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French Cameroun: Biya regime to introduce biometric passports from July 1

9, June 2021

French Cameroun: Biya regime to introduce biometric passports from July 1 0

Cameroon plans to launch the first biometric passport model starting from July 1, a senior official told the press on Tuesday.

Dominique Baya, Secretary General of the General Delegation of National Security said, the intention was to eradicate fraud or forgery, and avoid delays encountered in the issuance of the travel document.

“The objective is to provide a modern, reliable and highly secured production system capable of fully meeting the requirements of the International Civil Aviation Organization and the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa,” Baya told reporters in the capital, Yaounde.

Applications for Cameroonian passport will henceforth be online and passports will be issued 48 hours after enrolment, he added.

Source: Xinhaunet

Nexttel Cameroon to launch mobile money service by December

9, June 2021

Nexttel Cameroon to launch mobile money service by December 0

Nexttel Cameroon has announced plans to introduce its mobile money services in the country by December, Nextvame reported. Nexttel Possa, which means Nexttel wallet, will be launched in collaboration with UBA Cameroon in compliance with CEMAC regulations. Their collaboration for that purpose was authorised by the central bank of the CEMAC region, Bank of Central African States (BEAC) on 12 March 2018.

Source: Telecompaper

Trump congratulates s**thole country for shutting down Twitter

9, June 2021

Trump congratulates s**thole country for shutting down Twitter 0

Former U.S. President Donald Trump has congratulated Nigeria for blocking Twitter and he is further calling for more countries to follow suit.

“Congratulations to the country of Nigeria, who just banned Twitter because they banned their President. More COUNTRIES should ban Twitter and Facebook for not allowing free and open speech – all voices should be heard,” Trump said in a statement.

American social media companies banned former US President Donald Trump from their platforms after accusing him of spreading falsehoods and inciting the crowd which attacked the Capitol in January.

Trump holds on to the need to create another competitive social media platform.

“In the meantime, competitors will emerge and take hold. Who are they to dictate good and evil if they themselves are evil? Perhaps I should have done it while I was President,” Trump added. “But Zuckerberg kept calling me and coming to the White House for dinner telling me how great I was. 2024?”

Trump is quoted to have said: “Why do we want all these people from Africa here? They’re s**thole countries … We should have more people from Norway.”

He made the comments whiles meeting a bipartisan group of senators at the White House on Thursday. He has tweeted today denying the use of the word.

Millions of Nigerians were unable to access Twitter Saturday after the government enforced an indefinite suspension of the microblogging platform’s operations in Nigeria.

The Association of Licensed Telecommunication Operators of Nigeria said in a statement that its members have suspended access to Twitter in compliance with a government directive to do so.

The Nigeria government said Friday it was indefinitely suspending Twitter in Africa’s most populous nation after the company deleted a controversial tweet President Muhammadu Buhari made about a secessionist movement.

Minister of Information and Culture Lai Mohammed said Friday that government officials decided to suspend Twitter because the platform was being used “for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.”

Mohammed criticized Twitter for deleting the post, saying, “The mission of Twitter in Nigeria is very suspicious,” and that Twitter had in the past ignored inciting tweets against the Nigerian government.

In recent months, pro-Biafra separatists have been accused of attacking police and government buildings. In his tweet, Buhari vowed to “treat them in the language they understand.”

Twitter had deleted Buhari’s post on Wednesday, calling it abusive.

Source: Africa News

France: President Macron slapped during trip to south

9, June 2021

France: President Macron slapped during trip to south 0

French President Emmanuel Macron was slapped in the face by a man on Tuesday during a visit to a small town in southeastern France, an incident that prompted a wide show of support for French politicians from all sides.

The French president was greeting the public waiting for him behind barriers in the town of Tain-l’Hermitage after he visited a high school that is training students to work in hotels and restaurants.

A video shows a man slapping Macron in the face and his bodyguards pushing the man away as the French leader is quickly rushed from the scene.

A bodyguard, who was standing right behind Macron, raised a hand in defence of the president, but was a fraction of a second too late to stop the slap. The bodyguard then put his arm around the president to protect him.

Macron just managed to turn his face away as the attacker’s right hand connected, making it seem that he struck more of a glancing blow than a direct slap.

French news broadcaster BFM TV said two people have been detained by police.

The man, who was wearing a mask, appears to have cried out “Montjoie! Saint Denis!”, a centuries-old royalist war cry, before finishing with “A bas la Macronie”, or “Down with Macron”.

In 2018, the royalist call was cried out by someone who threw a cream pie at far-left lawmaker Éric Coquerel. At the time, the extreme-right, monarchist group Action Française took responsibility for that action. Coquerel on Tuesday expressed his solidarity with Macron.

‘Isolated event’

In an interview with the Dauphiné Libéré newspaper later Tuesday, Macron played down the incident, which had made nationwide headlines, calling it an isolated incident perpetrated by an “ultra-violent” individual.

“I am doing fine. We must put this incident, which I think is an isolated event, into perspective,” he said, and added: “Let’s not let isolated events, ultra-violent individuals… take hold of the public debate: they do not merit it.”

Speaking at the National Assembly, Prime Minister Jean Castex was more forceful in his reaction. “Through the head of state, that’s democracy that has been targeted,” he said in comments that prompted loud applaud from lawmakers from all ranks, who stood up in a show of support.

“Democracy is about debate, dialogue, confrontation of ideas, expression of legitimate disagreements, of course, but in no case it can be violence, verbal assault and even less physical assault,” Castex said.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen firmly condemned on Twitter “the intolerable physical aggression targeting the president of the Republic”.

Visibly fuming, she said later that while Macron is her top political adversary, the assault was “deeply, deeply reprehensible”.

Former President François Hollande of the Socialist Party tweeted that the assault is a “unbearable and intolerable blow against our institutions … The entire nation must show solidarity with the head of state”.

 Looming elections

Less than one year before France’s next presidential election and as the country is gradually reopening its pandemic-hit economy, Macron, a centrist, last week started a political “tour de France”, seeking to visit French regions in the coming months to “feel the pulse of the country”.

Macron has said in an interview he wanted to engage with people in a mass consultation with the French public aimed at “turning the page” of the pandemic – and preparing his possible campaign for a second term.

The attack follows mounting concerns in France about violence targeting elected officials, particularly after the often-violent Yellow Vest economic protest movement that repeatedly clashed with riot officers in 2019.

Village mayors and lawmakers have been among those targeted by physical assaults, death threats and harassment.

But France’s well-protected head of state has been spared until now, which compounded the shockwaves that rippled through French politics in the wake of the attack.

Macron, like his predecessors, enjoys spending time in meet-and-greets with members of the public. Called “crowd baths” in French, they have long been a staple of French politics and only very rarely produce shows of disrespect for the head of state.

A bystander yanked then-President Nicolas Sarkozy’s suit during a “crowd bath” in 2011 and his successor, Hollande, was showered with flour the next year, months before winning the presidential election.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and AP)

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Yaoundé government takes punches to the liver

9, June 2021

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Yaoundé government takes punches to the liver 0

The Yaoundé government received a double whammy on Monday, June 7, 2021 following the release of a Human Rights Watch report that clearly indicts the government for its inhuman brutality, while the United States announced visa restrictions against those responsible for the perpetuation of violence in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions which has been the theater of a bloody and senseless violence between armed Anglophone groups and the army.

Since the Biden Administration came to power in January 2021, its Secretary of State, Antony John Blinken, has focused on the conflict in Cameroon, urging the Yaoundé government to seek peaceful means to bring about sustainable peace in the two English-speaking regions. 

On Monday, Blinken stepped up pressure for a peaceful resolution to Cameroon’s conflict between state forces and English-speaking rebels by imposing visa restrictions on individuals believed to be undermining efforts to end the crisis.

Mr. Blinken said in a statement that “this decision reflects our commitment to advance a dialogue to peacefully resolve the Anglophone crisis and support respect for human rights.” 

The sanctions are aimed at “those who undermine the peaceful resolution of the crisis,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement, without naming those targeted by the ban. 

However, many people across know some of those in government who have been seeking to perpetuate the fighting as it gives them leverage and wealth. Paul Atanga Nji, the territorial administration minister; Joseph Beti Assoumo, the defense minister; Fame Ndongo, the higher education minister and Laurent Esso, the justice minister and their family members are those who are really targeted by the U.S. sanction, a source at the State Department has hinted the Cameroon Concord News Group.

The country’s two English-speaking regions have been gripped by fighting since 2017 as the rebels try to break away from the predominantly Francophone government. Some 7,000 people have died and more than 700,000 have been displaced as a result of the violence.

Announcing the visa sanctions, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States was deeply concerned by the continued insecurity and called for both sides to negotiate for peace.

“We condemn those who undermine the peace by provoking or inciting violence, human rights violations and threats to peacekeepers and humanitarian workers,” the U.S. diplomat added.

“Washington is deeply concerned about the continuing violence and continues to call on the Cameroonian government and armed separatist groups to end the violence and engage in dialogue without preconditions to peacefully resolve the crisis,” the statement further said.

The English-speaking minority in Cameroon’s northwest and southwest regions blame the French-speaking majority for marginalizing them, instead of looking at how to address the issues, the Yaounde government resorted to terrible crack-down that has resulted in a bitter civil war that will not be ending anytime soon if external pressure is not mounted the government which holds that only military violence can deter Southern Cameroonians from walking away from hastily patched union between English speakers and French speakers.

It should be recalled that the Administration had also taken some measures aimed at bringing the government to the negotiating table, but the French-backed government has been very arrogant and indifferent to human rights abuses and the killing of civilians.

Former President Donald Trump had said Cameroon had failed to address concerns regarding government forces’ persistent human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, arbitrary and unlawful detention and torture. The violations have persisted in recent years as English-speaking communities demand independence from Cameroon, alleging marginalization by the government of President Paul Biya.

President Trump said he would ax Cameroon from a trade program that allowed African countries to sell goods to the United States on a duty-free basis, citing “persistent human rights violations” in a letter to Congress.

The decision came as U.S. officials accused the Central African nation of extrajudicial killings and unlawful detentions amid conflicts that had displaced more than a half-million people over the past two years. 

Despite intensive engagement between the United States and the Government of Cameroon, Cameroon had failed to address concerns regarding persistent human rights violations being committed by Cameroonian security forces. 

The announcement came several months after the US scaled back security assistance as a result of Cameroon’s Francophone military committing multiple human rights abuses against Anglophone civilians. 

While the U.S. was threatening a targeted visa ban, the human rights watchdog, Human Rights Watch (HRW) made things more complicated for the government by releasing a report on the situation in Cameroon wherein he put the blame squarely on the Yaounde government, indicting it of curtailing human rights and limiting free speech.

“Violence has been rife in Cameroon’s North-West and South-West regions since late 2016, as armed separatists seek independence for the country’s minority Anglophone regions. Separatists’ targeted civilians, including aid workers, students, and teachers, while continuing to enforce a boycott on children’s education. Security forces have also committed a litany of abuses including the killing of civilians, arson, sexual violence, and torture of suspected collaborators with separatist groups. Boko Haram attacks are a persistent threat in the Far North region. The Cameroonian government has also taken steps to limit freedom of expression and association, including through the arrests of hundreds of opposition party members and supporters in September 2020 following peaceful demonstrations,” says the HRW report

The report chronicled abuses by government security forces, highlighting a military operation in Bali, North-West region, in retaliation for separatist attacks on polling centers, destroying over 50 homes and killing several civilians, including two men with intellectual disabilities.

It also highlighted actions by government forces on February 14, where government forces and armed ethnic Fulani killed 21 civilians, including 13 children and 1 pregnant woman, in Ngarbuh in North-West region. 

The report pointed out that residents told Human Rights Watch the attack was to punish civilians suspected of harboring separatist fighters. The government initially denied soldiers were involved in the attack, but in March, following international pressure, President Biya established a commission of inquiry into the killings which resulted in the government admitting to the fact that its security forces bear some responsibility for the killings.

Government violence knows no limits. On June 10, 2020 a grenade was fired into the courtyard of the district hospital in Bali, North-West region, following clashes between government soldiers and separatists, leading to the death of one cardiac patient. At least four others were injured as a result.  Security forces also damaged a health facility in the North-West region on June 30, 2020 and arbitrarily arrested seven people.

However, the report also indicts separatist fighters who have also been committing serious atrocities. However, on the whole, the government that is supposed to engineer peace in the country is to blame for the escalation of the conflict and the enormous abuses that have taken place since 2016.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

But why does the UK ingratiate itself with the Biya regime?

9, June 2021

But why does the UK ingratiate itself with the Biya regime? 0

Trade deals being negotiated by Britain reveal cynicism, a disregard for public health and a strange sense of priorities.

The UK-Australia trade deal has received attention because of its negative implications for the British livestock business, animal welfare concerns and deforestation caused by industrial-scale cattle ranching Down Under.

But another recent agreement, this time with Cameroon, does not get column inches or airtime, although it sets a regrettable precedent, overlooking the track record of a corrupt, undemocratic and repressive Central African regime.

Both deals indicate the British government is conditioning Parliament to expect no scrutiny or debate, regardless of pressure from Emily Thornberry, the Liberal Democrats, Greens and SNP.

A Liberal Democrat adjournment debate on June 9th will ask why MPs are being denied any say in Britain’s future trading relationships.

But it seems that despite promises to return sovereignty and oversight to Westminster, this is what Brexit and Global Britain looks like.

Bombs and Bananas

In 2019, the UK sold £50 million worth of goods and services to Cameroon, while importing their bananas in return. The total deal is worth £200 million, a rounding error in international trade.

Compare it to the £41 billion we exported to Germany, our formerly biggest market and the customers we have casually shunned because of Brexit, along with the other EU buyers of UK goods and services – Ireland, which purchased £27bn worth, the Netherlands (£24bn), France (£23bn), and Belgium (£13bn).

We have literally sold our souls for a bunch of bananas. 

It may be immoral and distasteful, but there is at least a pragmatic financial argument for overlooking Saudi Arabia’s human rights record and its war in Yemen. In 2020, the UK sold the kingdom £3.59bn worth of goods and services, mainly military and oil industry equipment, along with providing lucrative money-butler-type consultancy.

But why does the UK ingratiate itself with tiny Cameroon? Since 2017, respected human rights watchdogs have condemned the Francophone regime of President Paul Biya, who, at age 88 has been in power since 1982, for persecuting peaceful Anglophone protesters who objected to having the French school curriculum and laws imposed on them.

The UN believes more than 700,000 people have fled into the bush as state security forces burn their villages. Their children have been unable to attend school for four years.

Unarmed civilians are caught between government soldiers and the increasingly violent separatists fighting for an independent country called Ambazonia. Cameroon’s brutal kleptocrats are worthy of targeted smart sanctions, not photo-ops with Foreign Office representatives.

Be Afraid – the facts about US chemicals

The financially insignificant Australian and Cameroon deals, and the neutering of Parliament’s capacity to scrutinise, are a dress rehearsal for the big one – the UK-US negotiations, which began last May.

The British public is already alarmed by the prospect of chlorinated chicken. We should also be concerned about other American consumer standards.

The United States Centers for Disease Control estimates there are more than 48 million cases of food poisoning a year in the USA, which counts for 14.7% of the population. This leads to more than 3,000 deaths annually.

The main culprits are salmonella, clostridium perfringens, campylobacter and staphylococcal, found in raw meat, seafood, fish and poultry.

In the UK, a fifth the size of the US, there are 1 million (1.5% of the population) annual cases of food poisoning and 500 deaths.

In other words, on a per capita basis the US has almost 10 times the number of cases of food poisoning and more deaths from food poisoning as the UK.

The US Department of Food and Agriculture claims it conducts 160 inspections each week. This amounts to 8,400 inspections a year, covering 172,969 food manufacturers. At the current rate, factories will be inspected once every twenty years.

The FDA says it has 8,000 food inspection “positions” but that tells us nothing about how many inspectors are on the road, going into factories.

Thanks to budget cuts, inspectors are under increasing pressure to complete their work rapidly. One inspector who would not give his name admitted he stands by a poultry production line, watching carcasses whiz past, with no time to do more than a rapid visual inspection.

Food safety, and the use of hormones and pesticides banned in Europe are not the only areas of concern. The US allows hundreds of chemicals in cosmetics and household cleaning products that have been curbed in the EU for decades.

The EU bans 1,300 chemicals from cosmetics, while America bans 11, and the US last passed legislation restricting their use in 1938. 

President Biden’s massive infrastructure budget proposal encourages more American self-reliance and less dependence on importing technology or other goods.

Perhaps the British government should also think twice before exposing UK consumers to products coming nowhere near the EU safety standards we have been used to since the 1970s.

We should also be more discerning about our economic partners if we are as serious about human rights as Dominic Raab claims we are.

Source: Leftfootforward.org

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Human Rights Lawyer Detained on Bogus Terrorism Charges

8, June 2021

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Human Rights Lawyer Detained on Bogus Terrorism Charges 0

Today marks one week since prominent Cameroonian human rights lawyer, Amungwa Tanyi Nicodemus, was thrown behind bars on bogus charges of inciting terrorism. He should be released immediately.

Gendarmes arrested Amungwa on May 31 at the Groupement Territorial de la Gendarmerie in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé, while he was assisting a client. According to Amungwa’s lawyers, after Amungwa complained that Cameroon’s criminal procedure had been breached in his client’s case, the gendarme in charge of the investigation seized Amungwa’s phone without a warrant, claiming Amungwa had taken photographs at the facility. While searching for the alleged photographs, the gendarme found other photographs that recorded alleged military abuses in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions and arrested Amungwa, his lawyers said.

Amungwa was transferred to the Service Central des Recherches Judiciaires (SCRJ), at the State Defense Secretariat (Secrétariat d’État à la défense, SED) – a detention facility where Human Rights Watch has previously documented repeated resort to incommunicado detention and torture – where he remains detained.

On June 1, Amungwa’s lawyers and the head of the Cameroon bar association visited him in detention and urged his release. Two days later, the Yaoundé military court prosecutor rejected Amungwa’s lawyers’ request for bail and returned the case to the SCRJ for “relevant checks.”

Amungwa, a member of the Cameroon bar association, is one of the lawyers representing Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe, the jailed leader of the Cameroonian separatist group, the Ambazonia Interim Government, and several other people arrested in connection with the Anglophone crisis.

“Amungwa’s arrest is a direct attack on the legal profession,” Ayukotang Ndep Nkongho, one of Amungwa’s lawyers, told me. “His arbitrary detention reveals a system geared towards stifling and undermining the role and activities of lawyers involved in key human rights cases.”

Amungwa’s detention takes place amidst a broader crackdown in Cameroon on opposition and dissent. He is one of dozens of government critics, human rights defenders, and journalists arrested in recent years.

Possessing photographs that provide evidence of abuses in the English-speaking regions is not a crime, far less an act to incite terrorism. Cameroonian authorities should immediately release Amungwa and ensure both his due process rights and his role and privileges as a lawyer are respected.

Source: Human Rights Watch

Bundes: Angela Merkel’s CDU party gains victory in key state poll ahead of national election

8, June 2021

Bundes: Angela Merkel’s CDU party gains victory in key state poll ahead of national election 0

The Christian Democrats (CDU) party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel has won the vote in a key state, giving the conservatives a big boost ahead of the national election.

Election results in Saxony-Anhalt in eastern Germany showed CDU won around 37 percent of the votes on Sunday in the last regional poll before the general elections scheduled for September 26.

The result is a huge boost for the conservative party which has chosen its new leader Armin Laschet to replace Merkel as chancellor after her 16-year-stint at the helm.

“Laschet is still a long way from the chancellor’s office,” the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily said. But the poll result has brought him “much closer to it.”

Political observers say the vote also showed the CDU’s greater popularity in comparison to its main rival at the national level, the Green party, as well as Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Polls in the last ten days have shown the CDU, and its smaller Bavarian CSU sister party, are slightly ahead of the Greens again after falling behind earlier in the year, according to Berenberg Bank’s chief economist Holger Schmieding.

“After the CDU did well in Saxony-Anhalt, this nascent reversal of fortunes in favor of the CDU will likely continue,” Schmieding said.

Source: Presstv

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Top US Senator says accountability for tragedies is first good step

8, June 2021

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Top US Senator says accountability for tragedies is first good step 0

U.S. Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, applauded Secretary Blinken’s announcement today that the United States will impose visa restrictions on individuals who are believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the peaceful resolution of the crisis in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon.

“For nearly four years, the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon have experienced one of most neglected human tragedies on the African continent. Countless atrocities and grave human suffering continue without much notice or intervention from the rest of the world,” said Ranking Member Risch. “I’m glad the United States is taking more definitive action against those undermining a peaceful resolution to the armed conflict in Anglophone Cameroon, and is acting on the Senate’s call for targeted sanctions in a bipartisan resolution that I introduced. Today’s action is a good first step to increasing accountability for those undermining peace in Cameroon.”

On January 1, 2021, the Senate agreed, by unanimous consent, to a bipartisan resolution introduced by Ranking Member Risch regarding the Anglophone crisis (S.Res.684). A key provision in the resolution urged the United States government to consider imposing targeted sanctions on individual government and separatist leaders responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.

Southern Cameroons Crisis: US Secretary of State announces visa restrictions on those undermining the peaceful resolution of the conflict

8, June 2021

Southern Cameroons Crisis: US Secretary of State announces visa restrictions on those undermining the peaceful resolution of the conflict 0

The United States is deeply concerned by the continued violence in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon.  We continue to call for both the Cameroonian government and separatist armed groups to end the violence and engage in a dialogue without preconditions to peacefully resolve the crisis.  It is important that children can attend school and that humanitarian aid can be delivered.  We urge all relevant stakeholders in Cameroon and in the diaspora to engage constructively and seek a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

We condemn those who undermine peace through engaging in or inciting violence, human rights violations and abuses, and threats against advocates for peace or humanitarian workers.

I am establishing a policy imposing visa restrictions on individuals who are believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the peaceful resolution of the crisis in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon. This decision reflects our commitment to advance a dialogue to peacefully resolve the Anglophone crisis and support respect for human rights.  The United States strongly supports the Cameroonian people, and we remain committed to working together to advance democracy and mutual prosperity for both our countries.

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