugabe and longtime leader of the MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai, who died of cancer in February.

Mnangagwa goes into the election with the advantages of incumbency and the backing of the army. His face main rival is 40-year-old Nelson Chamisa and the MDC.

Critics have accused Mnangagwa of being Mugabe’s most loyal acolyte, and blame him for a crackdown on rebels in the mid-1980s that rights groups say killed 20,000 civilians. He denies those charges.

 

Source: Reuters


Kenya: President Uhuru vows to recover resources lost in youth fund corruption scandal

31, May 2018

Kenya: President Uhuru vows to recover resources lost in youth fund corruption scandal 0

Kenya’s public prosecutor said on Wednesday 24 civil servants and business people charged with involvement in the theft of nearly $100 million of public funds will stay in custody pending a June 4 hearing on their application for bail.

The suspects, who include the public service ministry’s principal secretary, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to magistrate Douglas Ogoti to charges that relate to theft at the government’s National Youth Service (NYS).‏

“Accused to be remanded in custody until Monday 4th June, 2018 when court will rule on their bail application,” the office of the director of public prosecution said on Twitter.

The NYS is a state agency that trains young people and deploys them to work on projects ranging from construction to traffic control.

It is rare for prosecutors to bring such a large group of public officials to court to answer corruption charges.

Kenyatta tells suspects to ‘carry own cross’

President Uhuru Kenyatta pledged to stamp out graft when he was first elected in 2013 but critics say he has been slow to pursue top officials and ministers.

In the wake of the latest NYS scandal, the president vowed to recover all resources that have been lost to corruption schemes.

“These people who are corrupt should be jailed and we recover all the stolen funds to deliver on the things we promised Kenyans,” Kenyatta told residents of the capital Nairobi while launching a government project on Wednesday.

The president also called out any Kenyans that might entertain the notion of defending people implicated in the scandal, based on their ethnicity.

“I do not want to hear anybody defending those caught in corrupt dealings. A thief is a thief irrespective of the tribe he/she comes from,” said the president.

Chief prosecutor Noordin Mohamed Haji on Monday named 54 people, 40 of them government officials, to face charges including abuse of office and conspiracy to commit an economic crime. Some of those charged remain at large.

The prosecutor’s office also tweeted that it had applied for arrest warrants for suspects who failed to turn up in court on Tuesday, or that they could surrender to the police.

Diplomats urge Kenya to decisively deal with corruption

Ambassadors from 18 Western diplomatic missions including the United States, Britain and Canada issued a statement on Wednesday welcoming Tuesday’s indictments and saying they stood “with Kenyans in the fight against corruption”.

The diplomats, noting their governments provide “wide-ranging assistance” to the Kenyan government, praised the investigation into the alleged looting of funds at the NYS and urged the judiciary “to ensure fair trials and justice”.

“Corruption has long undermined Kenya’s prosperity, security and democracy,” the statement said. “It is, quite simply, theft from the Kenyan people.”

The diplomats included ambassadors, high commissioners and head of delegation of the European Union, Sweden, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Ireland, United Kingdom, Denmark, Switzerland, Finland, Australia, Canada, Poland, Romania and Norway.

 

Source: Africa News


Africa’s next civil war could be in Cameroon

30, May 2018

Africa’s next civil war could be in Cameroon 0

On May 20, Cameroon’s national day, citizens in the capital of Yaounde marched in parades, and President Paul Biya congratulated members of the armed forces on their commitment to peace and safety. At the same time, in the country’s unstable Anglophone regions, separatists kidnapped a mayor, killed two police officers and intimidated people who tried to celebrate the holiday.

Such incidents have human rights activists worried that Cameroon could soon be the site of Africa’s next civil war.

“We are gradually, gradually getting there,” said Agbor Nkongho, an Anglophone human rights lawyer and director of the Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa. “I’m not seeing the willingness of the government to try to find and address the issue in a way that we will not get there.”

Since late 2016, Cameroon has faced an increasingly violent uprising in the bilingual country’s minority Anglophone regions, where English speakers say they have been marginalized by the French-speaking majority for decades. When peaceful protests started 18 months ago, government forces opened fire on protesters and looted and burned down villages. Now an armed separatist movement is gaining traction, kidnapping government officials and killing gendarmes.

Some observers say the situation has already reached a point where it could be considered a civil war.

“If you look at what is going on now, you can call it a civil war,” said John Mukum Mbaku, a professor at Weber State University in Utah and a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution. “The government is shooting down defenseless villagers, and many have decided to defend themselves and are fighting back.”

At the end of World War I, the League of Nations divided the German colony of Kamerun between France and Britain. The French-controlled territory won independence in 1960, and the British territories that now make up the southwest and northwest regions of the country joined the next year.

On paper, Cameroon is now the only country in the world other than Canada where both French and English are official languages. But only one-fifth of the country’s 22 million people are Anglophone. Biya, who has ruled for 35 years, is Francophone, as are most of the country’s elites.

“The fact of the matter is, if you don’t speak French, you cannot survive in the country,” Mbaku said.

Anglophones say they are being forced to assimilate into Francophone culture, and their frustrations reached a boiling point in 2016.

A protest movement was launched with teachers and lawyers at the forefront, attacking the “Francophonization” of their home towns. A particular complaint was the growing number of non-English-speaking teachers being sent to Anglophone areas.

“It’s not just about language,” Nkongho said. “It’s a culture, it’s a way of life, it’s the way they’ve been raised.”

The Cameroonian military responded to the protests with brute force. Videos emerged of the security forces kicking university students and dragging them through mud. They also opened fire on protesters, killing some of them. As the movement gained momentum and evidence of police brutality circulated on social media, the government cut the Internet in Anglophone regions. Julie Owono, executive director of Internet Without Borders, said the months-long shutdown “convinced people that, indeed, Anglophones are treated differently.”

Support for armed separatists, who want to establish a new Anglophone nation called Ambazonia, started to grow. “You talk to people who were very moderate but they are now supporting the separatist movement,” Nkongho said.

Last week, he said, civilians counted around 40 dead bodies in Anglophone regions of the country — at least 27 of which were allegedly killed in a standoff with government forces. That made for one of the bloodiest weeks since the unrest began 18 months ago. Col. Didier Badjeck, a Cameroon Army spokesman, said government troops engaged in a firefight with separatists and that “several terrorists were neutralized.”

A recent count by the International Crisis Group said at least 120 civilians and 43 members of security forces have been killed since the conflict began. Some 20,000 people have fled to Nigeria as refugees, and 160,000 are now displaced within Cameroon, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

A presidential election looms in October, with Biya expected to run again. Akere Muna, an Anglophone presidential candidate and prominent lawyer, hopes that better governance could keep the country unified. But he said the government has only ignited tensions and dismissed Anglophone calls for more autonomy.

Muna said he recently visited an Anglophone village that is normally home to 6,000 people. Only a handful of people were left, he said. “If [Biya] gets reelected, the country will become ungovernable,” Muna said. “By the day, it’s getting worse.”

Culled from Washington Post



UN Emergency Response Plan and Overview of the crisis in Southern Cameroons

30, May 2018

UN Emergency Response Plan and Overview of the crisis in Southern Cameroons 0

The crisis in the South-West and North-West Regions of Cameroon has compounded pre-existing vulnerabilities. Since 2016, political and social instability, exacerbated by sporadic violence, has had a negative impact on the civilian population of Cameroon’s South-West and NorthWest Regions, hosting four million inhabitants (16% of the total population). In November 2017, the sociopolitical crisis progressively translated into insecurity and armed violence. Since then, the escalation of tension and upsurge in hostilities between non-state armed groups and defence and security forces have triggered humanitarian needs across the two regions, linked to significant internal displacement.

In recent months, the epicentre of the crisis moved from Bamenda (North-West) to Mamfe and Kumba (SouthWest). All divisions in the South-West region, host to more than 1.4 million inhabitants, are affected by the crisis.

The number of households forced to flee their villages – or the country – in search of safer areas has rapidly and steadily increased since November 2017. Recent needs assessments report that at least 160,000 people have been internally displaced in the two affected regions and would need humanitarian and protection assistance over the next three months. In addition, more than 21,000 Cameroonians have been registered as refugees in Cross River, Benue and Akwa Ibom States in Nigeria.1 This crisis is taking place against a backdrop of several other humanitarian emergencies affecting 3.3 million people across Cameroon.

Most affected areas

The South-West Region has become the hub of the crisis as it is home to more than 90% of the 160,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in need of humanitarian assistance; 135,000 are located in Meme Division and 15,000 in Manyu Division. The remaining 10,000 are displaced in the North-West Region.

Simultaneously, dozens of villages in Mbongue and Konye Subdivision (Meme Division) have been emptied of their populations. The situation is similar in the NorthWest, especially in Boyo Division.

Many villages have suffered significant material damage in Mbongue and Konye Subdivision (Meme Division), and in Eyumodjok and Akwaya Subdivision (Manyu Division). 1 This Response Plan does not include the need of Cameroonian refugees who found refuge in Nigeria Recently, insecurity has spread to new divisions in the South-West (Ndian, Lebialem, Fako) and North-West (Boyo).

Who are the most vulnerable?

Clashes between non-state armed groups and defense and security forces have displaced the civilian population into the surrounding forests and villages – 80% of the displaced population have found refuge in the forest.

The two regions has experienced a deterioration of living conditions – primarily affecting school-age children, women and the elderly – and a collapse of livelihoods as well as heightened abuses.
The crisis and subsequent displacement have prevented people from accessing their fields and markets. For most of the affected population who relied upon agriculture or livestock as their main sources of livelihoods before the crisis, dependency on external assistance will be inevitable in the short-term.


FIFPro Africa Division: Geremi Njitap en route to Zimbabwe

30, May 2018

FIFPro Africa Division: Geremi Njitap en route to Zimbabwe 0

CAMEROON legend Geremi Njitap and CAF deputy secretary-general Anthony Baffoe will headline a host of the game’s former stars who will converge in Victoria Falls for the annual FIFPro Africa Division Congress that bursts into life tomorrow.

In a first for the country, the Footballers Union of Zimbabwe, are hosting this year’s congress of the African Division of the World Footballers Association, which will run from tomorrow to Saturday.

FUZ president Desmond Maringwa revealed yesterday that Njitap and Baffoe will be among the 40 delegates expected to start trooping into the country today for the indaba that is key to the welfare of professional footballers across the continent.

The maiden congress to be staged by FUZ comes following a successful bidding by Maringwa’s leadership.

The former Dynamos and Zimbabwe midfielder has been working tirelessly to ensure the country’s footballers also receive the same kind of attention and treatment in line with current global trends. Maringwa said FUZ had deliberately chosen to stage the congress in Victoria Falls to also market brand Zimbabwe.

Sports Tourism has been on the ascendancy in Zimbabwe with a number of international football and other sporting legends visiting the country’s various resort areas. In the next few days, the spotlight will fall on Zimbabwe in as much as the focus will be on the leaders of player unions around Africa as they gather for their round table.

“The different FIFPro Divisions whether it is Europe, Asia or South America hold these congresses in their respective zones and I am glad that our bid to hold the Africa Division Congress was successful and hence we have 40 delegates coming to Victoria Falls.

“I think it is in recognition of the work that we have been doing of late that we were granted the right to host the congress and we are very happy about it as this also puts the country on the right map.

“We decided to host it in Victoria Falls as part of marketing our country and Africa at large and we believe that after the congress the delegates will be able to go back to their respective countries and talk about Victoria Falls and Zimbabwe as well as return with family and friends to visit our tourist resorts,’’ Maringwa said.

Maringwa also urged local footballers to take FUZ activities seriously and follow the other countries.

“We have come a long way in terms of our governance hence we are now able to host such a congress. I would urge local players to be members of this union and be part of the global village’’.

Maringwa, while not at liberty to reveal much about the topics they will discuss, hinted that “a lot of the key issues are internal but will be centred on player welfare and the strategies that will be used going forward’’.

ZIFA and Premier Soccer League officials are also expected to grace the opening ceremony of the congress tomorrow after which the delegates would go into closed door sessions.

Njitap, who won the UEFA Champions League with Real Madrid in 2000 and featured for a number of English clubs including Chelsea and Newcastle, completed a memorable season that year when he captained the Cameroon squad to Olympic gold at the Summer Games in Sydney, Australia.

He also featured 108 times for the Indomitable Lions while his club football record includes stints in Paraguay and Turkey.

Baffoe, who resisted attempts to lure him to play for Germany and stuck with his native Ghana, has seen his administrative profile grow in leaps and was on November 16, 2017, appointed CAF deputy general-secretary in-charge of football and development.

The former defender was also part of the Black Stars squad that finished second in the 1992 Africa Cup of Nations in Senegal and played alongside the likes of three-time Africa Player of the Year, Abedi Pele another legendary striker, Anthony Yeboah, and incumbent head coach of Ghana James Kwesi Appiah.

After his playing career, Baffoe used his broad popularity to set up and front a new TV magazine show devoted to youth football.

He was successful on German television in various sport programmes and also acting as host of Viasat One’s UEFA Champions League show in Ghana.

Legendary former Egyptian midfielder Magdi Abdelghani Sayed Ahmed, the first African player to score a penalty kick in the World Cup when helping the Pharaohs to a 1-1 draw against the Netherlands at the 1990 show-piece in Italy, will also be in Victoria Falls.

Source: herald.co.zw


‘This is a genocide’: villages burn as war rages in blood-soaked Cameroon

30, May 2018

‘This is a genocide’: villages burn as war rages in blood-soaked Cameroon 0

As rebel groups combat the clampdown on anglophone activists, civilians are being caught in the crossfire, with reports of many killed and tens of thousands forced from their homes

Villagers from Belo, in Cameroon’s north-west flee the fighting to nearby Bamenda
 Villagers from Belo, in Cameroon’s north-west, flee the fighting, heading for nearby Bamenda. All photographs by Peter Zongo

An hour and a half’s drive from Bamenda, in Cameroon’s north-west, is Belo, a village largely abandoned except for a military checkpoint manned by drunken soldiers.

In the middle of the road is a burnt motorcycle. A little further on, a corpse is sprawled – someone has tried to cover it with a few handfuls of grass.

Two girls pass by with bags on their heads filled with dried fish. “We barely have any food. That’s why we came back to collect the fish,” they say.

A covered corpse at the side of the road near Bamenda
 A covered corpse at the side of the road, near Bamenda

They explain that the corpse belongs to a villager. “There are many more bodies,” they add. “The soldiers burned part of the village.”

Belo is on the frontline of Cameroon’s simmering conflict between anglophone and francophone, an increasingly secessionist struggle that has pitted the French-speaking government in Yaoundé against the recently emerged Anglophone Ambazonia Defence Forces (ADF) and other rebel groups. According to the UN, the fighting has forced an estimated 20,000 Cameroonians to flee to Nigeria.

Many more people forced from their homes remain in the country. On the main road outside Belo, groups of people are moving, laden with possessions, whole families leaving with everything they can carry.

“We are on our way to Bamenda,” a woman says. Like all the others, she asks not to be named for fear of reprisal.

“There was a fight between the ADF and the army. Beginning in the early morning, I heard heavy gunfire. The army attacked the rebels in the village. The rebels blew up a bridge. So the army got stuck, and the rebels succeeded in killing the soldiers.

“The army sent reinforcements later in the day, and then they started taking their revenge on the villagers. They burned the houses, raped women and executed people at random. Those who had the chance to flee are hiding in the jungle,” she says. She could not tell how many were killed. “Many. This is a genocide.”

The matron at the nearby Mbingo Baptist hospital confirms that on the evening of 5 April “many soldiers” were brought in. About civilian casualties, however, she says she is unaware.

Although French and English are both official languages in the central African country, English speakers complain of policies they say discriminate against them, particularly in the education and judicial systems.

Beginning as an anglophone demand for more say in the government of President Paul Biya, that movement evolved at the end of 2016 into strikes, demonstrations and an uprising.

Then in 2017 the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium began Operation Ghost Town, a call for the shutdown of schools in the English-speaking south-west and north-west provinces.

In response, the government arrested anglophone leaders, blocked the internet for three months and installed a curfew in a series of repressive measures that became deadly when, in September of last year, at least 40 were reportedly killed during massive demonstrations.

That in turn provoked rebellion when in December separatists of the Ambazonian Defence Forces began attacks on state targets, with Biya declaring war on the separatists in places like Belo in retaliation.

In the village of Ambo the scene is similar to Belo. Small groups of soldiers occupy the village centre. The walls of several houses are marked by bullet holes and arson attacks.

The deserted village of Ambo
The deserted village of Ambo

 

An old man is standing in his door. “I could not flee, because my leg is crippled. My grandchild had to stay with me – both her parents are dead. For weeks now, we have survived on bananas.”

He points to a nearby house. “An old woman was shot there. The soldiers killed her in her own house. I also saw two girls hit by bullets in their shoulder.”

And while the fighting in Belo occurred last month, the violence is continuing.

Near the village of Widikum, machine guns rattle. A roadblock – one of the many that are situated every 10km or so – has been attacked by rebels. When travellers are finally permitted to pass, a house is burning further down the road.

Lucas Cho Ayaba is commander in exile of the Ambazonia Governing Council, of which the Ambazonia Defence Forces are the military arm. He sees the government in Yaoundé as an occupying force.

“60% of the GDP of Cameroon is earned in Ambazonia. Oil and wood are exploited by foreign companies, but the profits go to Yaoundé. On the other hand there is allegedly no money to provide for English-speaking teachers,” Ayaba says in an interview by phone.

“Our first aim is to make Ambazonia ungovernable. We must try to raise the cost of the occupation to higher than the profits they get here.”

A local government building in Batibo, destroyed by ADF rebels
 A local government building in Batibo, destroyed

“We cannot stand idly by,” Ayaba adds. “Peaceful protests and civil disobedience in the ghost towns simply do not have any effect against the repression of Yaoundé.”

Despite this, say locals in Bamenda, support for the Amba-boys, as the ADF are locally known, is not always voluntary.

“Those who don’t support the guerrillas with food, petrol or weapons is put away as a traitor,” says the man attacked by the machete.

Culled from The Guardian



Zimbabwe to elect new president, MPs on July 30

30, May 2018

Zimbabwe to elect new president, MPs on July 30 0

Zimbabwe announced on Wednesday it would choose a new president and parliament on July 30, in the country’s first electoral test since the removal of its autocratic former leader Robert Mugabe.

His successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, unveiled the date in the official Zimbabwe Government Gazette.

“Monday, the 30th day of July, 2018 (is) the day of the election to the office of President, the election of members of the National Assembly and election of councilors,” Mnangagwa said in a proclamation.

Once a right-hand man to the 94-year-old Mugabe, Mnangagwa dramatically succeeded the veteran leader in November after nearly four-decades in charge when troops swarmed the streets and briefly seized key sites.

Mnangagwa, 75, will square off against the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, now led by 40-year-old Nelson Chamisa following the death of Morgan Tsvangirai in February.

If no candidate receives a simple majority in the first round of the presidential election, a run-off will be held on September 8.

Elections under Mugabe were marred by corruption, intimidation and violence, but Mnangagwa has vowed to hold a free and fair vote.

The election will be the first to be monitored by Western observers in many years.

On Monday Harare and the European Union announced that observers from the bloc would monitor polls in the southern African country for the first time in 16 years.

A prospective voter (L) checks her voter registration details with ZEC officials on May 29 2018 at an inspection center in Harare, ahead of Zimbabwe harmonized 2018 general election, expected for July. (Photo by AFP)

 

The head of the last EU observer mission, Pierre Schori, was thrown out of Zimbabwe in 2002 on the eve of presidential elections that were condemned as flawed.

Following the high-profile spat, Zimbabwe barred the EU and other Western observers from sending further missions to monitor polls in the country as Mugabe grew more and more defiant of foreign criticism up until his downfall.

And in a further sign of Zimbabwe’s growing efforts to mend fences with former foes following Mugabe’s resignation, the country has applied to re-join the Commonwealth, the bloc of former British colonies said Monday.

Harare’s membership was suspended in 2003 over the violent and graft-ridden elections the previous year.

Zimbabwe left the Commonwealth at the height of violent land seizures, when white farmers were evicted in favor of landless black people — a policy that wrecked agriculture and triggered economic collapse.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland confirmed that the organization would also send observers to the elections.

Mugabe sent shockwaves through the ruling ZANU-PF, the party he dominated for decades, when he recently posed with a retired general who will take on the government in this year’s election.

Despite a slew of reformist pledges and announcements it is unclear whether Mnangagwa, who was a vital cog in the ZANU-PF party and helped Mugabe to hold onto power for 37 years, has won the support of ordinary Zimbabweans.

(Source: AFP)


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